Letter to the editor

In response to “High and Dry” (March 2021), I agree, our water crisis in the West is terrifying.  However, to me, what’s truly terrifying, is that we’ve known this for decades. HCN does a wonderful job of reporting on the crisis, yet we never change. We continue to use far too much water, mainly because we are […]

Stories can make you feel sadness, frustration, exhilaration. Leah Sottile’s “Did James Plymell Need to Die?” made me angrier than I can remember feeling after reading any story. The graphic showing Plymell’s officer contacts reveals 47 incidents from 2012 to 2019. And the officers involved in the Taser attack claimed they did not know Plymell? […]

I have read Alex Trimble Young’s review of  Let Me Tell You What I Mean twice now  (“Finding meaning on Joan Didion’s frontier,” February 2021) and cannot find any relevance to the usual subject matter of High Country News, which in itself has diverged so much from the original news information of the West. Thanks […]

I write in appreciation of Jessica Kutz’s piece about the end of the Navajo Generating Station and the Navajo Nation’s struggle for control of its energy (“Life After Coal,” February 2021). I really enjoyed the calm, in-depth exploration of the whole story. It has strong resonances here in Australia, where Indigenous peoples have nothing like […]

Jane Hu’s article about the cowardly attack on her enraged me (“The long Western legacy of violence against Asian Americans,” hcn.org, 3/5/21). I was a teenager growing up in Southern California during World War II, but was unaware of the anti-Japanese American feelings, probably because my parents were able to separate our fellow citizens from […]

Thirteen years ago, I was fortunate enough to live and work with my spouse in a remote region of Nevada near the Ruby Mountains. I’m not sure I saw a single person besides my partner during the entire field season. I have yet to return to this spot and now, after reading your recent article […]

Just wanted to commend Leah Sottile and HCN for an excellent article, “Did James Plymell Need to Die?” (March 2021). I worked at the County Alcohol and Drug program in Albany, Oregon, years ago, and it seems the same difficulties in service delivery are still at play. Issues of homelessness and chemical dependency are complicated […]

I wanted to thank you for the February issue “End of the Line.” I grew up in Billings, Montana; saw Colstrip more times than a teenager should; read the Global 200 Report to the President shortly after it came out; and hiked Canyonlands in the smog from the Four Corners plants. I’ve been a rabid […]

As someone who lives in a city that depends on Colorado River water for its residential water supply, I worry about the trends of increasing demand and decreasing supply. I was disappointed, though, to see the article “High and dry” (March 2021) close with a warning that “people need to ditch way more lawns.” To […]

The analysis in the article about Western roots of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was excellent (“A siege with Western roots and consequences,” February 2021). Resistance to public-land takeovers is now going on in Washington County, Idaho, where three county ordinances that place restrictions on federal lands may be repealed because a new […]

The excellent February 2021 “End of the Line” issue hit home in several ways today as I read Jessica Kutz’s “Life After Coal.” I was halfway through the article when the outbound (read: filled) Union Pacific coal train from the West Elk Mine, east of Paonia, passed only 160 feet from our home. Nothing new, […]

As a long-time HCN subscriber (going back to the tabloid format in the 1980s), I’d like to thank Maya L. Kapoor for her excellent reporting in general, and for “The next mining boom” (March 2021), in particular. I was not aware of this mining proposal, but I have some personal connections to the Thacker Pass […]

The color photographs in the “End of the Line” issue helped me link the stories:  the sun shining on the site of a future hospital, bison grazing in the soon-to-be-tribal Bison Range, and alpacas grazing in Colorado ranchland under the eyes of LGBTQ+ herders. Smokestacks of the Navajo Generating Station come tumbling down in a giant […]

Thank you for High Country News in general and especially your recent article on the winds of change (“Pro-Trump riots won’t stop the winds of political change blowing in the West,” 1/11/21, web-only). As an Idaho Democrat, it is very helpful to hear this right now. I hope some of those winds blow this way, […]

Kudos on Nick Bowlin’s well-written, level-headed, even-handed article (“Second Citizens,” January 2021). As a Colorado native who has lived in the Gunnison Valley for over 27 years, I have paid close attention to the delicate balance between classes, lifestyles and valued labor input, and the efforts to keep this valley viable economically while also welcoming both […]

The January issue caught my attention, touching on issues with historical and current causes in my areas of interest. The best was the essay by Kimberly Myra Mitchell (“Through wildland firefighting, finding a space to heal”).  I won’t try to put into words the emotions I felt as I finished reading it! I cried. Tommy […]

I am writing to thank you for Eric Siegel’s piece about the Tenacious Unicorn transgender alpaca farm. As an East Coast city-dweller, I am surely not the target audience, but it definitely struck close to home. I grew up in a small town in the country but left because I couldn’t see a future there as […]

I’m a recent subscriber, and while I love the magazine generally, I have to express special admiration for Eric Siegel and Luna Anna Archey’s “Queers, alpacas and guns.” It often seems there is a consensus that certain communities can only find homes in either our urban or our rural spaces, but not both. This has never actually been true, and articles […]

The problems revealed in your interview with Jackie Fielder (“Is it time to decolonize the housing market?” February 2021) are as real as they have been for the history of our nation. The pandemic and the renter problems it has caused and magnified are huge and absolutely impossible to ignore. If we don’t answer the challenge and […]

Jessica Kutz’s article about coal on the Diné and Hopi lands was both heartbreaking and uplifting (“Life After Coal,” February 2021).  What a perfect place, generally and geographically, for the new Biden administration to walk its talk about supporting Indigenous nations while addressing climate change by fully enabling, with federal funds, the transition to carbon-neutral […]