While reading recently about Kit Carson’s role in the settling of the West, I was struck by how mountain men more than 150 years ago dealt with the elements, particularly winter weather. Amazingly, they rode horses huge distances over unknown terrain without wearing Gore-Tex, Thinsulate or other advanced “technical clothing.” They mostly ate bacon, beans […]
Writers on the Range
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What does a $155 million house reveal about us?
People have been talking about a plan to build the most expensive spec house in history in the exclusive Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Mont. The ski resort-home will boast 53,000 square feet of living space, larger than the new public library in Bozeman. It will have a heated driveway, an enclosed chairlift for direct […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
A Western historian and a Western hero
Hal Rothman is dying. You can hear it in his voice — what’s left of it. The historian of the New West, defender of Las Vegas as the poster child for what the region will become as it continues to boom, fights a losing battle. Every day, says Lauralee Rothman, there’s something else her husband […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
Don’t part out our national parks
When I worked as a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone National Park some years ago, I came to believe that magnificent places like this should remain free from commercial exploitation. Yellowstone and our other national parks belong to all of us as a public commons to be protected for future generations. Park rangers tell visitors to […]
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Delisting wolves won’t change much in the West
When Idaho Gov. Butch Otter said last month he wanted to bid for the first wolf tag offered to hunters in his state, it prompted predictable righteous indignation. Newspapers across the nation, including the New York Times, expressed doubts that the federal government could turn control over Idaho’s remarkably productive wolf population to people like […]
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The underbelly of prosperity in the resort West is illegal labor
The public affairs director for Park City, Utah, Myles Rademan, tells a story about tourists on a ski vacation asking him for directions to a Mexican restaurant. His answer: “They’re all Mexican restaurants. Go into the kitchen of any restaurant, whether it’s American, Italian or Chinese, and the people cooking the food are Mexicans.” I […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Why operation of wildlife refuges shouldn’t be privatized
Through the years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t been known for a willingness to stand up to political pressure. So I was surprised in mid-December when the agency took back control of the National Bison Range in Montana. Until then, it had been operating the refuge jointly with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai […]
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Get out of Iraq now
I’m a retired Air Force colonel and a teacher, and over the years I?ve taught a great many people about the military, sometimes starting out with a quote from Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer Abroad”: “I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says ‘Yes, the little ones does.’” That […]
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Hypocrisy on the road
I?ll always remember the evening a candidate for local political office, an environmentally minded and intelligent citizen whom I liked and admired, passed me on the highway between Cortez, Colo., and Mancos. I was traveling somewhere between 60 and 65 mph, my usual cruising speed. He blew by me — passing over a double yellow […]
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Only reform in Mexico can stop the exodus to America
Angelica, a dark-haired young woman, smiled and looked straight ahead. She was wearing a new dress and shoes and sat behind a table in the schoolhouse of a remote village in the mountains of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. “Mi esposo se fue al norte,” she replied, when a health worker asked why her […]
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Sharing jurisdiction is the worst thing for thenation’s bison range
Through the years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t been known for a willingness to stand up to political pressure. So I was surprised in mid-December when the agency took back control of the National Bison Range in Montana. Until then, it had been operating the refuge jointly with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai […]
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Injustice on the Great Plains
I wasn’t born soon enough to be a cowboy on the West’s old open range. But for the last 10 years, I’ve been lucky enough to help gather a herd of up to 500 bison every fall on 30 square miles of Montana prairie. I live on the reservation, though I’m not a Native American, […]
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Could it be Apocalypto for the Southwest?
Thanks to Hollywood movies showing the first North Americans as wandering hunters grunting to each other, Westerners may perhaps be forgiven for failing to appreciate the urban civilizations that arose in the New World long before Europeans arrived. Now, moviegoers have a chance to correct this oversight by seeing “Apocalypto,” Mel Gibson’s gruesome depiction of […]
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Dick Cheney was right
President Bush’s idea that voluntary corporate efforts can stop climate change is wrong, and it’s wrong because Dick Cheney was right. That paradox, along with a new Congress and many progressive Western governors, may outline a path to a real climate policy in 2007. The vice President famously called most conservation measures “a personal virtue” […]
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Hold on: I’m on my cell
In the last year I’ve done something that deeply offends some of my small-town neighbors: I’ve acquired a cell phone. Back when I was among the land-lined gentry, I used to think a cell phone was a reflection of lifestyle. People with mobile lifestyles — you commute to work, step out to meetings, travel to […]
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Let’s not allow winter’s quiet to be shattered everywhere
As an outdoor educator, I receive questions about cross-country skiing every winter. Lately, one common question is: “Where do I go to get away from snowmobiles?” Unfortunately, the fact is that there are fewer and fewer places on the West’s national forests where we can enjoy the natural peace and quiet of winter. We are […]
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One oil change ago
I’m not really sure how I met Jim. Like everything else in life, it was probably through a series of bad choices, weak will and cosmic roulette. I probably should have said “no.” I probably should have moved on. I probably should have done a lot of things differently, but that’s how you end up […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Of salvage logging and salvation
Salvage is a word that is much in the air these days, not just in the woods, but also in the lecture halls of universities and in the marble corridors of Washington, D.C. It is a word of power, a soothing word implying many virtues: prudence and profit, rescue and redemption, both exploitation and, somehow, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Chickens are roosting on private property in Oregon
Oregon’s infamous Ballot Measure 37 created an old-fashioned land rush as property owners, developers and opportunists raced to file claims for compensation before the recent deadline. An estimated 3,600 claims were filed, and it’s possible that the last-minute rush added 1,000 more. The total cost of the claims may top $7 billion, though no one […]
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A field guide to the instant rural guy
Anyone who has moved to the mountains recently has learned of the existence of a distinct subspecies of human beings known familiarly as “flatlanders.” The first thing that needs to be understood about this group is that it is almost never found at sea level. Only when the flatlander takes residence at a higher altitude […]