Savoonga is the place to be on the Fourth of July. The village is a cluster of roofs on the north side of St. Lawrence Island, a treeless hump of capes and dormant volcanoes rising out of the Bering Sea, battered by Arctic weather. The Native Yup’iks here celebrate the holiday with more gusto than […]
Communities
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Best of the West: Our favorite books
Western authors and HCN staffers share their most-loved writing about the region in this list of favorites. Isabella Bird and Katie Lee: two of my favorite Western women, tough, brave and eloquent. Bird, an Englishwoman, traveled from California to Colorado in the 1870s, often alone on horseback. Her richly descriptive letters became A Lady’s Life […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Western literary journals give voice to story and place
“We are out loud and proud as a regional journal,” says poet Maria Melendez, publisher of Pilgrimage, a literary magazine based in the former steel-mill city of Pueblo, Colo. “Our mission is to nurture the voices of the Southwest — and beyond.” Literary journals like Pilgrimage are devoted to publishing inspiring and innovative fiction, nonfiction […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Celebrating what remains: A review of The Dog Stars
Award-winning adventure writer Peter Heller sets his debut novel, The Dog Stars, in an apocalypse-stricken Colorado, where Hig, one of the planet’s few survivors, flies around in an antique plane with a dog as his copilot. To this compelling frame, Heller adds adrenaline-pumping adventure, deep philosophical undercurrents … and a bit of love. In the […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Suffering and freedom in a microcosm: A review of San Miguel
California writer T.C. Boyle’s 14th novel, San Miguel, continues his exploration of the Channel Islands, off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., which began with last year’s When The Killing’s Done. This time, Boyle focuses on windswept San Miguel Island and the histories of two very different families who inhabit it between 1888 and 1945. […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Fall books offer journeys of the mind
Here in western Colorado, most days unfold under azure skies and stubbornly brilliant sunshine. When rains do visit, they’re usually brief — an hour, or maybe two. So when autumn unexpectedly shrouds our valleys under thick gray clouds that dribble for days on end, our world feels utterly transformed — the pillowy, unfamiliar heavens almost […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Finding funk in Western Colorado, sadistic races, corrections
The mornings are getting chilly; local harvests are at their peak. Up in the mountains, the aspens have changed color early and winter is tapping at the door. As the color moved down the mountains, many visitors came with it, taking advantage of this lovely time of year to drop by Paonia. Susan Nunn visited […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Student essay: How I became a Westerner and why it doesn’t matter
Editor’s note: This is a runner-up essay from our annual student essay contest. This year’s theme was “How I Became a Westerner.” Learn more about student subscription offers here. I grew up in Fircrest, Wash., population 6,497, a small suburb of Tacoma. There’s a house on our street with an unkempt front yard; the neighbors despise […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Student essay: Lost and found in the sagebrush
Editor’s note: This is a runner-up essay from our annual student essay contest. This year’s theme was “How I Became a Westerner.” Learn more about student subscription offers here. Artemisia tridentata. Commonly known as sagebrush, it’s seen as ugly, a terribly widespread eyesore — a dead-looking, twisted piece of scraggly shrubbery that fills the landscape […]
Posted inWotr
Living with autism
School is back in session, and once again I’m grateful. As the parent of an autistic son, I’ve become comfortable with the notion of school as not just a learning opportunity for Harrison, but also as respite care as well. When Harrison is back in school, I have a block of time to work. It’s […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bobcat kittens fall in love with firefighters
OREGON Every town needs something to be proud of. Portland not only has its own television show, Portlandia, but also a toilet. A very special toilet: Portland, if the L.A. Times is to be believed, has revolutionized the public loo, creating a minimalist, solar-powered bathroom that boasts its own Facebook page. It supposedly solves the age-old […]
Posted inArticles
That familiar loneliness: a writer’s own relationship mirrors a Stegner novel
During my first full summer in the West, I participated in a rite of passage: I read Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. The first character I fell in love with was the land. The stirrup-high grass near Leadville, Colorado, that “flowed and flawed in the wind, its motion revealed and hid and revealed again streaks […]
Posted inGoat
Fear and loathing in San Juan County
Vandalism and threats play out against wilderness proponents in Utah’s canyonlands.
Posted inArticles
In Montana, ‘Dr. Trout’ battles the planet’s most dangerous diseases
In his day job, Marshall Bloom is the associate director for scientific management at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a cutting-edge federal research campus in an unlikely place: Hamilton, Mont., a town of about 4,500 in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley. Nearly 500 workers in dozens of lab buildings are dedicated to studying “emerging infectious diseases” like […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Fraudulent corn robberies
Around Colorado’s Dinosaur National Monument, the livestock are a little different. Credit: Andrew Gulliford UTAH It seemed at first like just another armed holdup of a roadside corn stand. Corn-seller Dusty Moore told police that he was innocently selling ears in a North Ogden parking lot when a Hispanic-looking man in his 30s approached, demanded some money […]
Posted inArticles
First impressions: an Easterner’s new life in the West
Photographer Andrew Cullen used Instagram to document his summer 2012 move from Maine to Colorado, capturing Western scenes of surprise, wonder, and delight. Click on the gallery view to see the images full size.
Posted inGoat
Big dreams in a little town
Last Thursday evening, three members of the HCN crew stopped off in El Rito, N.M., an hour and a half north of Santa Fe, where we were headed for a Board of Directors meeting. There, in a hamlet of about 1,000, we strolled through a century-old campus and learned about a grand vision for education. […]
Posted inArticles
Rantcast: The desert shoe tree
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast for free in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker sloganeering, licensed under […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Harvesting the Desert Shoe Tree
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. On the […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Storm on Lava Creek: A season in Yellowstone
By the second mile of my third hike during my first season in Yellowstone, thunder booms near. I wonder if we’ll have time to finish the hike. • • • Ten days ago, my best friend, Alison, and I began our new summer jobs as Xanterra lodging reservation agents at Mammoth Hot Springs, after a […]