Writers on the Range

Cheerful epidemic strikes region.

It’s time to take radical action against climate change

There’s an old saying in Colorado’s ski country regarding weather reports and predictions of snowfall: “I’ll believe it when I’m shoveling it.” That’s what I was thinking to myself several weeks ago as I sat on my couch, sifting through some ideas for a weekly opinion column in the western Colorado-based Summit Daily News, where […]

It was dark, and about 30 of us were grouped around a campfire in a forest in the Pacific Northwest, when Tim, the owl expert, said, “I think it would be really weird to be a ‘sparred’ owl.” A sparred owl is what you get when a spotted owl mates with a barred owl. I […]

Just a year ago, I turned 65, had a modest Social Security income and half-time job with the nonprofit I’d founded 20 years earlier, and I was divorced — amicably — after a 34-year marriage. Home was a small house in the small town of Joseph in northeast Oregon, but I was making frequent trips […]

I try to do my best, I really do, but it seems harder than it should be. I’m in the grocery store, where the shiny plastic packaging stretches as far as the eye can see, and parents and kids seem larger than life – in fact, some seem the size of NFL linemen. With my […]

I live in the flat, scruffy desert of southwestern New Mexico, a half-hour from the Mexican border town of Palomas. There’s been a war going on in Palomas for over two years. A dusty town of 5,000 people, Palomas has more murders per capita than any city in the world, some say. I talked recently […]

It’s been a good year for wilderness. In March, the Omnibus Lands Bill designated over 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states. In September, President Obama declared a month-long celebration of the Wilderness Act, and this November, the United States, Canada and Mexico signed the world’s first international agreement on wilderness conservation. Perhaps because […]

One morning, my wife told me she’d seen a rattlesnake on a knoll behind our house in southern Utah. Nestled under a bush just 25 yards up the hill, it didn’t look aggressive. It lay circled in the shade as if taking a nap, its diamond pattern strangely enhancing the scene. We decided to leave […]

The farm equipment graveyard — a row of horse-drawn plows and mowers overgrown with prairie grass — is a common sight at the edge of rural fields in the West. Collapsing hay wagons, disemboweled tractor hulls and other antique machinery sinking into the earth tell a story of farming, past and future. Each item was […]

This cold-weather week, I’ve seen two pickup trucks parked in town, each stacked high with firewood. This may be a sure sign of the coming of winter in rural towns across the nation, but it’s become an uncommon sight in downtown Telluride these days. When I moved to Telluride in the 1980s, almost every house […]

Environmentalists are “green Nazis … pure, unadulterated satanic evil … vile vomit.” Does that hateful tone sound familiar? Radio and TV commentary tycoons — Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk — often use that kind of language against their targets, including not only environmentalists, but also liberals and gay people. Their broadcasts encourage destructive […]

It’s no secret that the traditions of hunting and fishing are dying. Academics have identified it, anti-hunters have rejoiced in it and families are living it. People who cherish hunting are trying hard to stem the decline. These days, lots of kids are growing up in a single-parent home, often headed by a mom who […]

Supbar terrain and snow spell death for schussing

Say goodbye to summer, and welcome the fall