Recently I was obligated to serve as a course official for a cross-country meet, which is a fancy way of saying that I got to spend a morning standing out in the drizzle on a golf course, waving young runners past. I was stationed at the end of a path that led through a grove […]
Wilderness
Posted inWotr
The roadless issue rambles on through the courts
President Bill Clinton sought to end the debate over 58 million acres of roadless national forests with a rule published in the last days of his administration. But because he issued his rule in the face of the outright anger of some Western governors and with little pretext of engaging his opponents, the roadless issue […]
Posted inJune 23, 2008: Peace on the Klamath
Solo journeys, life lessons
The nine essays in Mary Beath’s new book celebrate nature from the viewpoint of an “independent woman pursuing adventures that include self-exploration.” An avid hiker, the artist and award-winning poet moved to New Mexico from New York almost 20 years ago. Her title piece sums up this collection’s recurring theme: the risks and rewards of […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Words that mountains speak
In the 18th century, when the Romantics looked up at the mountains of Europe, instead of seeing what their predecessors saw – foreboding rocky obstacles to human advance – they saw sublime peaks. Rather than fear, they felt wonder and desire. In a swift shift of perception, they re-wrote European attitudes towards mountains, initiating the […]
Posted inApril 28, 2008: Pillaging the Past
Forces of nature
Amy Irvine, environmental activist, writer and former professional rock climber, sets her memoir, Trespass, in the stark geology of Utah’s red-rock wilderness. Following her father’s suicide, Irvine retreats from Salt Lake City to rural Utah, where she is confronted almost daily by divisive public land-use demands and ubiquitous Mormon missionaries, not to mention her tumultuous […]
Posted inArticles
Carpe Noctem
I pledge devotion to the stars of the majestic Milky Way Galaxy and to a dark night sky in which they shine; one cosmos, overhead, clearly visible, with liberty from light and dark skies for all. — Jack Troeger, Dark Sky Initiative In 2001, Florida developer and amateur astronomer Gene Turner came to southeastern Arizona […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
The granddaddy of all collaboration groups
One thing you quickly learn in the rural West is that ranchers come in all shapes and sizes. There are the fourth-generation ranchers hanging on by their toenails with overextended credit and the eternal hope that cattle prices will rebound, the drought will break, and most of their cows will be found on the mountain […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
The great wilderness compromise
What would Zahnie do?” I asked myself that question as I hiked into the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho. I’d come here to report on an ugly internecine fight among environmentalists over the fate of this would-be wilderness of rock and ice, high meadows, pine forests and alpine lakes. Both sides invoked the name […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Dottie Fox, one of the greatest old broads
It’s never pleasant to read the obituary of someone you’ve met several times and admired for more years than you can remember. But the several obituaries of wilderness advocate Dottie Fox of Aspen, 86, who died Sept. 11, glowed with admiration for her joie de vivre and effectiveness. As reported by the Rocky Mountain News, […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
One war that’s worth the fight
In Walking It Off, Doug Peacock covers a lot of ground. Having survived the Vietnam War as a Green Beret medic, Peacock writes of himself at age 27: “Wounded but dedicated, I was a committed whacko, a fanatic willing to go the distance at the drop of the hat, a warrior who didn’t believe in […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Craig’s excellent adaptive adventures
Name Craig Kennedy Age 33 Vocation Adaptive adventure-travel writer and accessibility consultant Home Base Steamboat Springs, Colorado Noted for Writing adventure-travel guides for disabled hikers, bikers, boaters, campers, paragliders … He says “(Accessibility) could always be happening faster. I’m just happy it’s happening at all. There are a lot of places we can go. ” […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Painting for progress
The call of the wilderness sounded more like a holler to Joan Hoffmann in 1963. At 13, already a headstrong artist and budding environmentalist, she was determined to go backpacking with the Sierra Club. Neither her urban family of Southern California golfers, nor the fact that she had to sew her own sleeping bag, could […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Snowy middle ground
Wilderness advocates and snowmobilers come to terms in Montana
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Bears and bull trout may block mine
A controversial silver and copper mine that would have tunneled under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area may have just been shafted. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled on March 28 that construction of the Rock Creek Mine on the edge of the northwestern Montana wilderness area would further jeopardize threatened populations of grizzly bear and […]
Posted inWotr
The BLM wields fork and spatula over the West’s wildlands
To my jaundiced and hungry eye, the federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages oil and gas development on public lands in the West, is looking more and more like a McDonald’s franchise. I first noticed it last January during a trip to Denver. At the McDonald’s in Glenwood Springs, Colo., the sign under the […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
Freewheeling wilderness proposal irks purists
Oregon bill would allow mountain bikers and chain saws in ‘wilderness’
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
American — and proud of it
Until I traveled to Holland recently, I didn’t know how irreversibly American I am. Perhaps I’m not precisely a patriot — the word comes from the Latin for father — but I’m certainly one deeply identified with my native land. In Amsterdam, people eyed me with pity, suspicion or loathing as soon as I opened […]
Posted inWotr
American — and proud of it
Until I traveled to Holland recently, I didn’t know how irreversibly American I am, perhaps not precisely a patriot — the word comes from the Latin for father — but certainly one deeply identified with my native land. In Amsterdam, people eyed me with pity, suspicion or loathing as soon as I opened my mouth […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
A water-and-wilderness bill kicks up dust in Nevada
Critics say an economic development initiative could suck desert springs and rural counties dry
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Mountain bikers go wild
OREGON Environmentalists hoping to create a 37,000-acre Badlands Wilderness Area about 20 miles east of Bend, Ore., got a tremendous boost in February, when the local mountain bike group endorsed the proposal. Because bicycles are banned from wilderness areas, many mountain bikers are lukewarm, at best, about proposals to create more wilderness. But the biker-run […]