“My baby’s got the most deplorable taste/but her biggest mistake is hanging over the fireplace/She’s got ducks, ducks on the wall!” That song by the Kinks rankles: What’s the matter with ducks on the wall? During my 15 years as a Wyomingite, I’ve learned that ducks make especially nice ornaments, winging toward windows or flapping […]
Writers on the Range
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I’ll take a double dare any time
I was that moronic kid who would do anything my brother dared me to, even if that involved, say, taking an ice ball to the face (“You flinched! You lose!”). I’m over the need for my big brother’s approval, but I still love a challenge. I took up one recently, after reading an interview in […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The challenge of climate-change denial
Reading the newspapers lately, you might get the impression that the once-strident climate-change deniers, doubters and skeptics are slowly becoming extinct. The New York Times recently called Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the most strident of Al Gore’s critics, “a dinosaur,” and few in the House or Senate even tried to counter Gore’s recent testimony on […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The need to remember Black Sunday
Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying to forget it — May 2, […]
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Asarco would take us back to a polluted past
I remember the first time I tasted the air near the Asarco copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. It was 1990, and my wife and I had just moved there from Tucson, Ariz., to start teaching jobs in the English Department at the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso. I soon met two professors […]
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So what if park fees go up?
A day at Disneyland costs a family of four at least $232, not counting Mickey Mouse ears. At Six Flags Magic Mountain, the admission price would be at least $180. A seven-day pass to enter Yellowstone National Park costs $25 per car, which means that the same family spending a week among bison, elk, geysers […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Why the West should copy Swiss transit
This winter, my family discovered that Oregon’s Mount Hood is known for more than dramatic mountain rescues. Would you believe it could also be home to the mother of all traffic jams? Taillights for as far as the eye can see, gridlock for nearly an hour: That’s what the highway through the Mount Hood National […]
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Black Sunday was a day to remember
Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying to forget it — May 2, […]
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Why are there still climate-change deniers?
Reading the newspapers lately, you might get the impression that the once strident climate-change deniers, doubters and skeptics are slowly becoming extinct. The New York Times recently called Sen. James Inhofe, the most strident of Al Gore’s critics, “a dinosaur,” and few in the House or Senate even tried to counter Gore’s recent testimony on […]
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Killer commutes in the rural West
Every day a clot of drivers moving at high speed takes on the Gallatin Canyon between Bozeman and Big Sky, Mont. It is the second-busiest commuting corridor in the state, and the most dangerous. Between 5,500 and 7,500 drivers navigate the perilous gantlet of highway 191 on a daily basis, on their way to work […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
The case for filet of filly
Imagine a proposal to scatter millions of pounds of poisoned meat around the United States, close to human populations. Much of it would be accessible to scavengers — including eagles, hawks, coyotes, foxes and badgers, as well as dogs and cats. Any animal feeding on the poisoned meat would probably die. This scenario is likely, […]
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Flying with Cowgirls all over Wyoming
Decibel levels in the arena were so loud the day the University of Wyoming Cowgirls won the Women’s National Basketball Championship, no other sound could be heard in all of Wyoming. House finches couldn’t hear their would-be mates entice them to nests. Antelope couldn’t hear the crunch of truck tires on gravel roads and were […]
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Water is definitely for fighting in Montana
One constant in the fierce debate over the public’s access to Mitchell Slough in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley has been the complaint that generous landowners are being vilified despite their considerable efforts to restore the waterway. It’s instructive that one of the arguments used by supporters of the landowners is this “heroic restoration” tack. It’s instructive […]
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Life and breath in the West
My brother is dying. He lives in a small town in the West, a village really, and he moves from room to room with an air hose in his nostrils constantly filling his lungs with a steady stream of oxygen. The sun warms the south side of the house and tulips bloom in the flowerbeds, […]
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They shoot horses, don’t they? Not any more
Imagine a proposal to scatter millions of pounds of poisoned meat around the United States, close to human populations. Much of it would be accessible to scavengers including eagles, hawks, coyotes, foxes and badgers, as well as to dogs and cats. An animal feeding on the poisoned meat would probably die. This scenario is likely, […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Wealthy landowners and locals wade into the ditch
Does a trout know who owns the body of water it lives in? This is not a Buddhist riddle. All a trout, elk or black-footed ferret cares about is whether the water or land can sustain it. Some of us have forgotten that unadorned fact. Motivated by laudable concerns over social change, some Westerners have […]
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Wilderness is the place that can make or break you
Beyond the end of most any road in southern Utah rests the crucible for my soul –? the beauty, ecological abundance and sanctuary of our public lands. With the Bunsen-burner intensity of its noontime sun, desert wilderness burns off the ephemera of my life, and there remains only the essence of emotion — awe that […]
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Why do we keep driving ourselves crazy?
This winter. my family discovered that Oregon’s Mount Hood is known for more than dramatic mountain rescues. Would you believe it could also be called the mother of all traffic jams? Tail lights for as far as the eye could see, gridlock for nearly an hour: That’s what the highway through the Mount Hood National […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Montana puts limits on national Trout Unlimited
One of the great things about living in Montana is state law allowing public access to any stream, no matter whose monster home lies alongside it. But just a few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Montana Trout Unlimited saying the national group wanted to back away from involvement in any dispute — and […]
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The decline of logging is now killing
If the connection between logging and closing libraries isn’t clear to you, then you don’t live in Oregon. Here, the connection is the stuff of crisis, the subject of daily news stories and of increasingly desperate political maneuvering. It is a crisis that reveals much about changing expectations and attitudes concerning government services, taxes and […]