Don’t ask questions when you don’t know the answers: That’s the rule of thumb for trial lawyers who don’t want courtroom surprises. The Bush administration has a different rule of thumb when it comes to the science of storing nuclear waste: Ask as few questions as possible, and ignore answers you don’t like. Until January, […]
Essays
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Throwing out the dishwater
Once I lived in a one-room log cabin where I pumped my water from a well and heated it on a wood stove. When I was finished washing my dishes, I carried the dishpan outside and tossed the water on the nearby sagebrush. It seemed natural to me to return the water to the same […]
Posted inWotr
Revisiting “A River No More”
With the five-year drought worsening in the Colorado River Basin, two Western icons are emerging like sore thumbs aching for attention. One is the casino-hotels of Las Vegas, their resplendent fountains and the waterways on which gondolas float and water spurts in time to music. The other is the graceful arch of Glen Canyon Dam […]
Posted inWotr
Who can argue with equality for all salmon?
A new policy from the Bush administration on endangered Pacific salmon is startling in its simplicity and brilliance. The policy cuts through all the scientific mumbo-jumbo the press repeats and puts a finger on the basic problem: Salmon are endangered because there aren’t enough of them. If there were lots of salmon in the rivers, […]
Posted inWotr
A feminist liberal looks back at age 90
What’s it like to look back at 90, over most of a century? Been there, done that, enjoyed most of it. When I was born in 1914, women could not vote. But in my lifetime, a woman named Hillary Clinton may well become president. The year I was born, we were at war. When I […]
Posted inWotr
Permanent life support is no substitute for a native land
One rides the summer thermals; the other glides through rivers and streams like a pale torpedo. They could not be more dissimilar, this big buzzard and the silvery fish, yet they have a great deal in common: Both are icons of the environmental movement, and both challenge us to deepen our understanding of the relationship […]
Posted inWotr
Nature is not a club to bash people with
As a nature writer, I’m always interested when a columnist or politician claims to speak for “nature.” As a gay Portlander, I’m especially amazed to hear that “nature” has passed judgment against me. A religious activist here in Oregon keeps getting anti-gay initiatives on the ballot, but he hardly seems the paragon of nature. True, […]
Posted inWotr
Throwing out the dishwater
Once I lived in a one-room log cabin where I pumped my water from a well and heated it on a wood stove. When I was finished washing my dishes, I carried the dishpan outside and tossed the water on the nearby sagebrush. It seemed natural to me to return the water to the same […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Off-road vehicles are chewing up our public lands
It’s hard to find anybody these days who’d even try to argue that off-road vehicles don’t damage public lands throughout the West. The U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded in 1999 that “with an increase of off-highway vehicle traffic, i.e., motorcycles, four-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have observed […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Motorized recreation belongs in the backcountry
I’ve had motorcycles in some form, on-or-off-road, since I was 11 years old. That’s how I went fishing or just exploring, dodging logging trucks as I gallivanted through the Flathead National Forest in Montana. It was, and still is, great fun; try it sometime. That’s not to say that there aren’t problems with motorized recreation. […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
The common beauty of a spring day
In the afternoon, they drove side by side, three abreast in the big Ford, and watched the land. When they came to a small rise on a gravel road between nowhere and nowhere, they slowed to a stop and lowered the windows. They sat there like they might be sitting their horses, or at a […]
Posted inWotr
Blowing the whistle on Yucca Mountain in Nevada
Don’t ask questions when you don’t know the answers: That’s the rule of thumb for trial lawyers who don’t want courtroom surprises. The Bush administration has a different rule of thumb when it comes to the science of storing nuclear waste: Ask as few questions as possible and ignore answers you don’t like. Until last […]
Posted inWotr
Pink Floyd and the Great Salt Lake
The first time I stood on the shores of Great Salt Lake, I spotted something pink in the midst of what seemed like a bazillion different species of bobbing waterfowl. “Are there supposed to be pink flamingos in Utah?” I asked my biologist wife while looking through a pair of binoculars. “It’s plastic,” she said, […]
Posted inWotr
Wilderness is as American as apple pie
Wilderness, as the conservationist Aldo Leopold put it, is “the very stuff America is made of.” As pioneers settled our continent, their encounter with wilderness shaped our national character. Today, as Americans flock to our national forests, parks and other federal lands, many seek the wilderness, savoring its scenic splendors and a quiet that’s increasingly […]
Posted inWotr
Is Glen Canyon Dam pulling the plug on itself?
The engineers have had their say on the Colorado River, plumbing it with dams and diversions, so as the drought continues, we have no choice but to turn to poets. As A. R. Ammons wrote, “If anything will level with you, water will.” Glen Canyon Dam is currently leveling with us. The last time I […]
Posted inWotr
Forest Service duplicity stands out like a clearcut
Perhaps it was an act of intentional deception when the U.S. Forest Service used old photos of a Montana timber lease to make the case for logging in California to reduce fire danger. It’s just as likely, however, that laziness and bureaucratic ineptitude are to blame. Either way, the incident raises doubts about the agency’s […]
Posted inWotr
Wolves may be the education of us
Carter Niemeyer raises a shotgun to his shoulder and squeezes the trigger. An instant later, a rubber bullet bounces off a cardboard target. Niemeyer, Idaho’s coordinator for wolf recovery, is demonstrating non-lethal means of stopping wolves from preying on livestock. His audience is 200 Westerners at a meeting of the North American Interagency Wolf Conference. […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
The West’s mythmakers are now its newcomers
If you heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Look for the best — and keep it
This country has been built on the idea of running away, of escaping whatever makes us dissatisfied, uncomfortable or ill-at-ease. It’s a vision of entitlement that began with the founding of the Plymouth Colony four hundred years ago and caused us to spread ourselves resolutely across a continent. But more than a century after the […]
Posted inWotr
Ruminating on cows
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with cows. I’ve cursed them loudly when they turned my favorite mountain meadow into a cow-pie strewn wasteland. But then, they taste so good. I’ve inched my way through a herd of these stupid beasts on some highway as their cowboy masters moved them to summer range or to […]