With fall in the air, I get this funny feeling that my homework isn’t done. It is true I was one of “those” students who tested patience, strained policies, broke rules and spent quality time on a chair in the hallway. I guess it was a natural aptitude, like yodeling. My parents urged me to […]
Writers on the Range
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Libby is not what you think
Libby, Mont., is a strange place. In the morning, the Cabinet Mountains sparkle, sporting new snow way up on the highest peaks. Folks arrive at work, open the front doors of their businesses and shout out “Mornin’” from across the street. Joggers pass by my house, dodging a stray doe that lingers after a night […]
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Place-based Forest Law
Questions and Opportunities Presented by Senator Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act
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Con: The cult of canning exposed
I hate this time of year. The leaves crackle underfoot like the bones of tiny children. And the light takes on a certain harshness that reminds me that, even as I grow closer to death, I have gotten no closer to realizing my dreams. Most of that is made tolerable with a dose of self-medication, […]
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Pro: Gold in a canning jar
All weekend it was food, food and more food. Digging beets, cooking beets, pickling beets, canning pears and peaches, blanching and skinning and freezing tomatoes. I made food until my back ached from standing slightly stooped, at the cutting board. I worked until the Ball jars stood in neat rows, each packed with product — […]
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Solace among the Crazies
I’ve always gone to the woods to calm or rejuvenate a spirit too easily rubbed raw by modern life. It shouldn’t have surprised me that this continued into chemotherapy. Cockeyed from surgery and early treatments for ovarian cancer, I thought I was too tired or too sick to feel alive in the woods, but found […]
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Wolves don’t belong on the firing line
The day before the first-ever official wolf hunt started in Idaho on Sept. 1, I stood on the sidewalk outside the county courthouse in Sandpoint, watching cars stream into town. As demonstrators on the sidewalk waved placards protesting the hunt, people in those vehicles reacted, and I focused on their hands, counting waves and thumbs-up […]
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Water and the National Parks
What you probably won’t learn about America’s best idea
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An ecological dilemma
It took the power of two flashlights to discover the source of the metallic screech that had been keeping us up nights. There, on the top of a telephone pole, sat a chunky juvenile great horned owl, plaintively calling for its parents to come feed it. But then my attention turned to the ground below […]
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Trapping is one tradition that ought to go
Every 20 years in Montana, more than a million bobcats, otters, wolverines, fishers, pine martens, otters, fox and other furry critters are exterminated from Montana’s forests and streams. Collateral damage includes the endangered Canada lynx, eagles and bears — not to mention all the dogs and cats unwittingly snared in traps. But a ballot initiative […]
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Conservationists wrong to oppose wolf hunt
Wolves have recovered, and it’s time for more rational management
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If you want to support wildlife, support ranching
An old friend of mine once said, “Sometimes Wyoming people would rather fight than win.” He’s right, of course. Even though there are only about 500,000 of us and our state does feel more like a small town with long streets, and even if I don’t know you — though there’s a good chance that […]
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Building brainpower on the cheap
It is not a nice day. The temperature is in the 50s and it is overcast and sprinkling. Through the ponderosa pines I can see that the mountains to the west are sprinkled with white. It will not be long before the rain turns into snow. If I pass the field exams, it will lead […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Book lust, Western-style
This fall looks to be one of the best in a while for new book releases. 2008 was a disastrous year for the publishing industry (as it was for many others), and publishers are now hoping for redemption with a strong fall lineup. Big-hit writers like Pat Conroy, J.M. Coetzee, Alice Munro, Wally Lamb, Richard […]
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We can help bees by cleaning up our act
Over the last four years, millions of the West’s workers have vanished. No, they’re not immigrants deported back to Mexico. Rather, they’re honeybees, and no one’s sure where they’ve gone. Scientists have been baffled by the large-scale disappearances, but now there’s finally some good news: Recent research has identified at least three of the major […]
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Is Obama’s goal of diversity trumping other goals?
Homer Lee Wilkes. Ignacia Moreno. Hilary Tompkins. Each is a member of a racial or ethnic minority, and each has been nominated by Barack Obama, our first black president, to a high position with power over environmental issues in the West. And each has faced skepticism from environmentalists. On May 5, Obama picked Wilkes to […]
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The Poudre: A river besieged by thirsty cities
Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River flows east out of Rocky Mountain National Park and through a canyon northwest of Fort Collins. Along the way, like any other Western river, it is diverted to water croplands and fill washing machines. It is a magnet for rafters and fisher-folk, and the people of Fort Collins regard it […]
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Whose Valles Caldera is it?
When people try to describe the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico, they sometimes compare it to Yellowstone National Park. Both offer stunning landscapes born of volcanic activity, and both are filled with wildlife. Though only 89,000 acres, Valles Caldera contains thousands of elk, vast grasslands, streams and mountains, all within the sunken remnant […]
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My home on a glacier
I spent the summers of 2007 and 2008 on a glacier in southeast Alaska, with 12 people and 200 huskies. I was working as a dogsled guide, and each morning I’d pull myself from my sleeping bag, slip on my raincoat and boots, and step from my tent into the pale light of the Northern […]
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Parks for the people — not profit
The fog that often hangs over Drakes Estero, an estuary in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, tends to obscure the natural features that make this small body of water one of the treasures of our national park system. This estuary, which has been designated a wetland of international importance, hosts one of the largest breeding […]