Boulder County, on Colorado’s urban Front Range, mostly missed the building boom that hit the prairies to its east a decade ago. Any land that wasn’t protected as open space was already developed. (The county has one of the most densely developed wildland-urban interfaces in the country.) What was left was pricey and strictly regulated. […]
Communities
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
A proud, flag-waving liberal
It really annoys me that the American flag has become synonymous with right-wing politics (“Right-wing Migration,” HCN, 5/13/13). I am an avowed “liberal,” as right-wingers derisively call me, yet I grew up with a love for flags. When my parents took me to Denmark as a child to visit the country they grew up in, I immediately […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Birds of a (red and blue) feather flock together
I fail to see the point of “Right-wing Migration” (HCN, 5/13/13). I read it looking for evidence of some illegal, fraudulent, immoral or even unexpected behavior and found none. The only “crime” I could discern was that Republicans voted for Republican candidates. Surprise, surprise. It is perfectly understandable that a resident of Southern California would want to emigrate, […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Book review: Close to Home: Photographs
Close to Home: PhotographsRichard S. Buswell, 80 pages, hardcover: $39.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Montana photographer Richard Buswell has documented the state’s landscapes for more than four decades. In the book Close to Home, he narrows his focus, providing an unsentimental look at objects discarded from pioneer life. Many of the images are […]
Posted inWotr
Two blocks from the Mexican border
Every weekend at daybreak, the neighborhood dogs begin to bark. I open my blinds to see what’s up, and it’s almost always the same: a Mexican teenager in a dark hoodie running down the abandoned railroad track followed by several others just like him, spaced every few minutes. Sometimes they’re barefoot. They disappear into a […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Most likely to secede
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. It is less than 90 miles, as the raven flies, from the Ranting Hill to Rough and Ready, California, a western Sierra foothills town that holds special meaning for a reclusive curmudgeon like me. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Beavers battle oil and gas spills
THE WEST It takes a bold person to tinker with Smokey Bear, the U.S. Forest Service icon who proclaims, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” Messing with the paunchy blue-jeaned bear and his strong message might just earn you a cease and desist letter, plus a threat of jail time and fines. That happened to […]
Posted inGoat
Mining for dark matter in Lead, South Dakota
Updated 6/17/13 In the 1870s, gold fever struck South Dakota’s Black Hills. Mining camps like the infamous Deadwood sprung from the mud, supporting bustling trade in opium and liquor. The gold seams went deep, and hundreds of miners and their families settled into a stable and prosperous living in the nearby, larger town of Lead […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
A Utah realtor’s quest to sell a ghost town
Woodside, Utah Mike Metzger strides through a row of cracked wooden headstones decorated with faded plastic flowers. The 35-year-old wears a button-down shirt and gray pants. He has lightly-gelled short dark hair and a trim goatee. “These graves are silent now,” he says, staring wistfully at the camcorder. “But if they could speak, the stories […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Listening to the secret heart: a review of The Last Shepherd
The Last ShepherdMartin Etchart203 pages, softcover: $22.University of Nevada Press, 2012. Arizona author Martin Etchart’s compelling second novel takes readers to the heart of a Basque family, originally from the French Pyrenees, that has been whittled down to two: a father and a son. Mathieu Etcheberri, the son of Basque shepherds who built a hardscrabble […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Sippings of memory: a review of “100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do”
100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother DisappearedKim Stafford202 pages, softcover: $16.95.Trinity University Press, 2012. One of the happy consequences of reading Kim Stafford is that he makes you want to become a better person. The Portland-based author of 12 books of poetry and prose writes with a quiet gentleness, intimacy and kindness. […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Subscriber Warning
High Country News subscribers should be aware that an Oregon company is mailing unauthorized offers for HCN subscriptions and renewals. Please note: These are not authentic solicitations from High Country News. The company name on these solicitations is Publishers Billing Emporium. The solicitation we have seen offers a renewal for $85.95 and includes a lot of […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
The West’s Big Data colonies
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The West’s Big Data colonies.
Posted inWotr
All it takes is somebody with conviction
Once in a while, a principled person can make all the difference. This is how it began for me: I host Home Ground, a weekly public radio program, and a year ago, Montana’s U.S. attorney invited me to attend a law enforcement conference of about 130 officials, ranging from city and county police to state attorneys […]
Posted inWotr
Hispanics flex some environmental muscle
The 1906 Antiquities Act, which grants the president unilateral authority to protect broad swaths of land as monuments, has long stirred controversy in the West, where we don’t like the feds overstepping. The 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated by Bill Clinton in 1996, is still a sore point because Utah’s congressmen and governor were […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
How right-wing emigrants conquered North Idaho
If anyone in Kootenai County could have predicted the Democrats’ downfall, it was Dan English. He had spent most of his life in the Idaho Panhandle and monitored more than 100 local elections in his 15 years as county clerk. The first ballots he counted, in 1996, revealed tight contests between Republicans and Democrats, but […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Have a ponytail? Watch out for owls!
MONTANA AND COLORADO As the Missoulian puts it, “There’s rotten cellphone service, there’s nonexistent cellphone service, and then there’s what’s happening just a few miles east of Ovando.” Which is exactly nothing, because a 195-foot-tall cell phone tower near this tiny western Montana town has never connected a call to anybody. Clearview, a Florida-based company, […]
Posted inWotr
A lesson from a pig called Eddie
I love animals and always have, but I am also a meat eater. In my early 20s, I tried a short stint as a vegetarian, but jumped off the meat-free wagon after a happy encounter with bacon. At the time I felt a twinge of guilt, but the truth is I never gave vegetarianism a […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
A tireless documenter of Native America: A review of “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher”
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward CurtisTimothy Egan412 pages, hardcover: $28.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. In Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan, who also won the National Book Award in 2006 for The Worst Hard Times, chronicles the life story of photographer Edward […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Book review: “Canvas of Clay: Seven Centuries of Hopi Ceramic Art”
Canvas of Clay: Seven Centuries of Hopi Ceramic Art. Edwin L. Wade and Allan Cooke, 248 pages, softcover: $40. El Otro Lado, 2012. In Canvas of Clay, the authors explore the evolution of Hopi pottery from the 14th century until recent times. Pairing full-page color prints with scholarly narrative, historical photographs with schematic drawings, the […]