There isn’t much I can praise about the Bush administration’s approach to Western resource issues. But its instincts on firefighting policy are just about right. If it can fill in its knee-jerk act of cutting the budget with a sound, long-term policy, it could lead the West out of a quagmire that has been deepening […]
Writers on the Range
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We need a shoe to drop on climate change
In 1999, Hurricane Mitch, which had lost most of its kick by the time it reached Honduras, still killed more than 10,000 people as a result of intense flooding, making it the biggest storm-related disaster in Central American history. A year later, 25,000 people died in Venezuelan rainstorms, the greatest such disaster in South America, […]
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Everybody’s a greenie now
Suddenly, everybody’s green: developers, who believe a golf course pond is good for wildlife, ski resort managers, who want to use recycled water to make artificial snow, absentee owners, who want to cut everything in sight in the name of fire prevention, though they spend a weekend a year in their Southwest trophy homes. Or […]
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Wyoming lives uneasily with big game and big equipment
As meat lockers go, this corner of northwestern Wyoming is one of the prettiest on earth. Behind me, as I sit on this sage-covered bluff, is a great horseshoe of snow-dusted peaks: the Wind Rivers, the Gros Ventres, the Wyoming Range. Ahead lies the Upper Green River Valley: empty, vast and skeined with moving lines […]
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Water principles of the West begin with blaming California
Like the rest of the West, Colorado suffers from a multi-year drought. Drought, in case you’re curious, is one of those technical terms for what happens when you have enough water for 1 million residents, but not enough for 4 million, let alone the 10 million that the developers would like to see. What might […]
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Snowmobilers need to police their bad apples
A recent story in my local newspaper, headlined “Snowmobiler says riders endure hate” made me sit up straight. The article quoted Clark Collins of the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition, who said that snowmobilers have become victims of a campaign “akin to any other hate campaign against ethnic or religious groups.” Mr. Collins’ comments interest me because […]
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A report from Nebraska, deep in drought
We’re dying out here. Thirsty grasses crunch underfoot, ground into sand that hasn’t gathered sufficient moisture to generate seed for new growth. Dried water holes wear wrinkled remnants of last summer’s mud, and powdery alkali sifts in our ever-present wind. Topsoil flies skyward from fields that never should have seen a plow. It’s a familiar […]
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Lake Powell: Going, going, gone?
Who would have believed it? Water levels at Lake Powell have dropped to 50 percent for the first time since it filled in 1980. This draining is likely to continue to the point where the reservoir could vanish in the next three-to-four years. With snowpacks below 25 percent of normal, and continued warnings from the […]
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For wet or for dry
I was pushed out of New York 30 years ago. I couldn’t take the city as it was, and I couldn’t change to meet New York on its terms. We moved to Colorado, where a mountain loomed in our backyard. There were challenges, of course. A tiny coal-mining town is alien to someone raised on […]
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A lesson in aridity from Wallace Stegner
The wisest man and best writer the West has produced was born this week 94 years ago. He died in 1993, but left us a massive inheritance, including Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, Angle of Repose, Wolf Willow and From the Uneasy Chair. You can celebrate his Feb. 18 birthday by reading one of these books […]
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Of Western myth and jackalopes
“Are there jackalope around here?” the dude from Chicago asked. “Well, up here there’s too much elevation. They’re down on the sagebrush flats.” from Jackalope by Hilda Volk On Jan. 6, 2003, the West lost one of its great mythmakers, 82-year-old Douglas Herrick, of Casper, Wyo. No, Herrick wasn’t a writer, an artist, or a […]
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A lesson in engagement from Mary Page Stegner
Who do we believe? How do we behave? These are questions I hold as we watch President Bush make his case for war. Our Department of Homeland Security recently placed us on “high alert/code orange,” advised us to buy duct tape and cover our windows with plastic, then in the same breath told us not […]
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There are perils in cowboy diplomacy
If there is one thing President George Bush has figured out, it’s the importance of a 10-gallon hat to the American electorate. We adore the cowboy politician, no matter if it’s a pose. No one cares that he was educated at Phillips and Yale, is the grandson of a patrician senator from Connecticut, and summered […]
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Talking trash in a national monument
The December afternoon was dry and warm as I eased my car along a remote, rock-studded road on Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Cortez, Colo. I hadn’t seen another soul, so it was a surprise when I came around a curve at 5 mph and spied a Ford pickup parked facing me in […]
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Why the growth apologists are wrong
There are two arguments defending sprawl in the West that never seem to end, and I hope I can convince you that both are flawed. The first argument is that current residents must not try to “shut the door” on growth because they have no right to deny others what they enjoy. Forget for a […]
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Reporters need to play a better numbers game
For nearly a decade, proposals to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been at the heart of a political debate that touches on a wide range of potent issues: the moral and military implications of America’s dependence on foreign energy supplies, the proper balance between stewardship and exploitation of natural resources, […]
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Dreams for sale in Leadville, Colorado
The latest team of economic-development consultants to visit Leadville, Colo., recently presented its cure for this former mining town’s chronic economic ills. According to these experts, Leadville could create jobs, attract new businesses and people and rebuild its tax base by constructing an industrial park and expanding its local airport to handle 737-type jets. My […]
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Come in, Krispy Kreme
Idaho may have gained the dubious distinction of leading the West in regressive economic innovations. In the small town of Blackfoot, local police will soon show off the first of their three new police cruisers, all free to the taxpayer. Well, not exactly free. The patrol cars will cost a buck, and there is a […]
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The West’s cities should trump agriculture
On New Year’s Eve, the normally placid pumping station of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California at Lake Havasu felt tense. Armed security guards on the scene since 9/11 seemed grim, and tourists seeking bird-watching information were turned away. It recalled those old black-and-white pictures from when Owens Valley farmers blew up the original […]
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Lewis and Clark: Their footprints are gone
Not long ago I was assigned a story for an outdoor magazine. The idea was to find a small portion of the Lewis and Clark trail that remains relatively unchanged since their storied journey, to go there and immerse myself for a couple of days, following their footsteps, and report on the experience. No problem, […]