My wife was just climbing into bed, and I was already heavy with sleep after a coastal trip the other night, when something began tearing at the screen outside our small bedroom window. This something was eager to come inside. In the few seconds it took for us to yell and wave our arms madly […]
Writers on the Range
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A teacher looks back at racism
In 1961, when I came to Browning, Mont., to teach, I emerged from my little rental — all dressed up — to investigate the town. A path headed towards the main street across a weedy empty lot. A tall Indian in a wide-brimmed hat started towards me. Was I going to have to walk into […]
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For Sale: The West
It’s disconcerting to look at the ads in the local newspaper these days. I’m bound to recognize someone I know who has just cast in his or her lot with Re/Max, Coldwell Banker or another of the multitude of agencies now playing the West’s biggest gambling game: Real Estate Roulette. He or she will be […]
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Climate change is pulling the trigger
I once spent an entire summer catching frogs. Most people, I gather, do this in elementary school: I was in my early 20s, with a supposedly marketable college degree. I guess I should have done something a little, well, more mature. But I had an excuse. I’d been hired by the U.S. Geological Survey to […]
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The unbearable triteness of skiing
Q: Why did Utah choose the slogan “The Greatest Snow on Earth” when it so closely resembled the Ringling Brothers slogan “The Greatest Show on Earth?” A: Both businesses attract a lot of bozos. It’s okay to hate skiing and to own an automobile without a ski rack. You don’t need to have your computer […]
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The windy West gains influential support
The wind blows constantly across the Western plains, as anyone who’s driven north from Denver and across Wyoming can attest. You feel your car needs alignment until you see the tumbleweeds bustling towards Kansas City. That’s why America’s heartland has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind, and that’s why we should be looking closely […]
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Bison aren’t Buicks, and other dangerous beliefs
Don’t believe everything you hear about the West. While some Western myths are mere entertainment, others can kill you. Like thinking a 4-wheel drive provides traction on ice. Recently, some dangerously incorrect statements gained serious media attention during the first hunt in 15 years for bison leaving Yellowstone Park. Calling the hunt a slaughter, protesters […]
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Cruising down a river
There is something liberating about the wide open vistas of a great river, something that encourages a person to break through the normal restraints of civilized society and expand outward — sometimes in ambitious directions, but as often as not along eccentric lines in isolated regions. I witnessed this even before I got out on […]
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Death in the backcountry
News accounts about fatal avalanches — and we’ve had nine deaths in the West this winter — sometimes give the impression that the difference between life and death is one easy piece of technology: an avalanche beacon. If only the buried victim had been wearing a beacon, goes the story line, a life could have […]
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Organic labels don’t tell the real story
When I first sold my family’s vegetables at farmers’ markets in 1980, Slow Food hadn’t been born, and the phrase “local foods” was not yet in the lingo. The word “organic,” however, was in vogue, and our customers always asked you the same question: Are you organic? Nine years old and barefoot, I tried not […]
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The West comes closer to speaking with a regional voice
Recent developments have given new impetus to the idea of a coordinated Rocky Mountain West presidential primary in 2008. Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman has asked that state’s Legislature to set aside $850,000 to enable Utah to hold an early presidential preference primary. Meanwhile, a special commission of the Democratic National Committee has recommended changes […]
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What the gas industry owes us
First, the gas industry should admit that it is changing Pinedale, and not all the change is good. Don’t tell us we should be happy to have industry and the jobs and money that come with it. Certainly, gas exploration and drilling have made our economy stronger than ever, and finally, many of us are […]
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Someday, chickens will come home to roost
From the air, part of New Mexico’s Carson National Forest looks like a spider web that’s been carved into the landscape. Here on the 33,000-acre Jicarilla District, more than 700 gas wells and a maze of over 400 miles of associated roads crisscross the land. While companies have been leasing this New Mexico forest for […]
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What one small town owes to the gas industry
Miracles are performed in the gas-drilling fields of Wyoming every day by roustabout and frac crews, drillers, hot-shot crews, water-truck drivers, office managers and others at all levels. No one in Sublette County — no rancher, waitress, sheriff’s deputy, newspaper editor, Bureau of Land Management employee — works harder, and we ought to respect that. […]
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A wish for the new year: A Scrooged Bush
One of my favorite stories of the Holiday season is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. What could be more inspiring than that moment when Ebenezer Scrooge, after enduring the long dark night of the soul, wakes up a new man? Scrooge’s transformation from a fearful, angry tightwad to a joyful gift-giver always fills me […]
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Arson on Vail Mountain returns to the news
Arson is a difficult crime to prove, so it’s no surprise that the federal government only recently named two suspects in the 1998 fires that caused $12 million in damage atop the Vail ski area. The 28-year-old suspects, who both grew up in Eugene, Ore., have not been charged, let alone found guilty, of anything […]
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Oil shale, our feel-good rock
Oil shale has made big news this past year. Congress has ordered the leasing of federal oil shale lands, and would-be developers are reporting advances in both conventional retorting and innovative, in-situ extraction technologies. Yet somehow I don’t get a warm, fuzzy feeling that oil shale is going to help me out at the gas […]
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Why one hunter is fed up with the NRA
I am a hunter. I care deeply about our hunting heritage and our ability to pass it on. Like most hunters, I consider organizations that work on behalf of hunting my friends, and those that work against hunting my adversaries. Like most hunters, I am confused when the lines become blurred. And today the lines […]
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Welcome, podnah, to the Westernized West
A hotel in my town has rechristened its newly remodeled pub the “Silver Spur Lounge.” I’m sure they just grabbed the last available piece of cowboy mythology that hadn’t been snapped up by someone else in the local tourism industry. But the name still has me puzzled: What exactly about the reality of upscale downtown […]
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Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree
“I will not kill another living tree for Christmas,” announced a waitress at a restaurant I frequent. It is a common misconception that cutting a fir at Christmas is killing a tree that will otherwise live. “Christmas trees are grown to be cut,” I said sagely. “That is their reason for being.” Then I recounted […]