We have begun to think of this place as ours. Every year, we cross the creek, ride up the long slope to the timbered bench, then drop into the meadow, as we have for a decade. It’s a coming home; a flood of memories of previous hunts, good times, hard work; a shared experience of […]
Essays
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
New forest chief becomes a lame duck
It could turn out to be the shortest tenure as Forest Service chief in history. Dale N. Bosworth was named the 15th chief of the United States Forest Service on April 12, 2001. He may have made himself a lame duck on Friday, Aug. 24, 2001, when he removed Brad Powell as regional forester for […]
Posted inWotr
Floating past ghosts on the Green River
The White Rim is a strip of manila sandstone on the edge of the Green River canyon. We’ve been following it for three days now, floating this 60-mile flatwater stretch above Cataract Canyon in Utah, one small raft and a kayak; 20 miles yesterday, 15 or so today. Sometimes delicately thin, sometimes robust and thick, […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
A former oilman says no to drilling in the Arctic
I come from a long line of Texas earth-divers: prospectors, trappers and explorers who have spent their lives in the successful pursuit of oil and gas. I am proud of our part in supplying the world with energy – in feeding this country – and am proud of how today’s geologists have survived the volatility […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Klamath’s federal agencies map different realities
Maps are no more objective than any other documents. Just look at the ones of the Klamath Basin produced by its two federal landlords. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation portrays the basin as a network of reservoirs and canals designed to deliver water to farms. Since parts of the basin have no natural outlets, areas […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
The man in the rubber boots
In the Land of IrrigationWhere the Desert blossoms as the roseThere dwells a Knight in armorWhom everyone loves that knows.He guides the little streamletsTo the famished stems and roots,He carries life in his shovel –The man in the rubber boots From “The Man in the Rubber Boots”by Agnes Just Reid (1947) When it rains in […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
Out of the woods, blithe spirit
Oh my! Oh dear! Imagine … 20,000 hippies. Not doing a lick of work. Messing up meadows like animals. Befouling streams like animals. Eating, sleeping, defecating like animals. Fornicating like bunny animals, thumping bongos, tooting flutes, gang-singing old Donovan songs, dancing around without a care in their heads like Jenna Bush in a cowboy bar, […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
A bird from the past, a warning for the future
My first California condor sighting was at the Grand Canyon. Imagine those huge birds aloft over that incomparable chasm – living gliders on wings that span 9 feet and 40,000 years. Imagine their oversized shadows passing over talus slopes and mesas, clouding the once blood-red, but now blue-green waters of the Colorado. Eclipsing the sun […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Environmentalism meets a fierce friend
Ten years ago, Tom Knudson awakened the West by revealing what had happened in California’s Sierra Nevada – John Muir’s “Range of Light” and the mountains that inspired the formation of the Sierra Club. Knudson’s 1991 series in the Sacramento Bee showed a Sierra under siege from five horsemen of a coming apocalypse: logging, grazing […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
West braces for Big Buildup II
In the boom times of the 1950s, Western city leaders embarked on the Big Buildup. It was an intensive resource-development campaign that wrote a critical part of the story of the modern West across the grand tableau of the Colorado Plateau – the Four Corners area, the high redrock desert, the canyon country, including the […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
The year it rained money
In early September last year, I threw my lower back out. I drove to my job in Salmon, Idaho, but by noon I could hardly stand. I scooted myself to the office lobby on a wheeled chair, then hobbled as far as the sidewalk before my legs buckled. I lay panting on the cool concrete, […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
The myth of the wooden Indian
Flip through any 19th century collection of American Indian portraits and you’ll see many stereotypical images of Native Americans: the warrior Sitting Bull, who wears a serious expression, his eyes avoiding the camera and his chin tilted forward in a gesture of nobility; children wearing the military uniforms of a government boarding school. The stereotypes […]
Posted inFebruary 26, 2001: Return of the natives
The mythic West and the billionaire
Only after looking over my shoulder as I left the Denver Art Museum did I realize the irony of the exhibit “Painters of the American West.” As usual, the blue neon Qwest signs flooded the Denver skyline. Behind both the art exhibit and Qwest, publicity-shy but firmly in charge, is Philip Anschutz, at last count […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
I am an Inuit warrior
“Let’s walk downtown and get a video,” said my husband on a starry January evening. “Are you out of your mind?” I asked, peeking at the thermometer outside the kitchen window. The red line hovered near zero. “That would mean we’d have to go outside.” “Honey,” he said, as gently as he could. “We live […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
No matter what they say, Westerners don’t fit the stereotype
As good Americans, we not only endure a presidential election, but we also tolerate the analysis that emerges afterward. This time around, the right-thinking pundits couldn’t accept the simple fact that the 2000 presidential election was one of the closest in history. Instead, they looked for a mandate for the winner, and found one in […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Rearranging the grid
A rural electric co-op becomes a progressive force
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Bush administration faces a reborn Interior
Now that the former attorney general of Colorado, Gale Norton, has been nominated as secretary of Interior (see story page 3), the cast of main characters is complete, and the four-year run of what is certain to be an interesting play can begin. The details of the script will be written on the fly, but […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Old West guns down growth initiatives
Well, so much for the great land-use greening of 2000. Colorado and Arizona’s bold citizen initiatives to toughen their states’ growth-management rules both went down in flames. Colorado’s Amendment 24 rode high all summer, but support for the proposed constitutional amendment to require towns to map future growth and obtain voter approval for changes fell […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
In Arizona’s growth fight, advertising defined reality
The television ad showed a truck unloading a port-a-potty in the desert, while a family of four stood by with forlorn faces. A voice-over warned that if Arizona’s growth-control initiative passed, a family wouldn’t be able to get water or sewer for a new home outside the boundaries. As a youth walked into the port-a-potty, […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Outlaws on an upscale road
When I moved to Teton County, Wyo., two decades ago, I lived in a sagging, second-hand pup tent for the summer. The tipi I moved into that winter felt palatial by comparison. Almost everyone I knew then lived in wall tents, tipis, yurts, or cabins with no plumbing. Even when the temperature fell past 30 […]