Dear Friends

I first met Ed Marston when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, wannabe journalist starting an internship at the funky little newspaper called High Country News. It was January 1984, less than a year after the paper had moved to Paonia, Colo., from its birthplace in Lander, Wyo. I arrived fresh from the nation’s capital, where I […]

Balancing act, part 2 The cover story of this issue is the second in our series, “California’s Water Balancing Act.” In it, veteran journalist Susan Zakin writes about the state’s water hub: the California Delta. The delta, just inland from San Francisco Bay, collects a mammoth one-half of the state’s rainfall and snowmelt each year. […]

Balancing Act The cover story in this issue is the first of a two-part series about a topic that High Country News has been covering for a long time: California water. More specifically, it’s a look at the Golden State, post-Bruce Babbitt – the Clinton-era Interior secretary who negotiated massive water agreements in California and […]

A legend of the land He’s been described by writer John McPhee as the “grand old man of Rocky Mountain geology,” and by longtime friend and HCN founder Tom Bell as a man you meet “once in a lifetime.” Born in Riverton, Wyo., in 1913, and raised in the rich landscape that became his life’s […]

You’ve probably seen his work in National Geographic or Audubon – or in High Country News – as well as in his photography books. Famed for a transcendental approach to capturing the natural world, Galen Rowell was also an accomplished mountaineer, who inspired and awed his audience with breathtaking, seemingly impossible photographs. Rowell and his […]

A high country jinx We probably should have seen it coming. After a positively wilting June and July and reports from around the West of drought, heat and wildfire, we decided to run a special issue about the Great Drought of 2002. The moment we started work on the stories in this paper, however, we […]

Happy 100, Mardy Murie On August 18, conservation legend Mardy Murie will turn 100 years old. Mardy was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska in 1924. She would later write Two in the Far North, chronicling her romance with renowned biologist Olaus Murie, and in 1998 win a Presidential Medal of […]

A historic, if confusing, moment The residents of Western Colorado’s Delta County, home of High Country News, had been on the edge of their seats for weeks. All eyes were on our three county commissioners, who, on Monday, July 22, would vote whether or not to allow Gunnison Energy Co. to explore for coalbed methane […]

“Momentous” is often used inappropriately, but when Maggie Coon used it at a meeting in Park City, Utah, on Saturday morning, June 15, it seemed perfectly scaled. The High Country Foundation board president was describing the task her fellow board members faced in choosing a new leader for the organization that publishes this newspaper; publishes […]

Conflagration Troubles of the modern West continue to break out around the home of High Country News. A month ago in this space, we talked about coalbed-methane developers beginning to target the mesa slopes near our office in Paonia. Now the trouble is wildfire in areas where people have chosen to live. Even though the […]

Digging deep When Rebecca Clarren, fresh out of college and working as a maid in Alaska, decided to become a journalist five years ago, she never dreamed she’d soon be writing lengthy stories about federal water policy or the structure of Native American governments. How borrrrrring. She envisioned telling lively stories with fascinating personalities and […]

The loooooong view One of the joys of working at High Country News is getting caught up in the excitement of ideas. Our interns often tell us that their four-month stint here feels as much like an intensive graduate course in Western issues as it does an introduction to journalism. No one gets more excited […]

Ex marks the spot We love those ex-interns, especially when they land in some Western locale and start sending in stories. This issue is an intern tour de force: Tim Westby, who spent time here in the summer of 1999, penned our cover story on the misunderstood and much abused Great Salt Lake, near whose […]

Mixing our media Centuries from now, when historians dig through HCN’s fossil record, they may discover that this week’s cover story was a metamorphic moment in the paper’s evolution into a multimedia endeavor. The genesis for the story was a recent board meeting, where board member, rancher and Idaho state senator Brad Little told staff […]

The reporter’s life There’s nothing like being on the ground to really understand a story. Just ask HCN Northern Rockies editor Ray Ring, who wrote this week’s cover piece on the turmoil in West Yellowstone, Mont., the self-dubbed “Snowmobile Capital of the World.” Ray is no stranger to digging for the deeper angle. A few […]

March madness Winter finally arrived in Paonia, March 1. The thermometer at the bank dipped to 5 below zero following a blustery eight-inch snowfall. The moisture was appreciated. Snowpack is well below average in almost every drainage of the state, and ranchers are already wondering how early in the summer their irrigation water will dry […]