PAONIA, COLORADO — In a house stuffed with green-building books, astrologic calendars and a world-spanning array of wooden drums, a basement office is one of the few signs that Hal Brill’s life has headed squarely into the world of high finance and asset management. “I’m definitely one of the more unlikely candidates to be an […]
Profiles
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
Wrecking homes for open space: Philanthropist Jennifer Speers
MOAB, UTAH — Call her a home-wrecker, and Jennifer Speers just laughs. But the title fits. In February 2003, Speers purchased the “Rio Colorado at Dewey,” a 115-acre commercial development near Moab, that included a new adobe home with spectacular views of the Colorado River. Just a few months later, she leveled the $600,000 house. […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Connecting Indian Country: Talk-show host Harlan McKosato
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO — Up on the third floor of Oñate Hall, the broadcast center for radio station KUNM-FM at the University of New Mexico, a pungent, distinctive aroma hangs in the midday air. It seems out of place in the halls of what looks like a nondescript college office building. “Did you smell the […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Persistence frees the Mokelumne: River advocate Pete Bell
California’s Mokelumne River flows from a high mountain lake in the Sierra Nevada, plunging down in a series of cascading waterfalls through a steep forest canyon in the foothills. Dams and diversions have reduced the once free-flowing river to a relative trickle. But that is changing, thanks in large part to the efforts of a […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Creating immigrant leaders: Labor organizer Ramon Ramirez
WOODBURN, OREGON — Disoriented, poor and unorganized, Latino immigrant farmworkers traditionally have not had a lot of political power in the United States. They often do the low-wage jobs American-born workers won’t do, working in an industry that largely precludes its workers from bargaining through unions. And because many immigrant farmworkers have entered the United […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Solving the puzzle of chronic wasting disease: Veterinarian Beth Williams
LARAMIE, WYOMING — Stacks of histopathologies — gray folders filled with the tissue of dead animals — litter the floor of Dr. Beth Williams’ office at the University of Wyoming’s State Veterinary Lab in Laramie. Crowded into the office with a computer and a microscope table, they leave little room for Williams herself. The morbid […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Saving a sacred lake: Zuni activist Pablo Padilla
Pablo Padilla is lying low right now, but don’t expect him to remain quiet for long. The 29-year-old law student at the University of New Mexico and member of the Zuni Tribe was an instrumental player in his tribe’s recent victory against an Arizona energy company (HCN, 8/18/03: Follow-up). He’s now trying to be just […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Getting under the desert’s skin: Biologist Jayne Belnap
The scenery of southeastern Utah is hard to miss. Steep redrock canyons plunge into long and lazy riverbends; wind-sculpted stone arches glow pinkly at sunset. But when biologist Jayne Belnap hikes through this famous landscape, it’s not the show-stopping rocks that draw her attention. It’s the algae. “This is not a rocky landscape, this is […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Want to protect a river? Get out and swim it
On the whole, professional conservationists are an office-bound bunch. They spend their days toiling to protect wild rivers and clean air, but don’t get outside often enough; the habitat these folks frequent is behind a desk, near a pile of papers. Enter Christopher Swain. A former acupuncturist and Iron Man competitor, Swain moved to Portland, […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
A native son of Oregon writes of heartbreak, determination
As its subtitle suggests, David James Duncan’s latest book of essays, My Story as Told by Water, has a little bit of everything: “confessions, Druidic rants, bird-watchings, visions, prayers.” At its core, the book is about how this native son of Oregon — author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K — […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
‘Horse Whisperer’ wins a round in natural gas fight
A recent ruling in a Wyoming district court signals a win for ranchers who say energy companies are running roughshod over their land. The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit from Mary Brannaman and her husband, Buck, the horse trainer who inspired the novel and film The Horse Whisperer (HCN, 11/5/01: Wyoming’s Powder Keg). […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Author says we’ll ‘match the scenery’ whether we like it or not
Wallace Stegner citations are a commonplace in High Country News. Stegner, a writer and historian, is our bard (if we have one), and perhaps most familiar to HCN readers for his call to Westerners to create a “society to match the scenery.” Now comes a Colorado writer who quietly turns this idea on its head. […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Conversation with a cowboy conservationist
Kick a sagebrush and you’ll find one jackrabbit and two cowboy poets, or so the saying goes nowadays. In the last 20 years, the rhymes that were once shared around a campfire under a lonesome moon have attracted a national spotlight. There are anthologies of cowboy poetry, coffeehouse performances, and an annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Sherman Alexie in his own words
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “The big show with braids.” On Hollywood: “Hollywood is the most liberal community in the history of the world. And yet the way they conduct their business is Machiavellian. Donald Trump and the Enron executives would fit […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
A Great Old Broad
Celia Hunter, legendary wilderness advocate, died peacefully at home in her log cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Dec. 1. She was 82. Though Celia’s work has been lauded by the nation’s major environmental groups, nothing speaks more about her life than how she lived her last days on earth. Last summer, Celia donned a drysuit […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Joy Belsky: ‘She made us better’
Joy Belsky, a Portland, Ore., range ecologist who rose to national prominence while crusading to boot cattle off public lands in the West, died Dec. 15 of breast cancer. She was 56. Belsky took on ranchers who, she argued, were letting their cattle trample native plants and wildlife, public agencies that she believed discriminated against […]
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
‘Scholarship, sainthood and simplicity’
Frank C. Craighead Jr., a world-renowned grizzly bear researcher, environmentalist and author, died in Jackson, Wyo., on Oct 21. He was 85. Craighead and his brother, John, who lives in Missoula, Mont., were best known for their pioneering research on the great bear, Ursus arctos horribilis. Among the first people to track wildlife using radio […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Remembering Mike
One of the country’s statesmen died Oct. 5, 2001, at the age of 98. Mike Mansfield grew up in Great Falls, Mont., and worked in the copper mines of Butte before launching one of the longest and most distinguished political careers in history. It was punctuated by his staunch opposition to the Vietnam War. Below […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
The Rio Grande’s unsung diplomat
River activist ‘Uncle Steve’ Harris makes waves rather than headlines
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Integrity and passion
W.L. Minckley, who stands out in Craig Childs’ lead essay as a three-dimensional figure of integrity and passion, died June 22 in a Mesa, Ariz., hospital from complications associated with treatment for cancer. Dr. Minckley, 65, had mentored graduate students at Arizona State University in Tempe from 1963 until his illness in June. While he […]