I live in a California mountain town that’s perched on a ridge that ascends toward the higher Sierras. The place was initially called Dogtown, and it boasts the distinction of being the site where California’s biggest-ever gold nugget was found. The town was supposed to be called “Magnolia,” but the poor spelling and/or penmanship of […]
Essays
Posted inWotr
Let the EPA finish its work in Pavillion, Wyoming
Over the last few weeks, the gas industry and their advocates have gone to great lengths to refute the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft report about the effects on groundwater of hydraulic fracturing – fracking — for gas in Pavillion, Wyo. In case you missed the story, on Dec. 8 the EPA released “confirmation of highly […]
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An Obama-Huntsman ticket would get my vote
Here’s a dramatic way we might break through the partisan gridlock and mutual demonization that dominate our politics these days: President Barack Obama, the top Democrat, should ditch his vice president, Joe Biden, and recruit a reasonable Western Republican — Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. — as a running mate. As unlikely as it sounds, there’s […]
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Getting a ski pass the hard way
With others to the left and right of me, we’re on the job, stamping our feet backward down an icy slope of manmade snow recently sprayed into the air by the Aspen Skiing Company. The slope drops off steeply for about 100 yards before ending in a brush-choked gully, and I’m about to get to […]
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How to find a 13,000 year-old mammoth
It takes a long time to find a curved-tusk mammoth, especially if it’s been obscured beneath tamarisk, oak brush and tenacious Russian olive bushes. I’d heard stories about mammoths once roaming the land that’s now San Juan County in southeastern Utah, but a beast from the Pleistocene is hard to locate on rock cliffs and […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
No matter how long you live in your small town, you’ll never be a native
The woman behind the counter asked where I lived. It turns out she grew up in the very same small town, population 300. She said she had to leave it to find a job, moving to the nearest place with a population nearer 10,000.“So you must be the new trash that’s moving in,” she mused. […]
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Survival tips for 2012
In this New Year, we can’t take anything for granted when the global financial system of speculative swindles, leveraged frauds and doomed debts keeps circumnavigating the bowl. Another bailout might extend this game of charades; another scantily clad stimulus package might temporarily succeed in goosing our economy — but only at the cost of rendering […]
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Some things deserve to stay the same
More so than any other landscape in Big Sky Country, Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front derives its wonder from a violent juxtaposition of geological forms. The Front is the convergence of two mega-ecosystems that together cover roughly a quarter of our country — the Northern Plains and the Northern Rockies. This is where each seemingly limitless […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
What is that dead deer thinking about, and why is he hanging there?
Ten points. That’s what my hunter friends would have noticed. They would have coveted the owner of those 10 points, would have risen early in the autumn morning chill, crept toward him silently as the sun warmed their backs, until they heard the echo of his hooves in the distance, caught a flash of brown, […]
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A do-it-yourself Christmas tradition
Last Christmas Eve, I found a new Christmas tradition. To shake off the crankiness of cookies gone wrong, of shopping and shipping and wrapping and frenzy, I took a long walk last December. And that’s when I got a wonderful, non-Grinchly idea. What if, as Dr. Seuss said, Christmas does not come from a store? […]
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Tips for a bright – and efficient – Christmas
Last year, I loaded up the Christmas stockings of relatives and friends with 60-watt Philips LEDs — light-emitting diode — light bulbs, and this holiday I’ll do it again. Why give a present few people even know they want? Because LEDs are the gift that keeps on giving, saving money every month on electric bills. […]
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The Forest Service discriminates against poor kids
The summer before last, I took a four-day hike through the backcountry of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the Washington Cascades. I’m accustomed to rugged terrain and steep slopes, so I was impressed when, after miles of travel off the trail, I heard the voices of teenagers wafting toward me. I met the intrepid boys […]
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Home on the range
This year, I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving back home with my parents in central Montana. Holidays at home usually include the traditional trappings of board games, gravy boats and hungry dogs making cute under the table, followed by food-induced snooze fests in the living room. But what I most look forward to when […]
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The end is near — the end of 2011
To claim that the ancient Mayan culture of Mexico and Central America developed a nuanced conception of time is like saying the modern stock market is a complicated financial instrument. The Mayan calendars cover a multi-faceted collection of linear and cyclical measurements that go back almost 3,000 years as well as forward in time — […]
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A ski town contributes mightily to paleontology
One morning last July, as Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper looked on, scientists supervised the hoisting of a 10,000-pound cast of a Columbia mammoth skeleton — rocks included — onto a flatbed truck for shipment to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. After 60 days of intense digging, the scientists and scores of volunteers attracted […]
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A frantic lion meets the border wall
I recently moved from Sasabe, Ariz., a tiny town located next to the border wall dividing the United States from Mexico. The wall was built of bars 15 feet tall and looked like a long prison cell. It ran four miles east until it hit an arroyo on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Fighting the wind on a Montana camping trip
My wife does not like the wind. I know this because she says so. “I hate the wind!” Crissie hollers, doing her best to be heard above it. It’s late June, 7 p.m., the first night of a three-day float down the Marias River in northern Montana, 40-some miles from the Canadian border. We woke […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
The burial of Elouise Cobell
Elouise Cobell filed her class action suit in 1996 and originally thought it would take only three years to resolve the issues. She joined Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Attorney General Eric Holder in making the settlement announcement. Tami A. Heilemann-DOI On Oct. 22, Elouise Cobell was buried on the Blacktail Ranch where she and […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Hunting deer on a mountain bike
In the tangle of gear in my daypack, the phone started ringing. It was a wholly inappropriate moment: My phone is pink, and its jaunty notes clashed with the traditional hunter’s world of blaze orange and camouflage. I sat on a rock by the trail and cringed. Everything about this — my first hunting trip […]
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Breathing clean air comes in second in Congress
Even in these politically polarized times, one might think that breathing clean air could muster some bipartisan support in Congress. A quick look at the bills the House of Representatives has been passing lately should dispel that naïve notion. Three bills aimed at delaying new air pollution rules on coal-fired power plants, cement kilns and […]