Every journalist is biased. Scribes-for-hire have opinions, just like anybody else. However most readers expect some approximation of fairness and balance. The reporter’s job is to lock his personal views in a cage until press time. This professional obligation was very much on my mind last winter when I wrote “The Snow War,” a summary […]
Recreation
Posted inGoat
Beyond adventure porn
Adventure sport films can be a lot like pornography. Claiming little-to-no real artistic merit, they are produced explicitly for the excitement of the viewer and the ego-gratification of the performers. They have predictable soundtracks. They provide the chance for adrenaline junkies to sit, slack-jawed, and live vicariously through someone else’s physical abandon. Other adventure sport films […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
A conflict of values
Yellowstone and the Snowmobile: Locking Horns over National Park UseMichael J. Yochim328 pages, hardcover: $34.95.University Press of Kansas, 2009. Even as another winter recedes, Mike Yochim’s new book on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park will remain in season. It’s an instant classic — the first comprehensive examination of a notorious nationwide controversy, packed with facts […]
Posted inGoat
Despite vandalism, road stays closed
Back in mid-March, I wrote about a wonderful development on one of my favorite local dog-walking routes. The federal Bureau of Land Management had blocked motor vehicles from this half-mile stretch of old bad road along the Arkansas River just east of Salida. I predicted that the closure sign would get knocked down, the blocking […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Fishing for solace
Yellowstone Autumn: A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous LandW.D. Wetherell166 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2009. An engaging blend of history lesson, fly-fishing essay and philosophical treatise, Yellowstone Autumn describes a veteran writer’s three weeks of solitude in Yellowstone National Park. Walter Wetherell makes the trip from New England to commemorate his 55th […]
Posted inGoat
Thank you, BLM
Our dog Bodie, a collie-shepherd rez-mutt mix, may make it to his fifth birthday in October. Or maybe not. He’s a car-chasing idiot and nothing we’ve tried, including a shock collar with five settings that range from tickle to Ted Bundy, has prevented him from racing off after anything on wheels. We all need some […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Of flotsam and jetsam
As poetry students at a California university, my friend Merie and I walked to class along the beach. We often paused to examine dead seagulls, whose glazed eyes and tar-matted feathers we described in our would-be avant-garde verse. Somehow we never questioned where the birds came from or even why they were dead. Twenty years […]
Posted inGoat
TBD stands for…
…Texas Billionaire Developer. Ray Ring’s January essay told the tale of one Texas billionaire you shouldn’t trust. Well, here’s another to watch out for. His name is Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, and he might try to develop a place that’s near and dear to you! McCombs is the founder of one of the world’s largest […]
Posted inWotr
Out of the nest and into a tent
I don’t have a house. It wasn’t lost to foreclosure or auctioned by the bank; I have simply never owned one. As a recent college graduate, I am just now learning to pay rent, utilities and my gym membership every month, while trying to find a job that will cover my medical expenses if I […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Political guns
Wyoming calls the shots on a pass in Yellowstone National Park
Posted inWotr
Thinking green in the midst of winter
Gardening season starts when you open your first seed catalog in the dead of winter, and it doesn’t end until you’ve dug up the last carrot, plucked the final Brussels sprout or eaten your last pickled pepper of the season. The rewards of gardening begin the minute you open that catalog — long before you […]
Posted inWotr
A tale of heartbreakin’ and asskickin’
He loved Silas. Then she kicked the tar out of him.
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Methow Homecoming
Whenever I have few days to spare, I like to toss a sleeping bag and a fly rod and a few books into the back seat of my car and drive east, toward the mountains. It takes some time to shake free of the gravity of Seattle’s traffic, but once the strip malls start to […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Night: not just for astronomers
Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the DarkEdited by Paul Bogard208 pages, softcover: $21.95.University of Nevada Press, 2008. Many of us in the rural West still get to enjoy dark skies and bright stars, but in urban areas around the world, night is not as black as it once was. Paul Bogard has […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Outdoor slacking still takes work
Back-of-the-beyond recreation was recently celebrated by a magazine called InsideOutside in its 10-year anniversary issue. The southwestern Colorado publication featured dozens of grassroots writers who shared stories about how they worked as little as possible in order to ski, snowboard, hike, fish, hunt, bike, climb or otherwise hang out. But as Luke Auld-Thomas recalled, living […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A new definition of pluck
A woman in Prescott, Ariz., deserves a prize for pluck: She ran a mile with a fox firmly fastened to her arm. The fox had run out and bitten the jogger in the foot, reports the Associated Press, and when the woman grabbed it by the neck, it squirmed and bit her arm. Wanting the […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
An unlikely Shangri-la
Little room is left for new development at the West’s established resort towns, so entrepreneurs are turning second-tier ski hills into private enclaves for the jet set. But will the new resorts fly?
Posted inWotr
Off-roaders drive closer to the Grand Canyon
Part of the pride in putting on the iconic flat hat and the green and grey National Park Service uniform is knowing you work for an organization that tries to protect some of the most beautiful and historic places in the world. After serving the National Park Service for 32 years — the last nine […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Got a license for those antlers?
As with all issues related to the marketing of wild animal products, horn hunting needs regulation as strict and enforceable as anything on the books for any hunting (HCN, 6/23/08). Whenever the convergence of wildlife and man create a market for wildlife products, greed inevitably takes hold, and what was a pastime turns into a […]
Posted inGoat
Utah fishermen no longer required to levitate
In Utah, as in many states, the public has a right to use the water in rivers for recreation. But the land underneath the state’s rivers is often privately owned. So what happens when someone touches the bottom? The question floated all the way to the Utah Supreme Court thanks to Kevin and Jodi Conatser, […]