Taos, New Mexico On a cloudless June day, Ernest Romero and I are parked on a ridge top in front of a home that gazes out over scenic northern New Mexico. The 2,200-square-foot adobe sits on three acres of piñon forest and is quintessentially Southwestern, with sand-colored walls complemented by sky-blue trim, wooden beams and […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Love and tomatoes — a natural combination
When other women ask me how I proposed to my wife, the first thing I tell them is that Crissie doesn’t like diamonds. They look at me with either contempt or condescension — the former if they think I’m going to lecture them about African child armies, the latter if they think I’m fool enough […]
Posted inGoat
Why is Utah so weird?
I’m no neurologist, but I know that something suspicious happens to my brain late at night or around 3 p.m. at the office. Productivity plummets and I know I need to get away from the computer, but I can’t seem to turn it off. All I can do is wander further down the Intertube wormhole, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Queen of the Old Timers
COLORADO: Gives “bare-back” riding a whole new meaning. Courtesy Cherie Morris NEW MEXICO Magdalena, a high-plateau town of about 1,000 people southwest of Albuquerque, N.M., once served as a center of mining for lead, zinc and silver in the 1880s, before it took on another role as a shipping center for cattle. The cowboying peak […]
Posted inGoat
The two-wheeled stimulus plan
On an overcast, unseasonably cool, late August morning, a roar, a cacophonous clatter of cowbells and a riot of horns and sirens rose up from the streets of downtown Durango, Colo., as the second annual USA Pro Cycling Challenge got its start. From there, the peleton — 126 riders, including some of the world’s best […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Stump appreciation
Becca Hall captured our town perfectly in her essay “Stump Proud” (HCN, 7/23/12). I am fortunate to live on the opposite side of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley. On my acre and a half, I have some of those old stumps left from the clear-cuts of the early 1900s. In fact, I have 90- and 100-foot-tall […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Summer visitors
The folks keep flowing in, despite the heat. Virginia archaeologists Allen Hard and Marjorie Siegel dropped by our Paonia, Colo., headquarters to cool down. They were headed to Gunnison, where they plan to spend a couple of months surveying the old mining town of Tin Cup, elevation 11,500 feet, for the Forest Service –– a […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
A long, strange trip: A review of Pot Farm
As blunt as its title, Pot Farm, a memoir by poet and professor Matthew Gavin Frank, goes straight to the point: You, the reader, will take a trip through the world of medical marijuana cultivation and sales, in the process becoming familiar with the unusual and even bizarre cast of characters at Weckman Farm, and […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Atlas of Yellowstone
Atlas of YellowstoneW. Andrew Marcus, James E. Meacham, Ann W. Rodman and Alethea Y. Steingisser274 pages, hardcover: $65University of California Press, 2012. The Atlas of Yellowstone details the Greater Yellowstone Area from A to Z. It goes beyond the region’s iconic geysers, wildlife and vegetation, with charts and maps that cover subjects ranging from the […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Don’t ‘live and let live’ with polygamy
High Country News deserves praise for publication of Debra Weyermann’s article, “The Darkest Shade of Polygamy” (HCN, 6/11/12). The article appears to be well-researched and firmly based on verifiable fact, and in several respects even more compelling than Jon Krakauer’s earlier book, Under the Banner of Heaven. Readers might also question the reasons for the […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Lights, camera, life: A review of Beautiful Ruins
Beautiful RuinsJess Walter352 pages, hardcover: $25.99.Harper, 2012. Beautiful Ruins, Washington author Jess Walter’s dashing sixth novel, spans two continents and five decades, creating a panoramic view of the lives it encompasses. The paths of its nine main characters intersect in places as various as Italy, Hollywood, Seattle, and Sandpoint, Idaho, in the course of this […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Aggressive, cat-eating lizards
COLORADO As if the recent local wildfires weren’t trouble enough, now Woodland Park, Colo, has to worry about a “strong, aggressive” 6-foot monitor lizard that might find itself tempted to dine on cats and dogs. The “pet,” known as Dino, snapped its mesh leash and wandered off in the tourist town northwest of Colorado Springs, […]
Posted inWotr
Mourning the world we’ve lost
“How do we grieve? How do we grieve for all that disappears into the maw of human appetite? How do we grieve for something as beautiful and terrifying as the polar bear?” The white-haired woman’s voice broke as she stood to ask her difficult question, the other audience members turning somber faces toward her — […]
Posted inGoat
Help us cover the New New West
Dear Reader, I need your help. No, I’m not asking for money, or even a couch to crash on or your extra ramen noodles to dine on during reporting trips. I’m just looking for your ideas and observations. When I was brought on as High Country News’ senior-editor-at-large number two in July, it was with […]
Posted inGoat
Get on the bus
One of the first things we did when we moved back to my quasi-rural hometown of Durango, Colo., this summer was ride the “trolley.” It’s actually a bus that is made to look like an old street car, complete with wood benches for passengers, but it’s mass transit, and it’s free, and it gets you […]
Posted inRange
Digital detox in the high Cascades
Turns out, I’m so far behind the curve in the electronic media I’m cutting edge. Years ago, I realized my basic neo-Luddite constitution did not square with making a living in the modern communication industry. So I learned to download and up-link. I “blog” and “friend” as verbs. I’ve got desktops, laptops, tablets and a […]
Posted inWotr
A subdivision on the edge of the wild
The subdivision in Utah where I live is bang up against the mountains, with open land between us and the Snowbasin ski resort, and more national forest beyond. Our house lies at the end of a cul-de-sac on a tributary of the Weber River. A steep hill flanks us to the south, thick with Gambel […]
Posted inWotr
No longer the safest place
My little corner of the West — southern Oregon, between the Pacific Ocean and the high Cascades — achieved a brief notoriety during the height of the world’s Cold War anxieties: It was listed as one of the safest places in the United States in the event of nuclear attack. Distant from population centers and […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Beauregard puppy
“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. […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation
Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River ReservationSara Wiles262 pages, hardcover: $35.University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. For more than 30 years, Sara Wiles has photographed life on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, a community she first encountered as a social worker in 1973. Wiles, who was adopted by Arapaho elder Frances C’Hair, is clearly […]