Another wolf made the news last month: SW266M received capital punishment in Wyoming for the crime of eating woolly domestic mammals. His “name” means he was the 266th male wolf captured and tagged in southwestern Montana. His record yielded the further information that he was born in May 2007 on the east side of the […]
Writers on the Range
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Stopping by apples in the land of condos
My chicken-filled backyard in Bozeman, Mont., butts up against a square block of condominiums. The green fence between us is like a Berlin wall, separating noisy, itinerant college kids from our more stable neighborhood of families. It separates the mostly paved, over-parked, garbage-strewn and under-aged drinking zone that police call “Bourbon Street” from our homes. […]
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Advice from the Loser School of Hunting
The less successful a hunter you are, the more practice you’re going to get, because failure means you have to go back out there again and again. If you bagged your beast early, then evidently you didn’t need any extra practice. Otherwise, consider yourself enrolled in the Loser School of Hunting. Many factors must come […]
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Mystery unsolved — and that’s a good thing
For almost a year, the world thought the final chapter had been written about the life — and death — of a young artist and poet who mysteriously disappeared in the Southwest’s canyon country 75 years ago. His name was Everett Ruess, and at age 20, he was already fed up with modern life, preferring […]
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Climate change threatens our livelihoods — and yours
In the summer of 2003, one of the most legendary and fearsome mountaineering routes in the world –– the North Face of the Eiger –– fell victim to climate change. An unusually warm summer melted much of the ice that makes this route in Switzerland passable. As temperatures continue to warm, this iconic passage may […]
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Confessions of an off-road outlaw
By God, it was my right. No one could tell me I couldn’t chop new roads through national forest land with my off-road vehicle and my chainsaw. I paid my taxes. This land belonged to me. If a few trees had to be cut and some makeshift roads had to be opened, well, too bad. […]
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On the road in lonely Wyoming
Here’s a typical Wyoming story: One night last week, I was heading down a lonely highway, driving the 100 miles from town to home. I had seen the dentist, bought cement so that we could repair our cattle-working pens, gone to the grocery store and checked on a friend who had just moved from her […]
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Phosphate mining: a toxic tradition
It’s a Stewart family tradition, passed down from generation to generation on their 880-acre ranch in southeast Idaho. A Stewart son escorts his unsuspecting girlfriend on horseback through a pine forest to a flat, treeless ridge the family calls the plateau. All the while, his family watches through binoculars from the living room, waiting for […]
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Polygamy tours? Why not?
Just spitting distance across the Utah border in Arizona, the very rural and remote Colorado City is home to rigid fundamentalists who think the Mormon Church sold out when it abandoned polygamy 119 years ago. The high walls surrounding houses with multiple front doors and “no trespassing” signs clearly signal “outsiders not welcome.” The dress […]
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Whose sovereignty is it?
In late September, Joe Shirley Jr., president of the Navajo Nation sent out a provocative press release charging that “environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty.” Shirley made his attack while joining northern Arizona’s Hopi tribal council in “unwelcoming” conservation groups from those tribes’ lands, which sprawl across portions of […]
Posted inOctober 26, 2009: The newest Westerners
Our national parks: Another idea
In 1912, James Bryce, the British ambassador to the United States, proclaimed that the national parks are “America’s best idea.” Others have called the parks “America’s best places.” But if the parks are our “best” places, what about all those other places where we live and work and go about our daily rounds? Don’t they […]
Posted inOctober 26, 2009: The newest Westerners
Socialism and the West
This region was built on government subsidies and aid
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Some people just don’t get it
I gave up driving years ago on a peaceful Sunday morning in downtown Ogden, Utah, when I was T-boned by a truck driven by a drunk driver who abandoned the scene. Our Volkswagen was totaled. My 9-year-old son was in the hospital for a week with a punctured spleen. My left femur was broken and […]
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The war between bicyclists and motorists
Most motorists courteously and safely share the roads with cyclists, but then there are all the obnoxious others, the ones who fill with rage when they see anybody on a bicycle on the road ahead. They not only think cyclists have no right to use public roadways, they also like to show their anger by […]
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Stubbornness and the art of riding a bicycle
“I ain’t gonna wear no stinkin’ helmet.” I bet you thought I was going to say a friend of mine said that. Wrong. I said it, and I meant it. Bike helmets are dorky. They make you look like one of those UFO creatures with the bulgy heads who mutilate cattle. No, it’s worse than […]
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Aldo Leopold might call it the new agrarianism
One hundred years ago, a great American conservationist began a job in the Southwest as a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. Over the course of an influential career, Aldo Leopold advocated a variety of conservation methods, including wilderness protection, sustainable agriculture, wildlife research, ecological restoration, environmental education, land health, erosion control and watershed management. […]
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Burning Man was better next year
My collection of silly buttons from the Burning Man festival in Nevada includes one that says, “Burning Man was better last year.” The irony, of course, is that this button is given out every year, and every year thousands of people keep coming back. If you’ve ever been part of an annual event that lasted […]
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Got your elk yet?
Got your elk yet? It’s a far more complex question than it appears. In one breath, it asks, “Are we friends?” “Do you approve of firearms?” “Do we share an ideology?” and, naturally, “Do you want to hear about me getting my elk?” Even more significantly, the question assumes that if you live in the […]
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Lament of a cat lady
Recently, my cousin called me with a problem. Her two grown daughters are sharing an apartment. One of them has a 3-year-old cat; the other is allergic to cats. It isn’t working out. The cat has to go. Naturally, the first impulse is to call me. I never intended to become a “cat lady.” In […]