Life in Durango, Colo., has taken on a surreal quality. Even for those of us not directly affected by it, the fire dominates our days. Handling mundane problems, pursuing our normal jobs and hobbies, grocery shopping and gassing up the car – everything takes place against a backdrop of disaster. It’s a crisis situation, but […]
Essays
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Restoring the West, goat by goat
In the early 1990s, Leslie Barclay bought a ranch a half-hour south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was from back East, and like many newcomers to the West with some money and energy, she was romantic about the region and the land. She understood that it wasn’t in great shape, but she thought it […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
In the lion’s eye
I like to work alone, far from other people, in the deserts and mountains of southeastern Idaho. These are the forgotten lands, rarely seen by the public and only occasionally by agency personnel. On one job I will always remember, I am in the Black Pine Range, working as an independent biologist for the Black […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
The name might be green, but not the group
When it comes to environmental, wildlife or habitat issues, it’s smart to be wary of names and titles. I was reminded of that recently when a group called the Nebraska Habitat Conservation Coalition gathered to consider strategies for halting habitat protection for wildlife along the Platte River. That’s right. The Habitat Conservation Coalition opposes habitat […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
In the throat of a black hole
I am standing over this crevice of Antelope Canyon, a thin fissure in the bedrock of far northern Arizona, a tourist attraction on the Navajo Reservation. It is dark down there, as if I am looking through the cracked roof of a mosque into an unlit interior. A metal ladder leads down and I follow […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
In the West, drought is a native
“You have to get over the color green,” wrote the late historian and novelist Wallace Stegner in Thoughts on a Dry Land, his treatise on living in the West. I’ve remembered Stegner’s words frequently this brown spring, as gusty winds smudge the air over my valley with clouds of dry soil. Green appears only along […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Ranching the changing times
My earliest memories revolve around my dad waking me up with the sun to work cattle. My feet took the shape of the pointed boots and my head grew within my Stetson, leaving an indented white forehead. I never even thought about not ranching. In 1978, I partnered with my dad to buy a ranch […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Riding the Line
Ruben Rivera leans his elbow on the side of a pickup truck. His wife and brother-in-law stand in the truck bed to get a better view of the race. Rivera’s horse, Misterio – “Mystery” he explains, rather unnecessarily – is running in the third race. “But on the other side.” We are officially in Mexico […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
The Old West went that-a-way
The East Coast editor wants me to tell her something new. Something nobody knows about the West. Something special. Something secret. I rack my brain. And my ethics. What we have left out here that’s special needs to stay special. Our secrets need to be kept. Here’s the piece I sent her. She turned it […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Where free trade is more than an acronym
It’s early when Ana Maria and I arrive at the onion fields, so early that we have to use the lights of a growling tractor to guide us along the rows. I stumble through the mud behind Ana, listening to the sounds of slamming doors and shouted saludos drift through the cold, damp air. When […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Leave my town out of your ‘Top 10’
Help me with a quick survey: Pick the “10 Best Towns” that people call home in America. Go ahead, take a minute. I’m betting Driggs, Idaho, wasn’t your top choice. But that’s assuming you didn’t pick up the March issue of Men’s Journal while waiting for a root canal and see its list of the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Muscle car of the prairie
I drove out east in the car with the crumpled front end. It was a vintage 1966 Pontiac LeMans with no muffler. At 60 miles an hour it roared like an F-16. The dry western wind whipping through the open windows made me feel alive and powerful. A year earlier, when I was 15, my […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Developers push revisionist history
In March 2000, the people of Flagstaff, Ariz., won a big one. Development of a treasured crater and wetland known as Dry Lake into a gated, high-end golf-course subdivision was stopped dead. This is especially significant because the property was private and already zoned for a planned community. The four-year battle was complicated, including a […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
The oldest living thing is a quiet survivor
The oldest living thing in the world is hard to find, and soon I’m lost. I drive out a rutted dirt road south of Barstow, Calif., in search of “King Clone,” a creosote bush identified as the oldest living thing on Earth. Said to be 11,700 years old, that makes it centuries older than the […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Notes from a corporate insider: It’s not easy turning green
Don Popish’s Carhartt overalls are so infused with dirt and grease that they crackle when he walks. He’s got rings under his eyes from fixing balky Snowcats at night in Aspen Skiing Co.’s vehicle shop. Me, I’m an environmentalist in a starched shirt. But like Don, I’ve got a job to do for the company. […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
The Postal Service stamps the mythic West
Wyoming has declared war on Montana. Why? Wyoming officials say their northern neighbor has co-opted an icon behind which the state tries to perpetuate long-gone traditions. The stimulus for the feud was the U.S. Postal Service and its 50-state commemorative stamp series. The Montana stamp features a cowboy atop a bucking horse. Wyoming says it […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
The ‘Niche West’ reconnects us to the land
Arguing is one of my favorite sports. I always like to participate, and often I enjoy watching, as with the latest bout between Thomas Michael Power, an economics professor at the University of Montana, and Ed Marston, publisher of High Country News (HCN, 12/17/01: Economics with a heart but no soul) and (HCN, 2/4/02: Post-cowboy […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2002: How I lost my town
In California, no water project is too big
In a state like California, where half the population relies on water that has been pumped hundreds of miles across deserts or thousands of feet over mountains, you might think it difficult to devise a plan nutty enough to draw jeers. Yet an Alaska company has managed to do just that. At first blush, I […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2002: How I lost my town
Bush turns BLM into energy machine
In November, quietly and without fanfare, Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management Nina Rose Hatfield created a National Energy Office to implement President Bush’s energy policy. Its sole purpose, according to BLM documents, is to expedite drilling and mining on public lands. Last May, Bush issued Executive Order 13212, which stresses that it […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
You can call mine Mortgage Manor
Lupine Lodge. Del Mar at the Sea. Massive Mountain Manor. Harbor House at the Pines. I have changed the names to protect the ostentatious; to protect those who not only must own four luxury homes in four different places, but also pick and register names for them. I didn’t think I was capable of being […]