For the first time a team of African-American climbers is assembling to make a bid for the summit of the tallest peak in North America, Denali. Led by the National Outdoor Leadership School in 2013, this expedition aims to encourage minority youth to enjoy outdoor recreation as part of an active lifestyle as well as […]
Communities
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Going down in flames
Long ago, many West Coast and Rocky Mountain tribes cremated their dead to purify them and free their souls, which were borne to the afterlife “on chariots of smoke.” Today, going out in a blaze is again the region’s most popular funerary rite. In 2010, the mountain and Pacific states (including Alaska and Hawaii) had […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
HCN subscribers and writers meet in New Zealand
It’s a small, small world. While honeymooning in New Zealand last month, HCN editorial fellow Marian Lyman Kirst and her husband, Michael Kirst, ran into longtime subscribers Barb and Lee Croissant. The Kirsts met the Croissants, retired Parker, Colo., residents, and their daughter and son-in-law, Cindy and Dan Payne, during a guided wildlife walk on […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Interior Landscapes: A review of The City Beneath the Snow
The City Beneath the Snow: StoriesMarjorie Kowalski Cole276 pages, hardcover: $ 22.95.University of Alaska Press, 2012. With her Bellwether Prize-winning novel Correcting the Landscape — a tale of journalism and urban development — Marjorie Kowalski Cole put Fairbanks, Alaska, on the literary map. Her posthumously published story collection The City Beneath the Snow again brings […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Misplaced blame
As a longtime subscriber, I was disturbed by the article by Tom Zoellner, and by his efforts to demonize those he disagrees with (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was not a political assassination. Rather, it was a delusional act of a schizophrenic in a psychotic episode. That Mr. Zoellner would […]
Posted inGoat
Into the Big Empty
Cross posted from the Last Word on Nothing. I grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York State, and went to college in western Oregon — both beautiful places, beloved by many. But I never knew what it was to love a place until I spent a college summer in southern Utah, where I worked […]
Posted inGoat
Fear and loathing in Arizona
Though I can’t recollect exactly what I ate, Dr. Brown had a BLT. Our Texas governor had recently left for the White House. We were having lunch at IHOP on University Street in College Station and talking about black film, rapper Tupac Shakur (she disliked him) and romances gone sour. Dr. Brown taught “African Americans […]
Posted inRange
Land of Disenchantment
The Territory of New Mexico became the 47th state of the union in 1912, so the state is celebrating its centennial this year. It’s also looking for a new marketing slogan to revive its tourism industry. For nearly 80 years, it’s been “the Land of Enchantment,” but the spell seems to be wearing off. As […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
How Arizona’s culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
To understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others 2011, look to Arizona’s vitriolic politics.
Posted inHeard Around the West
Hollywood turns wolves into man-killers
THE WESTOnce again, Hollywood has chosen mythmaking over reality in its portrayal of predators, in this case, Alaskan wolves, in a new movie called The Grey. According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, the “man-versus-beast thriller” pits stranded oilfield roughnecks against extreme cold, hunger and a pack of starving wolves; when carnage erupts, “the wolves are usually […]
Posted inRange
Richard Hugo, revisited
Editor’s note: These stories were produced for High Country News by students in the University of Montana’s online news class. They will be running over a period of two weeks in the Range blog. See a list of all the stories here. By Annela Rova The celebrated American poet Richard Hugo chose to focus on […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Photojournalist Lisa Hamilton explores rural California
For her project, Real Rural, photojournalist Lisa Hamilton traveled throughout California, interviewing and photographing scores of rural people.
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
A life measured in cordwood: A review of Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men
Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and MenCindy Bellinger159 pages, softcover: $14.95.High-Lonesome Books, 2011. What does it mean for one woman to take an active, eventful life and root it ever more deeply in one spot, settling down in the mountain foothills where a nearby pine forest becomes a close companion, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Bucking the stereotypes: A review of West of 98
West of 98: Living and Writing the New American WestEdited by Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland380 pages, softcover: $21.95.University of Texas Press, 2011. Any anthology is a collage, a series of snapshots imperfectly melded into one composition. That’s why we read them: They allow us to look at a topic from a variety of angles, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Craig Childs is HCN’s latest contributing editor
We’re excited to announce that author Craig Childs has just joined our list of contributing editors. Many of you are already fans of Craig’s work, which appears regularly in these pages and in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, Outside and Orion. His writing focuses on natural sciences, archaeology and his remarkable […]
Posted inRange
Churches use punk culture to reach Montana teens
Editor’s note: These stories were produced for High Country News by students in the University of Montana’s online news class. They will be running over a period of two weeks in the Range blog. See a list of all the stories here. By Billie Loewen It’s an especially cold December night, with the kind of […]
Posted inWotr
West to East, and a world away
A few months ago, after 20 years, I moved from the West to the East, reluctantly, carting a truckload of artifacts and memories, literal stones and actual stories, each one a product of the forests, mountains or deserts of Bend, Ore., Missoula, Mont., Argenta, British Columbia, Canada, and beyond. My little 4-cylinder truck labored under […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Winning the wildfire jackpot
THE WESTMany of us harbor a sneaking suspicion that Westerners aren’t quite real to D.C. Beltway officials, particularly to the Easterners in their employ. The habitat of these politically engaged men and women so close to power is usually a crowded room where they toil from morning to night, and so the poor wretches rarely […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Following the Oregon Trail, digitally and on foot
As a kid, I loved playing Oregon Trail, a popular and notoriously difficult computer game in which avatars inevitably drown, run out of water or die of dysentery en route from Missouri to the Promised Land at the Pacific’s edge. An imaginative child, I took my virtual pioneer adventures offscreen, loading up my small red […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Anecdote of the Jeep
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. 1919 was a pretty decent year, all in all. The Grand Canyon received protection as a national park, the 19th Amendment finally gave women the vote, the world witnessed the end of the war […]