Maybe because Christmas and the New Year are traditional times for celebrating a sense of community, it’s also a good time to acknowledge some of the rough patches in the rural Shangri-La where I live: the growing demands at the local food bank, dissension in the town of Joseph, Ore., over our governance, the 23 […]
Essays
Posted inWotr
You better watch out, that’s for sure
I’m as sentimental about Christmas as the next guy, but after years of listening to the holiday carols and Christmas standards, I find some troubling messages embedded in those songs. At the heart of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, for instance, is a small herd of really nasty reindeer. The song was written by an advertising […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
For the love of stuff
I don’t find most theistic versions of the afterlife compelling, but over the last few weeks I have become convinced that if there is a hell, it surely involves shopping for a car. After an epic quest, my wife and I finally decided on a 2-year-old Subaru, which will allow us to travel Wyoming’s wintry […]
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This is the time to make land management make sense
The federal deficit is already gigantic, and it keeps getting bigger in order to stimulate the plummeting economy. But times of crisis are also times of opportunity. This is the perfect chance for the Obama administration to improve the way the federal lands are managed. Consider the big three land agencies: the Forest Service, the […]
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Forest Service morale sinks to a new low
When Dave Iverson first came to the U.S. Forest Service’s regional office in Ogden, Utah, in 1980, he was drawn by a love for the outdoors and a desire to do good work on the public lands. But after spending almost three decades on planning and policy, he quit last year just shy of retirement. […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Change we could believe in
The federal deficit is already gigantic, and there’s serious talk of making it even bigger in order to stimulate the plummeting economy. But times of crisis are also times of opportunity. This is the perfect chance for the Obama administration to improve the way the federal lands are managed. At the moment, increased budgets for […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Trashing the earth, and the truth
This is the last time I will ever tell this story. For an environmental reporter, the past eight years have produced a jungle of topics to explore at will, but the lessons learned there could not have been more unpleasant. This is the story of one of those lessons. In April of 2004, Field and […]
Posted inArticles
A word in favor of rootlessness
The joys and perhaps necessary virtues of not settling down.
Posted inWotr
The perfect imperfect Christmas tree
I love going into the woods to cut my own Christmas tree. It’s not that I want to snub the Boy Scouts, who host a tree lot in town. I’ve spent a lot of time in those urbanized groves, searching for the perfect conical tree, and sampling hot chocolate. But a backcountry tree hunt is […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Methow Homecoming
Whenever I have few days to spare, I like to toss a sleeping bag and a fly rod and a few books into the back seat of my car and drive east, toward the mountains. It takes some time to shake free of the gravity of Seattle’s traffic, but once the strip malls start to […]
Posted inWotr
Lessons from the mighty Maya
One theory about the collapse of the Maya civilization in Mexico some 1100 years ago is based on evidence that they had perfected a bureaucracy of corn. Exhaustive rules governed how corn was grown, distributed and consumed. A rigid hierarchy defined every individual’s social position and allotment of corn, and this cultural arrangement lasted 650 […]
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Here comes change
Recently I had the opportunity to watch a short but very moving video about an elderly Dine woman named Pauline Whitesinger from Big Mountain on the Navajo Nation. In it, she speaks about who she is, where she lives and what informs her life. Her nephew, Danny Blackgoat, translates her words, listening and speaking quietly. […]
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Stream access wins decisively in Montana
The long slog is over. The Montana Supreme Court has finally settled a dispute over who controls access to a side channel of the Bitterroot River known as the Mitchell Slough. The verdict: The public does; Mitchell Slough is a natural waterway, and that means access is guaranteed for the people of Montana. You may […]
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It’s time for a ceasefire on guns
Gun owners represent at least 4 million of the nation’s most dedicated voters, and in election after election, they affect the outcome. Sometimes they elect politicians who are corrupt or unabashed lackeys of corporate interests — people whose only appeal to gun owners is that they promise to leave the Second Amendment alone. Now, however, […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Night: not just for astronomers
Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the DarkEdited by Paul Bogard208 pages, softcover: $21.95.University of Nevada Press, 2008. Many of us in the rural West still get to enjoy dark skies and bright stars, but in urban areas around the world, night is not as black as it once was. Paul Bogard has […]
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How to survive the lean times
In 1976, circumstances beyond my control forced me into temporary homelessness. For six months, I alternated between relying on the couches of friends and camping out in my car. With the proper gear, it’s surprising how well you can fend for yourself. Of course, it helps to live in a region of the country with […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Real work
Depending on your perspective, my partner Laurie’s resume is either impressive or disturbing. In her 20s, she worked as a wilderness ranger, hiking miles with a too-heavy pack, digging drain dips and toilet holes. In her 30s, she worked on a trail crew, chopping roots, sawing logs, clearing brush. Nowadays she works in an historic […]
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A chance to do it right in the West
The 2008 election took the West another big step down the path of political realignment that has been underway since the turn of the century. By 2000, the Rocky Mountain West had become essentially a one-party region. All eight of its governors were Republicans, as were 13 of its 16 senators. In the 2000 election, […]
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The persistence of bigotry, Western-style
Q: What’s Barack Obama’s new Chinese name?A: Coon Soon Die. Work on it a little bit. You’ll get it. I got it while I was eating eggs over-medium, hashbrowns and bacon at a restaurant in Hotchkiss, a town of less than 2,000 people in western Colorado. The waitress who was pouring coffee asked who we […]
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We’re in this together
There is a house in Rawlins, Wyo., that won’t sell. It’s a bargain, too, at $135,000. In fact, there are 43 houses in Rawlins selling for under $150,000. This is a booming energy town with a housing shortage. People in Rawlins have money. Wyoming has, in fact, the fastest growing median household income of any […]