THE WEST AND CHINAIt’s no secret that many Germans adore the Old West, but who knew that prosperous second-home buyers in China would also succumb to “cowhide, antler chandeliers, saddle blankets, lodgepole chairs, wagon wheels, Navajo rugs, iron light fixtures, wildlife-scene fireplace screens, wooden snowshoes, leather throw pillows, horseshoes, Charles Russell prints and plaid curtains”? […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
How to find a 13,000 year-old mammoth
It takes a long time to find a curved-tusk mammoth, especially if it’s been obscured beneath tamarisk, oak brush and tenacious Russian olive bushes. I’d heard stories about mammoths once roaming the land that’s now San Juan County in southeastern Utah, but a beast from the Pleistocene is hard to locate on rock cliffs and […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
No matter how long you live in your small town, you’ll never be a native
The woman behind the counter asked where I lived. It turns out she grew up in the very same small town, population 300. She said she had to leave it to find a job, moving to the nearest place with a population nearer 10,000.“So you must be the new trash that’s moving in,” she mused. […]
Posted inWotr
Resolutions for living smarter in 2012
I can’t say that if you try to do everything on this list you’ll win a gold star, but you will definitely save money, feel virtuous and lose weight. It’s a tough-love list of resolutions that work: Cook: Preservative-laden fast food costs more and makes you fatter. Bake bread: Simple, cheap and cheering. Eat local: […]
Posted inRange
Montana is full.
I saw the bumper sticker and the headline on the same day. The newspaper read: Montana’s population estimated to pass 1 million. The bumper sticker read: Montana is full. Go home. The Census Bureau says Montana has grown 10 percent over the past decade, and would soon break 1 million people. Barely. How can a […]
Posted inWotr
Go take it off the mountain
When they emerge from the trees while cruising down a popular run at Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Resort, skiers suddenly encounter the back of a life-size statue of Jesus Christ. Clad in a flowing blue robe, the statue’s arms stretch toward the Flathead Valley below. It has been here for over half a century — a […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Do not sink teeth into animal testicles
MONTANABob Ream, chairman of the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission, was driving to north-central Montana just before sunrise to hunt deer, when a deer jumped in front of his car and made the trip unnecessary. The deer was a goner, “but only its hindquarter was damaged,” reports the Independent Record, “so Ream tagged it.” […]
Posted inWotr
Las Vegas needs to let the market decide where the water goes
The famous slogan, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” once assured visitors that they were exempt from the wages of sins committed in the city of lights. It was the inspired product of the Las Vegas convention and tourism bureau. Not to be outdone, the local water authority is still promising cheap water in […]
Posted inWotr
A novel solution to the drug problem
A cop friend told me not long ago that he had changed his mind completely on the idea of legalizing drugs. His current take: “Legalize everything but meth and hang the meth-pushers” — or something close to that. We were talking about a kid we both had known back in the day, a kid who […]
Posted inGoat
Waking up from the holiday food coma
If you were watching TV news over Christmas weekend, you likely saw weather forecasts mapping Santa’s position over the U.S., a few feel-good stories about hard-case animals finding happy homes, and a report or two about how on Dec. 26, gift-recipients thunder back into the malls to return what they got for what they REALLLY […]
Posted inWotr
Survival tips for 2012
In this New Year, we can’t take anything for granted when the global financial system of speculative swindles, leveraged frauds and doomed debts keeps circumnavigating the bowl. Another bailout might extend this game of charades; another scantily clad stimulus package might temporarily succeed in goosing our economy — but only at the cost of rendering […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
All I want for Christmas is a rifle
ARIZONAAlthough the Scottsdale Gun Club has yet to start selling Christmas cards showing baby Jesus cradling a machine gun in the manger, or the Magi bringing gifts of frankincense, myrrh and crates full of extra ammo, the club did offer its members a unique photo op: posing with Santa Claus while holding military-style rifles. Choices […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Girls gone wild — 1900s style: A review of Nothing Daunted
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the WestDorothy Wickenden304 pages, hardcover: $26.Scribner, 2011. “We did not want strays. We had serious matrimonial intentions, and we decided that young, pretty schoolteachers would be the best bet of all,” cowboy Ferry Carpenter recollected about his part in the effort to attract “schoolmarms” to […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Holiday break
While you snuggle up with your last issue of High Country News for 2011, our editorial staff will be taking a two-week publishing break to catch up on editing, writing, reporting and other projects, and, of course, spend time with family and friends. Expect your first issue of 2012 around Jan. 25. We wish you […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Lessons from Laos
I’ve been reading back issues of HCN while living and working in Vientiane, Laos. As a native Coloradan, outdoor enthusiast, and anti-corporate child of hippies, I tend to oppose commercial development of public lands and natural resources. However, on a small point, I found myself agreeing with the mining representative in “Hardrock Showdown” (HCN, 11/22/10). […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Love and loss on a Wyoming ranch: A review of Lime Creek
Lime CreekJoe Henry160 pages, hardcover: $20.Random House, 2011. Woody Creek, Colo.-based Joe Henry studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with John Irving, but then detoured from writing fiction to work as a rancher, becoming a successful lyricist along the way. Henry’s ravishing first work of fiction, Lime Creek, must have been inspired by the Western […]
Posted inRange
The Water Buffalo Postulate
I first heard of the Water Buffalo Postulate in a snowbound cabin near the Canadian line. Several friends were sitting around a wood stove after a vigorous day, sharing tales of danger and derring-do. One friend, I’ll call him Joe, rolled up a pant-leg, revealing a badly scarred calf muscle. “Water buffalo,” he said. As […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Deer smugglers and avocado thieves
THE WESTWe won’t go into the Freudian implications of hunters who covet wall decorations fashioned from the enormous antlers of the deer or elk they “hunted” on a fenced game ranch, but in Texas, where everything is supposed to be bigger than life, the desire for giant racks has gotten entirely out of hand. Smugglers […]
Posted inWotr
A do-it-yourself Christmas tradition
Last Christmas Eve, I found a new Christmas tradition. To shake off the crankiness of cookies gone wrong, of shopping and shipping and wrapping and frenzy, I took a long walk last December. And that’s when I got a wonderful, non-Grinchly idea. What if, as Dr. Seuss said, Christmas does not come from a store? […]
Posted inRange
The decline of rural incomes
Bill Bishop, the Daily Yonder Nearly 7 out of 10 rural counties saw their median family incomes drop from 2007 to 2010, according to new figures from the U.S. Census. Median income is point where half the families in the county make more than that amount and half make less. The national median family income […]