Writers on the Range

The mustard-colored water flowing down the Animas River in southwestern Colorado is a painful reminder of the lengthy gestation time of environmental disasters. The ugly surge was unleashed last week by an EPA contractor, which unwittingly breached a dike that allowed contaminated water from the Gold King Mine to flood into Cement Creek, a tributary […]

When my daughter was a high school senior, she asked if she could keep chickens in the backyard. My first thought was, “Great. Another thing to take care of.” But I have always been stingy about letting her keep animals, so I agreed. Besides, I figured we could use the eggs. My daughter built a […]

Nine years ago, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company embarked on a campaign to improve its freight service in and out of the coal-rich Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming.

Times were good, the coal industry was booming, and BNSF was getting political pressure to beef up its Powder River Basin infrastructure to help meet […]

When President Obama announced central Nevada’s new Basin and Range National Monument July 10, the White House described the area as “one the most undisturbed corners of the broader Great Basin region.” That’s ironic, given that the monument includes a parcel of private ranchland where, for more than four decades, a man named Michael Heizer has […]

So, the biology class is called “Life on Earth.” Hilarious, right? Let’s learn about all the extinct animals! After weeks with the boring creepy-crawlies (they’re not extinct! You should see the mosquitoes here, big as birds), we finally got to a great white shark and a bluefin tuna. Did you know the last tuna sold […]

Just as day turned to dusk May 16, 2015, Dean Potter jumped off Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. Graham Hunt jumped right behind him. Both were well-known BASE jumpers. (“BASE” is an acronym that stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans, i.e., bridges, and Earth, meaning cliffs.) Both men wore wingsuits to help them steer as […]

Consider this scenario: One man is hell-bent on drilling for oil through the floor of a church that has stood for generations. This church is part of the social fabric that ties one generation to the next. Thousands of baptisms, marriages and funerals have occurred there. It teaches charity, forgiveness and other values that bind […]

The energy world we live in now was unthinkable just a decade ago. Policy back then was shaped by talk of peak oil and fears of increased reliance on Russian or Middle East imports. President Bush used his State of the Union address that year to push Congress for legislation to reduce environmental oversight and […]

I could put it off no longer. The gear shed had long been an object of contention in my marriage. “You don’t use half this stuff,” my husband observed, more than once. “You need to go through it and make more room.” Defiantly, he rolled his fat-tired bike into the living room and left it […]

The boy’s name was Alejandro, and when I stepped off the bus in Oaxaca, Mexico, he handed me a mango, half of it peeled so I could both hold it and eat it on our walk up the mountain to his village. I was 16 and my Spanish was lousy, which is to say, this […]

Summer is here! This is the time when the great outdoors beckons, and we can’t wait to get out to the rivers of the American West to raft, fish, swim and just cool off. But unfortunately, the water we all enjoy has just become imperiled by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. Though the EPA’s […]

When I first set foot in the rambling, drafty, hunched-over house perched above Telluride, it never crossed my mind that I might live there one day. Ski boots and snowboard bindings lay scattered around the living room. Dogs roamed from room to room, and it was impossible to determine which ones belonged there and which […]

I lived on Padre Island, Texas, during my formative years. I knew the names of all the plants, animals — vertebrates and non — the weather and best fishing and surfing spots. I surfed, ate and lived from the sea. I served as an Air Force Munitions Specialist Staff Sergeant, with two deployments in service […]

I grew up in Oakland, California, and was blessed to live close to wide-open spaces and enjoy acres of land on my parent’s woodland ranch. It’s these experiences that inspired my desire to help people, especially fellow African-Americans, discover the outdoors. It’s also why I treasure the American concept of “wilderness,” a word that signifies […]

Arizona, once dubbed “the meth lab of democracy” by political comedian Jon Stewart, continues its sad ways. To wit, when unveiling his first “no-new-taxes” budget, ex-ice-cream salesman and new Republican Gov. Doug Ducey tried to sneak through a provision that would have taken money away from veterans’ programs for the living in order to pay […]