It takes a special talent to make the topic of library management controversial, but the Environmental Protection Agency seems to have a real knack for self-inflicted wounds. EPA gave itself a black eye and enraged librarians throughout the country last year, when, without public notice or congressional consultation, it began the process of dismantling its […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inWotr
The strange attraction of the “breakfast thing”
I am sitting in Marie’s on a Tuesday morning in an eastern Colorado town, sipping weak coffee. In a few minutes, the other members of our “breakfast thing” will show up, and we will eat and talk. I have been doing this for two centuries. Okay, it’s been about 10 years, but those years spanned […]
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When wealthy landowners and locals collide
Does a trout know who owns the body of water it lives in? This is not a Buddhist riddle. The answer is: Of course not. All a trout, elk or black-footed ferret cares about is whether the water or land can sustain them. Some of us have forgotten that unadorned fact. Motivated by laudable concerns […]
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Too much can be asked of a river
What do China’s Yangtze, India’s Ganges and America’s Rio Grande have in common? All share the dubious distinction of making a “Top 10” list compiled by the World Wildlife Fund of rivers in trouble. On the lower Rio Grande, where the river forms the border between the United States and Mexico, the challenges include widespread […]
Posted inApril 2, 2007: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields
The single women who homesteaded the West
Thanks to Western movies and popular novels, stereotypes come easily to mind when you think of women of the early West. There’s the saint in the sunbonnet, the soiled dove, the schoolmarm and the rancher’s daughter. Or maybe you remember dramatic figures like the Lewis and Clark guide Sacajawea, or Calamity Jane of the perfect […]
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Grassroots activists battle a national environmental group
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 weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Montana Trout Unlimited that said the national group wanted to back away from involvement in any dispute — and […]
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Wolves have a reputation that’s larger than life
Ever since he ate Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma and blew down the houses of two-thirds of the little pigs, the wolf has been Big and Bad. Everyone knows what big teeth he has. But can those gleaming incisors explain the startling decline of elk herds in the Yellowstone area? Some people think so. Hunters […]
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Down but not out in Missoula, Montana
The American dream is alive and well in Missoula, Mont., sort of. Not long after arriving here in the late 1990s, I found myself in the same conversation about real estate, hearing the same words and sharing the same sentiment. “You can’t eat the landscape,” someone would say, and everyone within earshot would laugh at […]
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March madness trims the herd
The yearling cow elk started showing up in the yard the first week of March, and at first nothing seemed wrong. During the day she fed along the back fence; as evening approached, she came in closer to the house, nibbling on the first green sprouts of lawn before bedding down under the ash trees. […]
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The single women who homesteaded the West
The women who settled in the Old West defy stereotypes.
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Picture a town that celebrates its old businesses
We’ve heard the story so often we could tell it ourselves. And we do. Another family-owned business in another Western town closes. This time it’s Roedel Drug in Cheyenne, Wyo., dispensing medicine, greeting cards, lipstick, film, lavender soap, teapots and good fellowship for 118 years. When I moved here 15 years ago, Roedel’s employees […]
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Down the alleys and through the collectibles
The blue mountains are mottled with cloud shadows. Cottonwoods stir in the breeze, and that sizzling sound mixes with the tinkling of distant wind chimes. Birdsong also fills the ears. A clump of green grass grows luxuriantly next to a dumpster. Yes, a dumpster. I’ve been walking in the alleys lately. A century ago […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2007: Wish You Weren’t Here
Don’t send a check, send yourself
When I first visited “Carnage Canyon” in the 1970s, it was clear to me how it got its name. The place was a mess. It had become a racetrack for racing bikes and motorcycles that zipped up and down the sides of the canyon. A few years later, people dragged in old refrigerators, cars and […]
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The new pariahs
Walking by a tavern in the late evening, seeing smokers clumped outside the door, their shoulders hunched in the cold, puffing furtively, I’m not sure what to think. In the temper of our times, I suppose I should be pitying, maybe even scornful, looking down my nose at the wretches, slave to a demon weed, […]
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Selling peace on the street in Flagstaff, Arizona
I sat with a friend and her son outside the post office in Flagstaff, Ariz. The building has been there half a century; we felt as though we had been there eons. There was an icy mountain wind and an occasional icy stare. We were encouraging people to send George Bush a half-cup of rice […]
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I’ve got the power
It isn’t like one of those holiday scenes with a flurry of snow swirling, caught inside a vigorously shaken globe of winter wonder. It’s only a glass cylinder about the size of a three-pound coffee can, attached to my telephone post. A silver disc spins inside it. Vaguely resembling a CD player, it’s known in […]
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Death of a New Westerner
Late on a Friday night last October, word came to me that my best friend, Bill Benge, had died suddenly of a massive heart attack in Moab, Utah. He was only 60. We had both come from large cities to Moab as young men, more than 30 years ago, and had chosen, for our own […]
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Snowbound
“The sun that brief December day rose cheerless over hill of gray…” I’ll never forget the grim smile on my father’s wind-burned face as he pulled back my bedroom curtains. Snow was falling so heavily outside that I couldn’t see the pump house 20 feet away. “Snow tracing down the thickening sky its mute and […]
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Don’t send a check, send yourself
When I first visited “Carnage Canyon” in the 1970s, it was clear to me how it got its name. The place was a mess. It had become a racetrack for racing bikes and motorcycles that zipped up and down the sides of the canyon. A few years later, people dragged in old refrigerators, cars and […]
Posted inWotr
Forget political labels, let’s think for ourselves
I recently filled out a survey from an environmental group but got stumped by the question about my political affiliation. The right of the scale was labeled “conservative” and the left side was ‘‘radical.’’ I bristled. Compare the two words: Conservative has a pleasant root, conserve, as in not squandering money or resources. Radical evokes […]