If the American West were to adopt a secular, flawed, feet-of-clay patron saint, John Wesley Powell, whose March 24th birthday just passed, would be the man. Powell, who was born in 1834 and died in 1902, epitomized grit and courage, qualities the West likes to honor. He lost an arm at Shiloh commanding a battery […]
Essays
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Cantankerous and contradictory: Remembering Ed Abbey
Edward Abbey changed my life. He saved me from becoming a Republican. Twenty-five years after a friend of my father’s handed me a worn-out copy of Desert Solitaire and a decade after his death, Ed Abbey is, to me, an honest hero in a time and a world where we don’t allow heroes. He’d throw […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
The Pacific Yew: Chasing a cancer cure with a chainsaw
Above 4,000 feet it rained every day of the summer of 1993. On the Fourth of July, a long night of rain and wind gave way at dawn to a fine sleet that lay on the ground like snow, and didn’t melt for nearly three days. We were somewhere east of Pierce, Idaho, on the […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Yankee stay home
We seldom hear about things that don’t happen. I’m not talking about cancelled flights or broken dates. Or even about asteroids that didn’t collide with the earth. The nonoccurrences that interest me are the products of restraint. This interests me most with regard to the American Southwest. The moment I saw it, 40 years ago, […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Bitter farewell: A Montana valley succumbs to growth fever
We are losing the Bitterroot. The first place settled in Montana may be the first to go. The words stick in the throat. They have the growl of negativity, the un-American taste of failure. What can we do with such an impossible fact? On days when fresh snow sashes the high granite ridges, we ignore […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Squandering our kids’ inheritance
“This is our kids’ inheritance.” I saw the bumper sticker the first time on the back of a beat-up old Airstream in a Searchlight, Nev., casino parking lot, and I thought of one of my dad’s favorite sayings: “Enjoy your money and your kids while you’re alive.” He didn’t, and died with that regret. I’m […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Children teach tough lessons
School is a terrible place to have to spend your days. As any disgruntled student can tell you, the walls are sterile, the teachers suspicious, the curriculum irrelevant, the freedoms nonexistent. And, out of all the places on earth I could be, I have chosen to spend my workdays here. I made this decision, perhaps […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
River guide quits and tells why
I began my “career” as a Grand Canyon river guide in 1971, in the heart of what we later referred to as the clueless years. Few boatmen had more than a couple dozen trips under their belt; some were on their first. We had few wizened veteran guides to tell us where to hike, how […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Fallen forester
Did whistleblowers destroy a fine public servant?
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Terrorist tactics always undermine progress
“We’re always a little afraid.” That’s what a staunch environmentalist told me shortly after I retired from the Idaho Legislature and left a big-firm law practice to work for the Idaho Conservation League. “Afraid of what?” I asked him. So he patiently explained certain realities of being an environmentalist in an Idaho Panhandle timber town. […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
It’s a good day to be indigenous
From this moment on kindly refer to my family as “indigenous.” Or, if you prefer, “First Peoples.” With the discovery of what could be my long-lost European relative – Kennewick Man – it’s time to respect my elders. Kennewick Man, found in 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River near the town of the […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Arson isn’t the only crime on Vail Mountain
Fires set atop Colorado’s Vail Mountain have unleashed a storm of condemnation, a media feeding frenzy, and a no-holds-barred federal investigation. But the powerful public outrage provoked by the arson has obscured more important events occurring on the backside of Vail Mountain. To my way of thinking, there was just as much to be outraged […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
A parade becomes a memorial after a murder
Laramie, Wyoming, wrestles with the hate in its midst when a gay student is beaten to death.
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A lifetime of service on the North Dakota plains
A slide show: Old pictures narrated in a yell by his daughter. Joe Sorkness is turning 97, and is deaf. He still lives in Jamestown, N.D., where he spends time piled in a chair, squinting at the Wall Street Journal through coke-bottle glasses that make his eyes look as big as eggs. “Here we are […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
God to Helen: ‘Do I know you?’
The fall of 1998 will undoubtedly go down in history as a record year for confessions of infidelity – followed by professions of contrition – from politicians. The latest comes from Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth, the ultra-conservative Republican, who recently admitted to a six-year affair with a married, former business partner. The Idaho Statesman decided […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Worn shoes, cattle and a spring
ENNIS, Mont. – It was late one afternoon some years back, when I drove from the Forest Service’s ranger station to the little grocery store at the end of Main Street. Among those milling about the aisles making last-minute purchases, I recognized the young wife and two school-aged children of the rancher with whom I’d […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
A polygamist of place: The tradition of the Eastern Westerner
I begin with a confession. While it’s true I have only one wife and no hidden mistresses, I am a polygamist of place. The writers I’ve always admired most, from Thoreau to Colorado’s Reg Saner, have made it their habit to wedge into one place, to know that place well through long association with the […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Longtime foes practice ritual combat in an Idaho forest
Last fall, I traveled to a war in central Idaho. For six years, in the longest-standing Earth First! demonstration in the country, environmentalists have laid pipe, cement, trees and themselves in front of logging trucks at the Cove-Mallard timber sale, 80 miles southeast of Lewiston, Idaho, in the Nez Perce National Forest. And though this […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
An American dream gets evicted
EDWARDS, Colo. – A luxury condominium complex is going up here – not an unusual phenomenon in one of the fastest-growing counties in the state of Colorado. But this development is affecting me. I hear voices as I drive by the construction site. Voices from this place’s past. They are not the voices of Ute […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Forest Service pulls anchor ban out of thin air
My skin still tingles when I recall our helplessness as the sound of thunder and flash of lightning struck our senses simultaneously. My rock-climbing partner and I had just reached the summit of a long, remote climb in California’s High Sierras, when a fast-moving thunderstorm broke over us. I yelled to my partner to start […]