Lessons from off the grid
Essays
Posted inWotr
Out of the nest and into a tent
I don’t have a house. It wasn’t lost to foreclosure or auctioned by the bank; I have simply never owned one. As a recent college graduate, I am just now learning to pay rent, utilities and my gym membership every month, while trying to find a job that will cover my medical expenses if I […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Putting our house back in order
While Barack Obama was making his inaugural speech, I was vacuuming. I hadn’t planned to be engaged in that particular activity at that particular moment, but the deliverymen turned up early, bringing us a new bed at precisely the moment the new president began to speak. The floor was covered with dropcloths when the bed […]
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The saga of Mineral King
A half-million abandoned mines litter the American West, many dribbling poisons into rivers and streams. But after more than a century of healing, one such place is poised to become one of America’s newest wilderness areas. It’s a testament to the resilience of nature and the vision of the people who fought to preserve it. […]
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Don’t trust this Texas billionaire
See T. Boone Pickens. Run, T. Boone, run! Watch out for T. Boone Pickens. As funny as that sounds, in the sing-song style of the classic Dick and Jane kids’ books, it’s a smart warning. Just as those books have used simple repetition to teach generations of kids to read since the 1930s, Texas billionaire […]
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On second thought, Mr. Cheney
On the last day of 2008, a little bird told me that the venerable American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vt., a beacon for the nation’s fly-fishers and a keeper of their rich tradition, had landed Vice President Dick Cheney as the guest of honor and speaker at its spring 2009 meeting. So I […]
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Thinking green in the midst of winter
Gardening season starts when you open your first seed catalog in the dead of winter, and it doesn’t end until you’ve dug up the last carrot, plucked the final Brussels sprout or eaten your last pickled pepper of the season. The rewards of gardening begin the minute you open that catalog — long before you […]
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The myth of minority favoritism
A myth is circulating around the West, and it goes like this: Regardless of your level of competence, if you’re black, you’ll beat out everybody else when it comes to getting a job with a federal land-management agency such as the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management. A hint of this myth appeared in […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Of an environmental hero and the need for reform
The Bush administration’s most enduring mark on the American West may well be the tens of millions of acres of public lands it has handed over to the oil and gas industry — and the belated backlash the giveaway has spawned. As if to punctuate this legacy, the Bureau of Land Management — which oversees […]
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Wherever you go, there you are
I lived alone in Paris for six months when I was 20. Technically, I had a roommate, an 80-year-old Frenchwoman who’d helped her father smuggle Jews out of the city during the Nazi occupation. She took in boarders to help pay the rent on her Latin Quarter apartment, and I was just one in a […]
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Fire and ancient forests belong together
The first time I walked through the burned part of western Montana’s Lolo National Forest, smoke was still rising from its deep duff layer. It was a crisp bluebird October day in 2003, and I was leading a student monitoring team to document how the fire behaved as it raced through two different areas: the […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
The fine art of bureaucracy
Artists helped further a government agenda
Posted inWotr
Forest Service skips a chance to do things right
If you’re like me and can’t keep up with the Bush administration’s last-minute policy changes, you might have failed to notice a recent announcement by the U.S. Forest Service. In its rush to tie up loose ends, the Forest Service is hammering out new internal agency guidance documents, called “directives.” These directives guide the management […]
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A tale of heartbreakin’ and asskickin’
He loved Silas. Then she kicked the tar out of him.
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The wild we take for granted
Recently I was obligated to serve as a course official for a cross-country meet, which is a fancy way of saying that I got to spend a morning standing out in the drizzle on a golf course, waving young runners past. I was stationed at the end of a path that led through a grove […]
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Hunting is the ultimate do-it-yourself experience
Garden-raised vegetables are probably the tastiest, and eating food raised from seeds you planted yourself always gives a deep sense of satisfaction. But nothing beats hunting for connecting you to the land. I came to this conclusion recently. Over most of my life, I equated hunting with killing, even though I was raised in Montana, […]
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Obama picks a moderate
It’s not surprising that Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity and Jon Marvel of the Western Watersheds Project are disappointed in Barack Obama’s choice for Interior secretary, Colorado Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar. The two activists have tapped the federal courts for the last two decades in their efforts to stop overgrazing, logging and […]