Stiff winds blow over the treeless islands of St. Paul and St. George, over 300 miles from mainland Alaska. The Pribilof Islands, breeding grounds to the northern fur seal in the middle of the Bering Sea, seem unlikely actors in world events. “People come and say, ‘It’s in the middle of nowhere,’” says Aquilina Lestenkof, […]
Communities
Posted inHeard Around the West
Ready-made solar houses
COLORADO AND THE WESTWouldn’t it be grand if you could live in a house that never racked up a single electric bill? Some homeowners have pursued that goal by retrofitting their homes with solar or wind power, though it’s not easy to achieve the wondrous state of “net-zero” — defined as any building that produces […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
A forbidden road trip: A review of Lamb
LambBonnie Nadzam275 pages, softcover: $15.95.Other Press, 2011. After his marriage dissolves over an affair with a coworker and his father dies, David Lamb drives to a parking lot near his Chicago home to think. “Nothing before him but the filthy street and bright signs announcing the limits of his world: Transmission Masters and Drive Time […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
A transplant at home in rural Utah
I happen to live in a tiny Utah town, population approximately 175, with plenty of “move-ins.” I’ve yet to meet a “move-in” who wants to create massive changes there (HCN, 12/16/11 & 1/9/12, “Stranger in these parts”). In fact, the majority of them moved there precisely for what the place offers: community, beauty, and a […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
High Country News welcomes new interns
Two new editorial interns just joined us for six months of “journalism boot camp” at our Paonia, Colo., office. Danielle Venton was born in Petaluma, Calif. Early backpacking trips sparked her curiosity about the natural world, which eventually led her to study biology at Humboldt State University. Unlike her classmates, Danielle couldn’t settle on just […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Searching for the truth about American Indians: A review of All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos)
All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos)Catherine C. Robbins408 pages, softcover: $26.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2011. “This is a personal book,” Catherine C. Robbins writes in the preface to All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos), a collection of her journalistic essays. Robbins is not Indian, but she is also “not […]
Posted inRange
Arizona turns 100
Now that February has arrived, I’d like to wish everyone a happy and festive Arizona Centennial! But wait – you say you didn’t realize that Arizona became a state one hundred years ago, on February 14th, 1912? Well, I’m not surprised. What with the recession, most of the publicity and celebrations had to be scaled […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Residents of Montana’s High Plains are angry – but not at the real threats
I was born in eastern Montana, on a dusty stretch of nearly riverless high plains north of the Bull Mountains. I came of age there, in a country that has never not been true frontier, in the late ’80s — during the farm crisis, that notoriously bad old time in rural America. In much of […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The warming properties of greenbacks
WASHINGTONMoney may not buy you happiness, but burning it might help keep you from freezing to death. A snowshoer who became lost in a blizzard on Mount Rainier told The Seattle Times that he survived by digging a snow tunnel and then burning everything he could find, from socks and Band-Aids to his toothbrush “and […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Richard West Sellars’ distinguished National Park Service career
On a late October afternoon, Richard West Sellars orders a bowl of black bean soup at Harry’s Roadhouse in Santa Fe, N.M. At least twice a week, he has lunch here with other former and current National Park Service employees. Today, Dan Lenihan, a retired underwater archaeologist, describes diving to survey sunken ships at Bikini […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
No ski for you
MONTANAThe owners of Montana Snowbowl near Missoula really, really don’t like criticism. So after a skier complained, they refused to sell him a season ski pass, or even daily tickets at a reduced rate during the pre-season. Jim Sylvester says that he put a comment in a handy suggestion box at the ski area, noting […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
A second chance at love: A review of Liberty Lanes
Liberty LanesRobin Troy192 pages, softcover: $22.University of Nevada Press, 2011. Robin Troy’s second novel, Liberty Lanes, is a big-hearted story of ordinary people, their hopes, secrets and longings. It begins quietly in a bowling alley in a small Montana town, where Nelson Moore, a 74-year-old stalwart of the senior bowling league, waits for an early […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
From the Old World to the Old West: A review of The Little Bride
The Little BrideAnna Solomon314 pages, softcover: $15. Riverhead, 2011. Anna Solomon’s fascinating first novel The Little Bride begins in Russia in the 1880s, when Minna Losk, a 16-year-old orphan, signs up to become a mail-order bride. After the death of her father, Minna worked for a while as a maid for a once-wealthy woman. Now, […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Move over, Ed Abbey
Craig Childs is a treasure, and his essay in the last issue is but another jewel (HCN, 12/26/11 & 1/09/12, “Stranger in these parts”). I have been enjoying his words for a decade and have now come to realize that he is my favorite Southwestern writer since Ed Abbey. I think that Ed, whom I […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Shadow Wolves track down smugglers on the Arizona-Mexico border
The technologies border police use to protect our boundaries range from the historic (mustangs trained for mounted patrols) to the futuristic. (The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency plans to nearly triple its fleet of unmanned surveillance Predator B aircraft.) But nothing can track a smuggler quite like a human being. The Shadow Wolves, a […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Welcome, Eric and Kati
Eric Strebel, our soft-spoken new Web developer, joined the HCN team Dec. 1. He’s been working with computers since 1978, when he got his first personal computer. Eric eventually developed his programming hobby into a livelihood. Prior to joining us, he freelanced and operated Mountain West Communication’s website for about a decade. Eric enjoys fishing, […]
Posted inArticles
Picking ranchers’ brains, from Colorado to Mongolia
As a college student in the mid-1980s, Maria Fernandez-Gimenez worked as a seasonal interpreter for the National Park Service. That’s when she was first exposed to the great Western debate over public-lands ranching. She soon became familiar with environmentalists’ gripes about grazing impacts, but realized she knew nothing about the ranchers’ point of view. So […]
Posted inWotr
An Obama-Huntsman ticket would get my vote
Here’s a dramatic way we might break through the partisan gridlock and mutual demonization that dominate our politics these days: President Barack Obama, the top Democrat, should ditch his vice president, Joe Biden, and recruit a reasonable Western Republican — Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. — as a running mate. As unlikely as it sounds, there’s […]
Posted inWotr
Getting a ski pass the hard way
With others to the left and right of me, we’re on the job, stamping our feet backward down an icy slope of manmade snow recently sprayed into the air by the Aspen Skiing Company. The slope drops off steeply for about 100 yards before ending in a brush-choked gully, and I’m about to get to […]
Posted inGoat
Dead man working
There are plenty of ways for roughnecks to kill themselves fast. Working as a roofer in Deer Lodge, Montana, they’d repeat that old joke that’s been amended for every blue-collar occupation in which I’ve ever been employed. “If you fall off the roof, you’re fired before you hit the ground.” “I want to (expletive) kill […]