We may be running out of landfill space in the West, but not because of me. I’m a packrat. I spent summers in eastern Montana with my grandparents, who lived in an apartment above a department store. I spent the warm days rummaging through trash bins in the alley behind the store, and then I’d […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
We’re in a land of Lincoln
The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth isn’t until Feb. 12, 2009, but we could easily spend the next year considering how our 16th president defined the American West. Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, never traveled west of his adopted state of Illinois. Yet he, and the Republican Party he helped found, took a deep […]
Posted inWotr
A hunter goes lobbying
A few weeks ago, I set out with a small group to lobby Oregon’s Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. The visit was set up by the national Wildlife Federation, and our goal — a long shot — was to convince the senator to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Lieberman-Warner bill to control greenhouse-gas emissions […]
Posted inWotr
The West loses a scrappy daily paper
Just as the booming — or busting — West needs her most, the Albuquerque Tribune is no more. The paper published its last edition on Saturday, Feb. 23, after 86 years of rough-and-tumble journalism that included winning a Pulitzer Prize. The paper was owned by the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., which decided last August that […]
Posted inWotr
President Bush would jettison Indian health for ideology
Is President Bush willing to sacrifice the health and welfare of Native Americans in order to pursue one of his administration’s pet peeves? It sounds as if he is. The White House recently warned that the president may veto long-overdue legislation to improve health care for Native Americans if the bill includes a provision calling […]
Posted inWotr
Why mining reform matters to all of us
With record snows and a robust economy, this has been a season of good fortune for the resort town of Crested Butte in western Colorado. Yet our future hangs in the balance as Congress wrestles with an issue that ought to concern Americans everywhere: reform of the 1872 Mining Law. How Congress proceeds could determine […]
Posted inWotr
Who will work in the West’s future company towns?
One day last summer, I gave directions to two young Asian women on bicycles who were looking for the grocery store. Further chatting revealed that they weren’t tourists. In scattershot English, they told me that they were from Thailand and had come to Cody, Wyo., on temporary work visas to serve up hamburgers in Wendy’s, […]
Posted inWotr
Gone geese
For the better part of a week, I’ve been driving around with the carcass of a Canada goose in the bed of my pickup. It lies there with the spare tire, the snow, the blue plastic box of emergency clothes, and an assortment of crushed pop and beer cans from last summer. Because of the […]
Posted inWotr
Lake Powell’s sandstone walls speak after 232 years
Across the Southwest, Native Americans, explorers, miners, settlers and Mormon pioneers have left dozens of inscriptions on rock walls. Now, a rare historical marking has been authenticated on one of the canyon cliffs that surround Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The inscription was carved when the United States was only six months […]
Posted inWotr
Bombing away in Socorro, New Mexico
Folks living in Socorro, in remote, central New Mexico, are regularly jolted by the sounds of car bombs and calculated cave-ins. It’s all cooked up by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, known here simply as “Tech.” “Energetic materials” refers to anything that […]
Posted inWotr
Hank, the non-cow dog
A story in my local Montana paper, the Missoulian, described the growing problem of family pets harassing wildlife and livestock. It seems that the expansion of urban life into the wild is taking its toll on deer, elk, cattle and all kinds of burrowing creatures. The story really hit home as my dog Hank, aka […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time to call the gas industry’s bluff
There’s been a steep falloff in friendly chitchat around the local gas pumps, and no wonder. With diesel at $3.40 a gallon and gasoline only somewhat cheaper, it’s common to see someone drop $100 on a tankfull. A typical American family will spend more than $3,000 on liquid fuels this year, and another two grand […]
Posted inWotr
Running the gantlet of Homeland Security
Albuquerque’s international airport, dubbed The Sunport, ranks as one of the smaller and friendlier airports around. That’s important for Westerners like me. Since traveling became an uncertain business, being met by “our” people behind the counter, in shops and at the gate, goes a long way to ease nervousness for infrequent flyers. This is particularly […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
A bad idea hits the gas pumps
A quiet invasion is under way near my home in Colorado. Inconspicuous black stickers are appearing on gas pumps to announce the arrival of a new molecule looking to occupy gas tanks. It goes by the name of C2H5OH – ethanol. Typically, my consumption of ethanol is strictly oral, in the form of alcoholic beverages. […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Time to call the gas industry’s bluff
There’s been a steep falloff in friendly chit-chat around the local gas pumps, and no wonder. With diesel at $3.40 a gallon and gasoline only somewhat cheaper, it’s common to see someone drop $100 on a tankful. The Pump N Pay is as glum as a morgue. A typical American family will spend more than […]
Posted inWotr
Here’s a new way to think about Black History
Every February, the contributions of black Americans are recognized during Black History Month. Since I’m black and work for the Bureau of Land Management, a mostly white federal agency, I appreciate that. But I also have a complaint: Why has its observance become so predictable? By now, I am sure that everybody knows that black […]
Posted inWotr
Whatever we do about illegal immigration, somebody suffers
It’s 6:30, and I’m eating breakfast at a café north of Denver with a man I’ll call Bob. Born and raised in Denver, Bob sprays custom finishes on drywall and has owned his own company for 18 years: “At one point we had 12 people running three trucks.” Now, the business is just his wife […]
Posted inWotr
When dams were young and gardenias a nickel apiece
My mother at 90 prefers the distant past to the present. When she sees the Tournament of Roses parade on television, she recalls coming of age during the Great Depression. When she hears that the nation might be sliding into recession, she tells me what hard times were really like. Her job during the 1930s […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s reform the 1872 Mining Law – finally
Like many Westerners, I grew up with the luxury of unlimited adventure outdoors. I could wander around, fishing rod in hand, looking for the next hidden pond near my family’s cabin in northern Colorado. That was before I began working in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado as a mountain guide for a kids’ […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Where do you draw the line?
As a journalist, I’ve watched many forms of civil disobedience in the West. I’ve known EarthFirst! tree-spikers and interviewed armed, tax-evading Freemen. I’ve seen “green” grandmothers lie down before bulldozers to stop the blazing of new logging roads across public land, viewed the carcasses of dead grizzly bears and wolves shot down by opponents of […]