Recently, in a photo essay entitled, “Here’s what life is like on the notorious Wind River Indian Reservation,” the online Business Insider gave a tour of the sprawling central Wyoming home of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. The essay delivered what it promised: a portrait of a place riddled with violence and addiction. A […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Eco-terrorism and me
It was not really surprising but, well, disappointing to hear that I’d been called an “eco-terrorist” by one of my neighbors. The news was second-hand, of course, which somehow made it worse. Whoever pronounced the judgment, whether she or he, hadn’t bothered to tell me about it, but let it slip, off-hand, as if it […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Feral child
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert, published the first Monday of each month. Almost ten years ago, after my wife Eryn’s difficult and dangerous 22-hour labor, our first daughter, Hannah Virginia, made her reluctant entrance and began an unbroken run […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Pot pilgrims
Traveling in the clouds “Marijuana tourists” are expected to converge on Colorado and Washington, hoping to score without fear of handcuffs, because voters in those states legalized recreational pot last November. Arthur Frommer, founder of the famous Frommer’s Travel Guides, observes that “already, hotels in Seattle and Denver are reporting numerous requests for reservations by […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Volunteering provides a special experience in national parks
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Big Bend National Park, Texas The Rio Grande is slow and muddy along the Mexican border, at the base of Santa Elena Canyon, on a sunny November day. My roommate, Alex Brachman –– like me, a fresh-out-of-college intern […]
Posted inGoat
Sovereignty and the Skywalk
At the Grand Canyon Skywalk, tourists can pay about $90 to shuffle along a horseshoe of glass that extends over the rim’s edge, wearing special booties to avoid scratching the surface as they peer 4,000 vertical feet down at the Colorado River. For such a snazzy feat of engineering, you would expect an equally fancy […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
A photographic journey through Montana’s vanished towns
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. We recommend that you use the Gallery View option to enjoy these photographs. When I arrived at the crossroads of Cartersville Road and Highway 446, I expected to photograph only a decrepit old schoolhouse; after all, I was […]
Posted inWotr
Of cars, booze, guns and angry mothers
Years ago, when I was much younger and dumber, I sometimes drove after drinking too much, occasionally even with a beer in hand. Once a state policeman stopped me leaving the small town of Joseph, Ore., and asked me to count backwards, touch my toes and walk a line. Fortunately, he knew me, and so […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Tribal casinos expand and go upscale
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. The Navajo Nation’s first casino opened in 2008 with a dramatic design — a simple, massive structure shaped like a tent. Prominently located between Interstate 40 and the red-rock cliffs just east of Gallup, N.M., it’s a shell […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Lost and Found Montana: Cartersville
Photographer Jeremy Lurgio unexpectedly finds that life carries on in Cartersville, a small Montana town whose name was struck from official state highway maps in 2000. Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West.
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
HCN takes a break
Note: This Dear Friends is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. In mid-March, as the last of the scanty winter snow melts here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox, […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Westerners love erotic landscapes
Note: This essay is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. On this October morning in southern Idaho, the air is dry and frosty, and the shifting sand dunes reflected in the lake at Bruneau are soft and curvy –– feminine shapes. The woman I love becomes one with […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Football players and other thugs
MONTANA After former Democratic Congressman Pat Williams attacked a certain sacred cow at the University of Montana, reaction was swift. Here’s what he told The New York Times: “We’ve had sex assaults, vandalism, beatings by football players. The university has recruited thugs for its football team, and this thuggery has got to stop.” Williams, now […]
Posted inWotr
Local food, even in winter
Most of what I’ve read lately about food in America makes me lose my appetite. Outbreaks of deadly pathogens that sicken or even kill people. Chemical spray and dead zones. Exploited workers. “Hollywood Food” that looks great but lacks taste and nutrition. It’s enough to make me want to sell my vegetable farm. That is […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Scaredy-cats and dogs
IDAHO Some state legislators like to rail against government intruding into people’s lives — unless, of course, those same legislators want to do the intruding themselves. Idaho Republican State Sen. John Goedde recently introduced a bill requiring all high school students to read “and comprehend” Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a doorstop of a novel about […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Upon the burning of our house
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert, published the first Monday of each month. When I say that American writers have ignited fires, I don’t mean only that they have fired our imaginations or that they have sparked changes in the […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Students take over HCN Facebook page
High Country News is thrilled to participate in a special educational project with marketing students from Washington State University. Under the guidance of WSU instructors and ActionSprout, a marketing firm that specializes in social media engagement, students are partnering with HCN to develop and implement a marketing campaign. The students will gain real-world experience, and […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
‘We Don’t Give a Damn How They Do It Outside’
An Alaska native struggles to “blend in” in the Lower 48.
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
An unlikely penitent: A review of On Top of Spoon Mountain
On Top of Spoon MountainJohn Nichols232 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2012. In a career that spans five decades, New Mexico author John Nichols has written more books and screenplays than he can count on his fingers and toes. His first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, was published when he was 23, and The […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Girl in the woods: A review of The Snow Child
The Snow ChildEowyn Ivey416 pages, softcover: $14.99.Reagan Arthur Books, 2012. Eowyn Ivey’s surefooted and captivating debut novel, The Snow Child, begins in 1920, as Mabel and Jack, middle-aged homesteaders in Alaska, try to rough it through their second winter there. They’d moved West to escape painful memories of their only child, stillborn 10 years earlier, […]