A few of the recent letters to the editor (Ferm, 10/29/18, and Mumaw, 10/15/18) lamenting High Country News’ shifts toward coverage reflecting the issues faced by people in the region — not just white recreationists, ranchers or public-lands managers, but people, including immigrants, prisoners, queer people and others, who have often been overlooked in the […]
Letter to the editor
Posted inNovember 26, 2018: Follow the fish
Bighorns, big livestock herds
I wanted to commend Paige Blankenbuehler’s “The Big Threat to Bighorns” (HCN, 9/3/18). My friends and I do a big backpacking trip each year in Western wilderness areas. This year, we did a roughly 40-mile loop through the Flattops Wilderness in northwest Colorado. There were few people, but lots of cows. For roughly seven miles, […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2018: Follow the fish
Imperial Beach is not planning ‘managed retreat’
A recently published article (“Nature Retreat,” HCN, 10/15/18) asserts that Imperial Beach is addressing sea-level rise by planning massive moves away from the coastline, technically known as “managed retreat.” Contrary to the author’s assertion that little has been done to address this “slow-moving catastrophe,” many California coastal communities either recently have or will soon complete […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2018: Follow the fish
Rising seas will touch us all
I find it interesting that Peg Ferm of Monroe, Washington, writes in a letter to the editor that she thinks HCN’s article on Imperial Beach has no relevance for her (HCN, 10/15/18). Monroe, in Snohomish County, is located in a floodplain. There have been record (disaster-level) floods 18 times in the past 56 years in […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2018: Follow the fish
Thank you for asking hard questions
A recent letter to the editor laments the author’s belief that HCN “seems to have become just another ‘woke’ partisan magazine” (HCN, 10/15/18). I disagree and applaud HCN’s efforts to diversify your coverage and engage the less-than-savory realities of the American West — racism, extraction and destruction. Basic historical literacy reveals that genocide is the […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2018: Follow the fish
The other dangers of drilling
Oil and gas drilling poses significant future safety and environmental threats (“When Your Neighborhood Goes Boom!” HCN, 10/28/18). Wells are drilled and cased with steel and a layer of cement to prevent reservoir fluids from contaminating fresh water zones above the hydrocarbon reservoir and escaping to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, over time, the cement degrades, allowing […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2018: When your neighborhood goes BOOM
Abandoned places
Eileen Muza is one of us (“The Pioneer of Ruin,” HCN, 9/17/18). How many of us there are, I have no idea, but we can be found in condemned houses in cities and scattered across the countryside. I myself bought a piece of land adjoining the Chanchelulla Wilderness Area in California in 1987. I moved […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2018: When your neighborhood goes BOOM
Compassion keeps us human
If killing sentient beings is what keeps us human, then heaven help us (“Can hunting keep us human?” HCN, 10/15/18). Taking the life of another being is a regrettable act that is sometimes unavoidable in an imperfect world. However, there is something very dreadful about sanitizing the killing of our animal brethren with a convoluted […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2018: When your neighborhood goes BOOM
Going downhill
I agree with letter-writer John Mumaw (“Letters,” HCN, 10/15/18). HCN is really going downhill. I’m not ready to pull the subscription plug yet, but will cut back on donations. I think you should read, and re-read, daily if necessary, tributes to Ed Marston and Tom Bell. I don’t think either of those guys would have produced […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2018: Nature Retreat
Poignant and heartwarming
The last two feature stories (“What Are We Doing Here?” HCN, 8/6/18; “Where the West Is Moving — and Why,” HCN, 8/20/18) were especially objective, well-researched, poignant and heartwarming. I’m a somewhat elderly dude who has spent much of my life working with and enriched by a wide variety of diverse folks. Also, my church is […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2018: Nature Retreat
Resonant ruminations
I write in appreciation of Cally Carswell. She relates, with uncanny precision and brittle clarity, what it is to be a Westerner confronting the transformation of a beloved landscape. Her moving rumination, personal and profound, resonates on many levels. What a writer. Pat CassenMiramonte, California This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2018: Nature Retreat
‘Welcome to Hell’
Of our 46 summers in this part of southern Arizona, this one has been the worst (“What are we doing here?” HCN, 8/6/18). Gone are the rare days when the temperature hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit; now it’s seemingly endless weeks of 101, 103, even 106 degrees. Gone are the almost daily afternoon thunderstorms that left […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2018: Nature Retreat
Erosive grooves
Daniel Greenstadt’s article, “Mountain bikes shouldn’t be banned from wild landscapes” (Writers on the Range, 8/7/18), covered all the complaints of the wannabe wilderness bike riders without addressing the reason for their exclusion. Bikes, like all other wheeled vehicles, create a continuous groove in soft earth that serves to channel running water from rain or […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2018: Nature Retreat
Misguided new direction
After 30-plus years of constant reading, I have read my final issue of HCN (8/20/18). Brian Calvert’s recent editor’s notes and many of your more recent essays and writers’ opinions have left me saddened that what was once the finest journal on the issues affecting the Intermountain West seems to have become just another “woke” partisan magazine. […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2018: The Pioneer of Ruin
A fire deficit
Cally Carswell’s piece on life in the Southwest during aridification hit home with me, living as I do on the edge of the national forest near Santa Fe. The town sits at the base of two large national forest watersheds, both of which are heavily forested and choked with thickets of decadent trees born of […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2018: The Pioneer of Ruin
Human rehabilitation
“Restoration’s crisis in confidence” (HCN, 8/6/18) is a breath of fresh air. For far too long not only restoration’s promoters but also the media, foundations and government agencies that fund restoration projects have ignored the movement’s inherent contradictions, as well as its failure to deliver the “restoration” that has been promised. The problem, however, is […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2018: The Pioneer of Ruin
Shifting baselines
In “Restoration’s crisis of confidence” (HCN, 8/6/18), Maya Kapoor offers a thoughtful summary of current debates about the role of history in ecological restoration. Kapoor correctly describes how restorationists in the Southwest are moving away from their traditional focus on recovering historic baseline, or “reference,” conditions. Baselines have always been arbitrary and difficult to describe, […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2018: The Big Threat to Bighorns
Double down on success
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Gloria Dickie’s investigation (“Pay for Prey,” HCN, 7/23/18) into Oregon’s flawed wolf compensation program was welcome sunlight for a state that prides itself on its conservation ethic, but whose leaders have regrettably thrown wolves to the self-serving cattlemen. The […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2018: The Big Threat to Bighorns
Funds and fortitude
Cally Carswell’s article “What are we doing here?” in the Aug. 6 issue finally prompted me to write and say what I’ve been meaning to for some time. I can’t express how your publication touches and moves me. You are doing great work conveying the issues and your perspective on life in the West and […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2018: The Big Threat to Bighorns
Political theater
I really enjoyed Elliott Woods’ detailed and perceptive account of the July Donald Trump rally in Great Falls, Montana (“Montanans sightsee at a political circus,” HCN, 8/6/18). Great piece of reporting and analysis of the spirit behind these rallies, which are nothing if not repetitive, reductive and as habit-forming to our president as any opioid. […]