We ran into Paonia’s foremost scientist near our office a few evenings ago, where she was arguing with the cash machine at First National Bank. It beeped insistently at her, until she pushed the right combination of buttons and got it to disgorge her credit card and some cash. It was a rare sighting. Dr. […]
Profiles
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
The sublime delight of backtracking
It’s a Saturday midnight in late September, and David Bertelsen drives his battered car to the northern edge of Tucson, where the newest pseudo-adobes push hard against the Santa Catalina Mountains. He parks off the road, then begins walking up Finger Rock Canyon toward the summit of Mount Kimball. While many hikers try to avoid […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
A journalist, and much more
During my first semester in college, I wrote a paper for an environmental studies class in which I cited an article by “journalist Donella Meadows.” “A journalist, and much, much more,” my professor wrote in the margin, high praise from a man not given to excess. In recent years, Meadows was known to many as […]
Posted inFebruary 26, 2001: Return of the natives
How to draw a duck
Start with basic shapes: an oval for the body, a circle for the head, triangles for the bill and tail, a pole for the neck and a checkmark for the wing. Be sure to fill up most of your paper. Now, let’s round out the lines and add color. Then, draw in the duck’s habitat. […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Don Ewy is no timber beast
HCN subscriber Don Ewy is not your typical logger. A self-described environmentalist who has fought to limit development on public lands, Ewy has selectively logged small trees in North Park, Colorado’s only state forest, for the past 31 years. During that time his only employees have been his three children, and he says his daughter […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Paul Fritz left a unique legacy for the Park Service
We have reached a time when many conservation legends of the 20th century are disappearing. David Brower, the environmental giant, is a recent example. Now we’ve lost a lesser-known but very influential conservationist. Paul Fritz died quite suddenly on Christmas Eve from an undiagnosed brain tumor. He was 71. Fritz’s generation possesses a pure conviction […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Remembering an establishment revolutionary
John Sawhill wasn’t planning to stick around as president of The Nature Conservancy for much longer. As he told some associates, 10 years is a long time for one of those high-powered jobs, and as a 63-year-old diabetic, Sawhill was starting to think about a life with fewer plane trips and less tension. Maybe he […]
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
Floyd Dominy: An encounter with the West’s undaunted dam-builder
The name Floyd Dominy still rings loud in the West. As the head of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to1971, he built Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River and many more of the West’s dams, persuading Congress that the region needed to control the flow of rivers to generate electricity, control flooding and […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Farewell, Marc Reisner
In 1995, when we first asked Marc Reisner to write an article for High Country News, we didn’t know what to expect (HCN, 3/20/95: The fight for reclamation). Would the man who had changed how America thought about dams and reservoirs accept suggestions from an editor of a small paper in a small town in […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
He’s worried about weeds
UNCOMMON WESTERNERS Steve Monsen is a stocky, modest, self-contained man. Sixty-three years old, the son and grandson of Utah sheep ranchers, he works as a botanist for an organization that could not sound more unassuming if it tried – the USDA Shrub Lab in Provo, Utah. There, he wears short-sleeved shirts and jeans and cuts […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The beauty of self-reliance
Reader Portia Masterson walked into the office on a drizzly day in late March. It was an unusual moment for a couple of reasons: first, Portia usually sticks close to her home in Golden, near Denver; second, when she’s out and about, she’s usually riding her bike. Masterson owns Self-Propulsion Inc., a bike shop that […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Tom Watkins has left us, but his Western dream remains
Tom Watkins, another pathfinder, has passed from the campfire circle. “He was a strong, clear and important voice backed by a good old-fashioned Rooseveltian-Ickesian liberal heart,” says Bozeman writer David Quammen. “Now we’re all older and more alone again, as we knew we were when Ed Abbey died.” T.H. Watkins died last week from cancer […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
The last Celtic warlord lives in New Mexico
LA JOYA, N.M. – Jim Catron, lawyer and history enthusiast, is sitting in his living room discussing the noble and inconvenienced Celt. He isn’t talking about modern-day Scotland or Ireland, however, which to his mind have degenerated into Socialist republics populated by barfly poets. He’s talking about real, live Celts. He’s talking about cowboys. Catron […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Montana loses an environmental leader
WHITEFISH, Mont. – The works of great men last long beyond their passing, so it was fitting that the memorial service for Ben Cohen was in the community theater he helped found, at the base of the mountain he loved to ski. Friends, family, former and sitting Supreme Court justices, legislative colleagues, ski buddies, and […]
Posted inFebruary 14, 2000: Land of the fee
Hazel Wolf: She made it
Hazel Wolf died in Port Angeles, Wash., on Jan. 24 at the age of 101. Wolf, a lifelong activist for social justice and the environment (HCN, 11/9/98: Wise words from a veteran activist), once told author Studs Terkel that she wanted to live to see the year 2000. “Then I’m going,” she said. Wolf, a […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Not your average beauty queen
Note: This article appeared as a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rachel Benally, recent runner-up in the Southwest Regional Miss Navajo Pageant, Internet surfer, and unflinching slaughterer of her grandmother’s goats, lies in a reclining chair in her Aunt Sharon’s living room. She is recovering from last night’s TV-watching marathon. Wrapped in a comforter, […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
All you can eat at Pueblito del Paiz
Ted Medina slams down a pan of, oh God, what is it? A pig’s head. Snout, eyes and yellowish toasted ears bubbling like Picasso’s own dinner. “You name it, it’s all good!” says Ted, stocky, aproned and grinning from under a cap emblazoned Denver Fire Department. “Here, you nibble on this bit here. It’s good!” […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
A man to match our mountains
The West lost a legendary mountaineer and outdoor educator Oct. 6. Paul Petzoldt, founder of the National Outdoor Leadership Training School (NOLS) and Wilderness Education Association (WEA), died at 91. “Paul was a tireless visionary,” said Jeff Liddle, former director of WEA. “He was one of the first people to draw a line in the […]
Posted inAugust 30, 1999: Who's stopping sprawl?
Montana tribes bid their leader farewell
Michael T. “Mickey” Pablo, leader of Montana’s Indian nations, died at his ranch Aug. 5, at the age of 51. Postoperative complications from surgery on a knee he twisted while fishing have been reported as the likely cause of death. This humble man was highly respected for his wisdom and much loved for his kind […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Uphill for these Idahoans
Gene Bray and Irene Wright of Meridian, Idaho, stopped by the HCN office just before Election Day with an insiders’ view of Idaho politics. Bray is a board member of the Idaho Watersheds Project, well known in the state for its confrontational anti-grazing billboards. The 900-member group aims to give state grazing allotments a break […]