Writers on the Range

Homeowners in disaster-prone zones need to be self-sufficient

The Indian trust suit — and what it means about our government

Like most people who use email, I get an extraordinary amount of SPAM, plus a large volume of canned messages from both sides of the political spectrum, forwarded by well-meaning friends who think I will agree or who think I should agree with the e-mail’s premise. Most of these messages get a quick hit on […]

One thing I love about the West is that so many people know their elevations.  I doubt that many citizens of Atlanta take pride in their thousand-foot-high city.  But everyone knows that Denver is a mile high, and most of us are well aware of the elevation of whatever high pass we have to cross […]

In his book “Jaguars Ripped my Flesh,” Tim Cahill tells us that he “sits around at home reading wilderness survival books the way some people peruse seed catalogs or accounts of classic chess games.” As a seed-catalog peruser, I took offense at first at being lumped in with the chess nerds. But after giving it […]

Cimarron, a ranching town of 1,000 in New Mexico, says it does not want a marijuana store. Residents cite the seaside town of Arcata in California where the Arcata Eye says people have finally had it because over 1,000 homes there have turned into “grow houses.” Crime has spiked, newcomers are protecting their stash with […]

As an economist, it startles me when representatives of the business community ignore basic economic relationships such as supply and demand. Yet oil and gas interests have been doing exactly that recently. It is hard to believe that there is anyone in the country who does not know that we are in a deep recession. […]

The November elections came and went without the hoopla of a year ago, but voters in western Colorado quietly approved measures that could set the stage for a clean energy revolution.  Rural mountain communities in Gunnison, Eagle and Pitkin counties voted to support clean, homegrown energy and energy efficiency. These clean energy investments are a […]

“Biocides” was Rachel Carson’s term for pesticides that kill indiscriminately. They haven’t been much talked about since the banning of DDT and relatives in the 1970s – until now. As Pete Gober, who heads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s effort to save the black-footed ferret, America’s most endangered mammal, put it recently:  “The incredibly […]

Over Christmas break my family paddled the Rio Grande River along the border of Big Bend National Park in Texas. More than a week along, we stopped at a riverside hot springs to soak off a layer or two of grit. A man appeared, walking down the trail from a nearby road. He was short, […]

When it comes to political reform on the Navajo Nation, one should never, ever, expect anything to change fast. Recently, voters agreed to reduce membership on the Navajo Nation Council from an unwieldy 88 members to 24, while also giving the president line-item veto authority. The reforms were passed overwhelmingly — once again. The same […]