“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 podcast too! 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. […]
Communities
Posted inArticles
Rantcast: The silence of desert greetings
In May’s Rantcast, also available in written form at our community blog, the Range, Mike wonders why he and his fellow desert dwellers tend to be so laconic. He recounts three different interactions he has had with others living in the desert; each of which casts a light onto the nature of those who choose […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Common ground in a fractured land
I arrived in Teton County, Idaho, as a regional bank president the week after the development moratorium was put in place back in 2007 (HCN, 3/5/12, “The Zombies of Teton County”). I rode the “real estate wave” in from Telluride, Colo., where I had also been a bank president. For me, conspicuous development and wealth […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Doc’s Legacy
Ed Marston’s essay, “Goodbye, Doc,” in the April 16, 2012, issue particularly resonated with me. As co-editor with my partner, Mark Schiller, of northern New Mexico’s journal of environmental and social justice, La Jicarita News, I’ve contributed articles, butted heads with editors, and written letters of complaint to High Country News over the years. We […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
New telling of a geologic saga: A review of Rough-Hewn Land
Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky MountainsKeith Heyer Meldahl320 pages, hardcover: $34.95.University of California Press, 2011. Landscapes tell stories, and Western North America has no shortage of geological sagas in the making. Keith Heyer Meldahl offers a fresh account of this gripping Earth epic in Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Visitors, books and brand-new babies
The unseasonably warm weather we endured this March, which melted much of Colorado’s snowpack, had a bright side: It brought an early flood of visitors. Emily Guerin and Marie Sears stopped in after their backpacking holiday was thwarted by the weather. The college friends are bound for new challenges. Marie will enter medical school this […]
Posted inWotr
A final hats off to rancher Doc Hatfield
Doc Hatfield died March 20 at his home in Sisters, Ore., just after his 74th birthday, soon after his and his wife Connie’s 49th anniversary, and an extraordinarily long three years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which usually kills within a year of diagnosis. Many Westerners may not have heard of them, but the […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
Librotraficantes smuggle controversial books to Arizona
Outside Casa Ramirez, a Houston, Texas, cultural center, a group of friends feasted giddily on pan dulce and café. It was the morning of March 12, a Monday. Nothing about the assembly seemed subversive. Yet 28 of them would soon cram a commuter bus with boxes of prohibited books and drive toward Tucson, Ariz., calling […]
Posted inGoat
Downsized cleanup plan for Idaho Superfund site
The mines of Silver Valley, Idaho, east of Coeur d’Alene Lake were once the richest silver producers in the world. The valley’s flush days, however, are long gone. In 1981, thousands of miners lost their jobs when the sinking price of silver forced the mines to close (a few have since reopened). Two years later, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Don’t shoot that grizzly; she’s combing her hair
ALASKA AND THE WESTGrizzly bears never cease to amaze. The latest news about the powerful bruins comes from The Economist, which reports that a British biologist observed a grizzly in the shallows of Glacier Bay National Park doing something unique. The animal would pick up rocks and then discard them until it seemed to find […]
Posted inGoat
Predator aversion
The delisting quickly led to state-sponsored wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho that were supposedly aimed at responsibly reducing wolf populations to protect game species like elk. But for many wildlife conservation groups, the hunts have amounted to little more than the state-sponsored slaughter of a still-endangered species sacrificed for the sake of politics. Last […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
New books from friends of High Country News
In mid-March, former intern Jeff Chen (winter 2009) came by our Paonia, Colo., office to say hello. After his stint at HCN, Jeff founded Pick Up America — a “youth-inspired nonprofit conducting the nation’s first coast-to-coast roadside litter pickup to encourage a transition toward zero waste.” So far, Jeff and his team have walked over […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
A headstrong hero
It was a great pleasure to read the article in the Feb. 20 edition of High Country News on Martin Litton (“A restless giant”). He is one of the heroes of the American West: passionate, headstrong, principled. The photo of him rowing the dory in the Grand Canyon should one day make its way to […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
Living on faith: A review of The Man Who Quit Money
The Man Who Quit MoneyMark Sundeen272 pages,softcover: $15.Riverhead Trade, 2012. The title grabs your attention: The Man Who Quit Money. Intrigued, you open the book and read: “In the first year of the twenty-first century, a man standing by a highway in the middle of America pulled from his pocket his life savings — thirty […]
Posted inWotr
Dead man working
There are plenty of ways for roughnecks to kill themselves. When I worked as a roofer in Deer Lodge, Mont., the guys on the crew would tell the same joke that’s been amended to every one of my blue-collar jobs: “If you fall off the roof, you’re fired before you hit the ground.” The joke […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A farewell to Montana’s grand madam
MONTANARuby Garrett, the racy grande dame of Butte, Mont., died March 17 at age 94. For many years, Garrett was the proprietor of the Dumas, the town’s last brothel, until it closed in 1982, reports the Montana Standard. Garrett had a couple of brushes with the law along the way, serving six months in jail […]
Posted inArticles
The itch that riles Frontera author Denise Chavez
Year after year, artists and authors, wrestlers and dancers, mariachis and chefs and people of all ethnicities have gathered in the tiny town of Mesilla, N.M., for the Border Book Festival, an unusual celebration of Frontera art and literature. The festival, which attracts internationally known writers and publishers to this impoverished region, features Latino-centric craft […]
Posted inRange
Lighten up, take a load off
All this serious, recent talk (also see this) about Western water shortages and new pipelines gets me thinking again about a not-so-serious but related subject: poop. Granted, there are many very serious aspects of poop such as its disease-carrying properties. You may be aware that some of these benefits are old news to Joseph Jenkins, […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Following the Old Spanish Trail across the Southwest
In his search for the routes used by the West’s early travelers, archaeologist Jack Pfertsh has become a detective of detritus. Today he’s on the hunt for old tin cans and fragments of purple and green glass. The mid-November sun is sinking as we walk the windswept land just north of Delta, Colo. Brown grasses […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Falcon fear factor
OREGONThree peregrine falcons named Judah, Carbon and Zinc are the go-to birds for a Portland garbage station when it wants to discourage pesky seagulls that scatter food scraps and foul nearby roofs and cars with their droppings. The raptors don’t have to attack the gulls to haze them away, reports The Oregonian; all they need […]