Over the past 20 years or so, I’ve been affiliated with at least a dozen environmental groups, and I’ve seen it happen several times. So has everyone who’s been involved in the movement. I’m talking about professionalization. It begins when a group of grassroots activists begins to feel overwhelmed. They can’t keep up with the […]
Essays
Posted inJune 9, 2008: Why the West needs Mythic Cowboys
The luckiest horse in Reno
When the men approached, the black foal might have been nursing. Or she might have been on her side, giving her wobbly legs a rest, leaning into her mother under the starry desert sky. At the sound of the vehicle, the band prepared to move and did move at once, for horses are animals of […]
Posted inWotr
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
Posted inWotr
Native Americans walk the talk across America
Native Americans began their 3,600-mile walk across America at Alcatraz Island Feb. 11, and soon they’ll conclude in Washington, D.C. I’ve accompanied them on the Northern Route, co-hosting a Web radio program as they crossed the freezing Sierra Nevada Range, plodded through a hailstorm in western Utah and walked over the cold Rocky Mountains of […]
Posted inWotr
My love affair with dandelions
It’s spring, and after a long, cold, dreary winter in New Mexico, I’m ready for it. And even though we’ve had a couple of late snowstorms and the trees are only just now beginning to get leaves, dandelions are already growing in the cracks of the rock wall next to my sidewalk. I call them […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
The amphibian heart
The road was covered with toads. Crouched on the two-lane mountain blacktop, posed like speckled sphinxes on the yellow line. I saved as many as I could, leaping from my idling car to scoop up their warm dimpled bodies and deposit them in adjacent Sonoran Desert. But too many were already belly-up or smeared across […]
Posted inWotr
Democrats could play the donkey card in Denver
It’s been said that burros, beans and brawn won the West. Now, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are weighing whether iconic images of the Old West should be used to market the event in Denver this summer. The debate is not without significance. Democrats, who have been unable to gain a foothold in Southern […]
Posted inWotr
When you’re rich, you can dream
The last great boom that lit up Wyoming’s economy happened 25 years ago. The predictable bust followed, and it was the mid-1980s when oil prices crashed, nationwide demand for energy plummeted, interest rates soared and, overall, many get-rich dreams that had been hatched during the heady days turned to nightmares. Now, we are in the […]
Posted inWotr
A beekeeper hopes for the best in spring
They all survived. My honeybee hives somehow managed to survive another winter. With all of the gloom and doom in the press about colony-collapse disorder, I had expected that at least one of my six hives would be pitifully empty or dead. Thankfully, I was wrong. Each of the hives has a different story, similar […]
Posted inWotr
How not to save salmon
For centuries, killing predators was to fish and wildlife management what leeches were to medicine. By the mid-20th century, even the dullest minds in government had figured this out. But duller minds were yet to come. Enter the administration of George W. Bush. In 2008, it is hawking control of salmon-eating birds, fish and mammals […]
Posted inWotr
All Westerners are stalwart (and other tall tales)
Western humor is all about adversity, braving the elements, surviving the landscape and stretching the truth. Call it polished prevarication. Not lies, exactly; more like embellishments. Stories that should be true, even if they’re not. Pioneers came West, and over time each group told its own jokes — cowboys, loggers, Lycra-clad bicyclists – and everyone […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
The mysticism of mud
Mud season just ended on the sage-covered mesa north of Taos that I call home. During the last few months, you could tell who lives on dirt roads by the perpetual stripe of mud on their lower pant legs. That’s normal. But I have never seen as much mud as I saw this spring. On […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Coffeepots and climate
As I rode my bike north out of Fort Collins, Colo., the houses thinned out, replaced by cows and horses. In one field between me and the foothills, several pronghorn antelope ran from me in a short leaping spurt, turned and looked back, then resumed their grazing. A string of steel power line structures, which […]
Posted inWotr
Predator control looks a lot different on the ground
The extremists who are on a mission to eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services would do well to spend time with ranchers who live and work on our Western landscape. There, they might gain an on-the-ground perspective other than their narrowly defined agenda. As the old Greek shepherds — echoing the ancient Greek philosophers […]
Posted inWotr
The ugly economy of killing wildlife
Most Americans have never heard of the federal agency euphemistically known as Wildlife Services. Yet it was a major force in eliminating wolf and grizzly bear populations in the early 20th century, and today spends over $100 million each year using mostly taxpayer dollars to kill more than a million animals — primarily birds — […]
Posted inWotr
Coffee with the ladies
This morning, I saddled a dependable horse and headed for morning rounds at the calving meadow. I want to finish checking on the cows a little early so I can drive up the road to my neighbor’s house for the Shell Ladies’ Coffee. (Shell itself may boast a population of only 50, but we’ve had […]
Posted inApril 28, 2008: Pillaging the Past
Cold dead fingers
About a decade ago, while waiting at the town stoplight, I read the bumper stickers on the Jeep Cherokee in front of me. Two were familiar: “The West wasn’t won with a registered gun” and “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” But the other one was new: “MY PRESIDENT IS CHARLTON HESTON.” […]
Posted inApril 28, 2008: Pillaging the Past
Feeding time
Dinner for the next few days is elk. It hangs from a heavy chain that dangles from a tall tripod of lodgepole pine logs. The body still smells of warmth and life. I glide my knife along the length of the whetstone, a few times on one side, a few times on the other. The […]
Posted inWotr
How to adopt a garden
The pioneer archetype looms large in the West. Strong and largely fictional, this heroic frontiersman delivered a calf at midnight in the blowing snow, mended fence all day and still had time to ride home into the sunset. Yet while one pioneer tended the herd, you can bet another was tending the garden, making applesauce, […]