A public-lands art project begs the question
Writers on the Range
Posted inWotr
A wild area gets a reprieve
Lovers of wild open spaces in northwest Colorado recently received some long-awaited great news. The Bureau of Land Management’s Little Snake Field Office announced that it would close 77,000 acres of the magnificent Vermillion Basin to oil and gas development. The agency’s decision came as a result of a well-publicized public process. Nonetheless, Moffat County […]
Posted inWotr
The problem of Western water is not what you think
The dirty little secret about Western water is that water conservation is a hoax, or at best a waste of time. When we conserve water by using less, we don’t save it for the health of the watershed or put it aside in any way; we simply make it available for someone else to consume, […]
Posted inWotr
Live fee or die
We grumbled, but paid the nearly 50 percent fee increase for registering our motor vehicle in Colorado. And we also paid the registration fee for our camp trailer, which had nearly doubled. I felt as helpless as Jack in the Beanstalk, when he hid under a bucket listening to a giant stomp around shouting, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM.” […]
Posted inWotr
Love wilderness? Thank a veteran
Some of the environmental movement’s greatest heroes were also heroes of World War II
Posted inWotr
Some neighbors behave like boors
Every year, they break into hundreds of homes on the northwest shores of Lake Tahoe in California, and once inside, they leave destruction in their wake — not to mention piles of poop. Homeowners, frantic to protect their castles, employ elaborate schemes to thwart these powerful animals. They buy mechanical dogs that bark at anything […]
Posted inWotr
I liked it better when being born here was enough
If the 14th Amendment is repealed, how do we know we’re citizens at all?
Posted inWotr
Montanans close to Yellowstone better wake up
Paradise Valley, my husband often jokes, is heaven only for real estate agents. Opulent log “cabins” crowd the banks of the Yellowstone River, and working family ranches can be counted on fewer fingers every year. Yet these changes seem secondary to the common foundation of our lives: the rise and fall of the river, the […]
Posted inWotr
Notes from the underground: The secret life of mushrooms
Finding the first mushroom of the season is one of those “Eureka!” moments, so when I went out a few weeks ago for an initial survey of the national forest nearest me, I got pretty excited when I saw a crinkled white blob sitting on a nest of moss. “Wow, a new species on the […]
Posted inArticles
The harm of hallowed ground
Why do we fight over places where bad things happened?
Posted inWotr
EPA hearings can be so, like, high school
I recently attended an EPA hearing in Denver. I’m an environmental attorney who left my job to spend a year teaching in Italy, and now that I’m back in the United States, I’m relieved that this country has a rational system of environmental regulation. (Italy has great shoes and amazing cappuccino, but environmental regulation? Fuhgeddaboudit.) […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Righteous gluttony
In the produce section of the grocery store the other day, I saw apricots on sale for 99 cents a pound. They sat in a bin between grapes from Chile and cherries from the Flathead Valley of Montana. I don’t know where the apricots came from. I selected six and put them in the shopping […]
Posted inWotr
What have we learned a century after the Big Blowup?
A devastating wildfire leaves its marks on the West.
Posted inWotr
Slobs at Lake Powell foment a revolt
Each summer I do penance at Lake Powell for the environmental sins of its visitors. This summer was no exception as I volunteered to work on a houseboat called the Trash Tracker. Our job: picking up debris in 108-degree heat along 100 miles or so of the 1,900-mile shoreline. Our team found the usual amount […]
Posted inWotr
Medical marijuana trips up Montana
The state of Montana is frantically backpedaling six years after voters passed Medical Marijuana Initiative 148. (Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for it.) One of 10 states now with medical marijuana programs, Montana has fallen into what might be called pot-plant purgatory as it struggles with blurry laws and even blurrier implementation plans, stalling […]
Posted inWotr
An improbable candidate runs in Arizona
Early in May, John Dougherty, the best investigative reporter I’ve ever known, made the eyebrow-raising announcement that he would run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. To think that a writer stood any chance of knocking off John McCain was absurd, vainglorious … and … perfect, as a matter of poetic irony. Back in 1989, […]
Posted inWotr
We keep trying to stop the fires
Scorched earth and gnarled oaks lit up like flares. Blackened skies and the whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopters aloft as evacuees huddle in a local school. This quick-cut imagery can mean only one thing in California: The summer fire season has begun. Although the first major fires in the Southern California counties of Kern and Los Angeles […]
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When you bike in Boise, “STOP” means maybe
Boise, Idaho, one of the most liberal cities when it comes to bicycling, issued new rules of the road this June that basically said to both drivers and bicyclists: “Don’t be jerks.” The rules said drivers should make room for bikers as they pass them and not harass them, while cyclists should never ride recklessly […]
Posted inWotr
Remembering Trixie at county fair time
Memories of a Wyoming barrel racer and a moment in the winner’s circle