“I love caves.” Just a whisper in the dim light of the cavern, and not addressed to me, but to a husband from his wife. I almost turned and said, “Me too,” then remembered we were on a cave tour – everyone on it probably loved caves. Until that tour of Kartchner Caverns State Park, […]
Essays
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Do we really need the rural West?
Note: this article is accompanied by another article in this issue, “Yes, we need the rural West.” Dan Dagget, the well-known authority on Western livestock grazing and a seemingly mild-mannered guy, lost his cool and fairly screamed at me: “Why don’t all of you go back to the cities back East you came from and […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Yes, we need the rural West
Note: this article accompanies another article in this issue, “Do we really need the rural West?“ Hal Rothman is normally a very cool guy – a history professor fascinated by the culture and economy of his hometown of Las Vegas. But he recently went to a conference about the rural Northern Rockies, and after sitting […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
In search of a politics of union
So far, a bigger table for decision-making has not led to more agreement, just more litigation
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The infinite West reaches its limits
Undaunted optimism runs up against a finite landscape
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Learning to think like a region
Environmental issues have nothing to do with political boundaries
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The West’s power game
The West is caught between congressional representatives beholden to resource industries, and federal officials with a conservation agenda. Can we find a middle ground?
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Indian reservations: Environmental refuge or homeland?
To non-Indians, reservations look like vast de facto wildlife areas. But that’s not what they’re for.
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The Old West is small potatoes in the new economy
Local and state governments are no match for the massive corporations moving in on the West’s open spaces
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
How to get right side up again
Instead of propping up corporate agriculture, let’s subsidize small farmers
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Notes from a fence-sitter
Though extremists on either side would never admit it, ranchers and greens care about the same things
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
A barbed tragedy is lodged in Libby
Note: This essay is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story,”Libby’s dark secret.” You remember asbestos: It used to be the hottest little insulator around. For years we crammed it into buildings and warships, wrapped it around water pipes and brake pads, wove it into fireproof clothing and flame-resistant drapes. Then we found out how […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Shadows out West
She greets you and your kids at the doctor’s office. Watching her as she goes about her work she seems very intent, almost frowning. But when a patient arrives she is attentive, tender towards the suffering, reassuring the frightened, and, especially with children, offering an encouraging smile. Her filing is precise and swift, as if […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Shoveling vs. sniveling
Watch out, Nevada! It’s gonna rain shovels. In case you haven’t heard, the Montana timber boys are teaming up with Nevada cow-punchers. The loggers are sending 10,000 shovels to Elko, Nev., as a sign of solidarity against the federal government. I think collecting stepladders might be a more appropriate gesture. The way the B.S. is […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
A new day
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story, “After the fall.” The “giant sucking sound” that presidential candidate H. Ross Perot described in his 1992 campaign can be heard today in the Northern Rockies, where the major timber companies are about done liquidating their private land and are busily moving cash, jobs and […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
In Wyoming, academic freedom is an endangered species
Mention the term academic freedom, and some people picture professors sitting in ivory towers, writing arcane articles and books for each other. They’re wrong. Academic research and higher education may be specialized, but they are not arcane or irrelevant. Ask the students who flock to this nation’s major universities, or visit the industries that have […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
The West ‘ain’t no cow country’
Whatever might be said of the arid West, it “ain’t no cow country.” That’s what Henry Fonda, playing Wyatt Earp, said of Arizona in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946). That’s also the bottom line of a book I wrote, The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. In it, […]
Posted inFebruary 14, 2000: Land of the fee
‘Hunting’ for elk in the salt pits of the upper Yellowstone
This October, on a slant-sunny day, I rode with friends just outside Yellowstone Park’s southeastern corner, where an old hunting practice called salt baiting still occurs. For 30 years, commercial big-game outfitters in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness have strewn salt in the meadows of the upper Yellowstone River and along the park boundary. They do it […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Salmon crisis is a kaleidoscope of complexity
My mother was fascinated by the Columbia River and the fate of the salmon. This was partly because I work with these issues, but also because they have the kaleidoscopic complexity and human idiocy that all really hard problems have. She thought those were the only problems worth our time. From her home in Salt […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Coming home to the country
EKALAKA, Mont. – We called it the Mother Tree: a mature ponderosa pine on the crest of a small hill, with an acre or so of seedlings and saplings draping the hill’s leeward side, a mini-forest in the making that was the product of scores of pinecones shed by that lone adult. We drove past […]