For more than 20 years, the fate of 13 threatened and endangered salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest has been a contest between the status quo agenda of politicians and power producers and a legacy of the Nixon era, the Endangered Species Act. A few months ago, many of us in the press who have […]
Essays
Posted inWotr
Rooting for the underdog
The hailstones came down like meteorites. They crashed against the house and whistled through the trees, ripping and shredding as if their icy edges were honed razor-sharp. I stood behind the screen door and watched as the clear fiberglass roofing on the front porch was torn, twisted and obliterated, bits and pieces of fiberglass flying […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Fury
When Fury finally dies, he picks a back pasture on my parents’ Colorado ranch to rest his old horse body. The neighbor across the fence calls to tell my mother this, that he can see a dead horse from his kitchen window. This neighbor is not well liked. He is new. His house is new. […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
The Healing River
I live on a remote tributary of the Gila River in a still-wild corner of Catron County, New Mexico. Well, not “on” the river, really; no one really lives on a river, unless they’re on a houseboat on the constipated Colorado, or a converted shrimper on Orbison’s bayou. More specifically, I live far enough from […]
Posted inWotr
Lions and tigers and wolves, oh my, even in the Midwest
Don’t look now, but there may be a couple of keen eyes within a placid suburb or rural Midwestern neighborhood. In fact, they might be up a tree. That’s where Nebraska’s most recent mountain lion was spotted earlier this year. The 100-pound animal was lounging comfortably in a tree in South Sioux City, across the […]
Posted inWotr
What’s in a name? Ask an Anacondan
I lucked out when I landed in Anaconda, Mont. I didn’t have to tell my friends I was a Helen or a Malted. I became an Anacondan. Newspaper folks like to find shortcuts when writing news stories, and one of the best ones around is the ability to describe the people in a town with […]
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Skeletons lurk in the closets of our respected institutions
Last spring, the now-infamous Ward Churchill, University of Colorado professor of ethnic studies, gave a talk at Colorado College about the contents of our institutional closets. He claimed that we had the bones of 139 people — all Native Americans — hidden on campus. Churchill used this number to demonstrate the college’s complicity in the […]
Posted inWotr
Why this ‘seasonal’ rides the public’s range
It’s day three into my 14th season at Grand Teton National Park, and now I must pass the infamous pack test. By carrying 45 pounds for 1.5 miles in less than 46 minutes, I’ll qualify for “arduous duty” as a wildland firefighter keeping an eye on lightning strikes. I wear a vest packed with weights […]
Posted inWotr
Buying used gets him enthused
Westerners are packrats. Blame it on the availability of flea markets or just the size of our backyards. My house is no exception, except that most of my stuff comes from the midden heap, which doesn’t mean I’ve been pilfering artifacts from sacred sites. The Anasazi used to dump their trash much like many of […]
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It’s time for the West to speak up
Howard Dean, former Democratic presidential candidate and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, traveled to Montana a few days ago to speak to the Western Democratic Caucus. He found Western Democrats heartened by their recent electoral gains, especially in Colorado and Montana, and he asked them to bring that Western energy to bear […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
I say: Good riddance to bad billboards
For four years in the 1980s, I lived in Vermont, and then left it for the West after tiring of the state’s busybody politics. But I certainly admired one aspect of life in the bucolic yet politically correct Green Mountain State: No billboards. Back in 1968, the Vermont Legislature passed a law banning billboards. Since […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The brief but wonderful return of Cathedral in the Desert
It looked almost exactly like Phil Hyde’s photograph taken in 1964, a year after Glen Canyon Dam began backing up the Colorado River in a process that would take seven years. Hyde’s photo revealed a stunning waterfall in a giant amphitheater with a narrow, almost slot-like opening at the top, perfectly named “Cathedral in the […]
Posted inWotr
Real estate lingo for the New Westerner
I’m a rancher, so almost every day some realtor explains how much money I could make if I sold the ranch. Developers are subdividing pastures nearby, and soon, it’s true, I may not be able to afford ranching. So, I’m studying up on the new real estate lingo and — in typical friendly Western fashion […]
Posted inWotr
An organic label for milk is getting watered down
The happy cow on the label of Horizon organic milk is like a stop sign for consumers: Your quest for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton assures us that Horizon milk is from certified organic farms, where clean-living cows “make milk the natural way, with access to plenty of fresh air, clean […]
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What it was like in prison in Riverton, Wyoming
My parents have been spending time in the slammer. They are both approaching 80, are upstanding citizens, but in any given month, they might average two weekends in the joint. A while back, I decided to join them. That particular weekend they were at the Honor Farm in Riverton, Wyo. They specialize in Wyoming institutions […]
Posted inWotr
Water pounds through our towns and our dreams
The water in the mountains has decided that enough is enough: It’s time to come down. And down it has come, in a swell of white, tumbling magnificence the likes of which I haven’t seen around here in my 28 years in the West. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of flood that is washing through our […]
Posted inWotr
Stars in our eyes
Recently, at mid-afternoon on a rainy day, I looked up at the cloud-burdened sky and missed the stars, truly missed them. I felt the kind of wistful pangs that you might when you remember a long-gone but beloved grandparent, or a teenage sweetheart who misunderstood you long ago. I knew they were up there — […]
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Can billionaire philanthropy save the earth?
A few days ago, I was commiserating with a friend about the sad state of environmental affairs. We were talking about the infamous “death of environmentalism” paper and its call for the environmental movement to connect more to issues involving social justice. My opinion, I told my friend, is that it’s not environmentalism that’s dead. […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Ego gates get my goat — and that’s just the beginning
So my neighbor finally got a ranchette. Whether it’s five acres or 40, the next step is apparently the perfect entrance gate. Rancheteers have made these huge gates the latest symbol of affluence in the West. They boast uprights bigger than my house, flanked by imported decorative boulders. The crossbar seems sometimes to be a […]
Posted inWotr
Energy Bill rewards the fattest cats
As you may have noticed, gasoline costs more than of yore. Some basic economics: Gasoline is a manufactured good. Its price depends in part on the price of its basic commodity, in this case crude oil. It costs more than of yore, as does natural gas. More basic economics: The price of crude oil and […]