As the personal tragedies and economic ripples flowed from New Orleans last week, a friend called from Eureka in Northern California to alert me that the price of gasoline had risen another 30 cents per gallon. Maybe this is a message that will get through, I thought. I live near Eureka in the tiny town […]
Writers on the Range
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What’s at stake in the evolution debate
On my desk is the fragment of a tooth from an ancient camel that roamed the area around Fossil, Ore., 40 million years ago. My kids and I unearthed it on a summer camping trip, and today I found myself fingering it as I read yet another story about the evolution “debate.” This controversy pits […]
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Be a patriot — get your hands dirty
While foraging through my backyard garden the other day for cucumbers, peppers and hot-to-touch chilis, a slogan occurred to me: “Support Our Troops – Plant a Garden.” A garden would demonstrate patriotism because each backyard Eden lessens our dependence upon imported oil. Of course, by itself, imported oil isn’t bad, but an addiction so intense […]
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Property rights advocates get rebuked in Oregon
Supporters of Oregon’s successful Measure 37, which requires compensation for any government land-use regulation that diminishes the value of property, have introduced a radical concept that overturns decades of settled law on what constitutes the “taking” of private property. Now, the Oregon Supreme Court has delivered a stinging rebuke to the legal theory underpinning takings […]
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The glue in some small towns comes from a guy or gal in a truck
Our small town has just suffered a profound loss: the departure of our treasured UPS deliveryman. Like Santa Claus, Tony always brought us treasures. The regular mail might bring bills or junk, but Tony’s brown truck always meant a package. Along with telephone, television and Internet, Tony was our link to the outside world. But […]
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The West shared in a meal of highway pork
That wasn’t just a transportation bill that President Bush signed in early July in Illinois. No, the measure — which will spend $286.45 billion in six years on highways, rail and bus service, and biking and hiking trails — has a far more elaborate name. It’s the “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act — […]
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Yellowstone grizzlies are a success story
The federal government’s proposal to take grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem off the Endangered Species Act’s threatened species list represents a tremendous achievement. It also demonstrates America’s enduring commitment to wildlife conservation. The National Wildlife Federation — one of the nation’s largest conservation groups at 4 million members and supporters — has reached […]
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Yellowstone grizzlies aren’t out of the woods yet
Grizzlies and Yellowstone — bears and geysers. People have been coming from around the world to see the national park’s main attractions for decades. Now, the Bush administration wants to remove the Yellowstone grizzlies from the list of species protected by the Endangered Species Act. I think delisting is premature, because we need more bears, […]
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Mad cow threat opens the door to grassfed beef
The predictable re-emergence of mad cow disease on American shores brings to mind the Mandarin Chinese word for crisis — a combination of the ideograms for danger as well as opportunity. The danger is obvious and growing, as mathematical probability tells us there must be more than two mad cows among the 112 million or […]
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Northwest’s dam breaching gets a surprise endorsement
When Don Chapman, a biologist and longtime consultant for the hydro industry in the Pacific Northwest, suddenly said four dams in Washington needed to be breached to save Idaho’s salmon, it shook the region. Until now, Chapman had staunchly defended technological fixes for hauling salmon from their spawning grounds past the dams to the Pacific […]
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Park ranger presides over the meeting of heaven and earth
In the dog days of this August, the ashes of “gonzo” writer Hunter S. Thompson are to be blasted out of a cannon from the top of a 150-foot tower, over the beauty of his mountain home near Woody Creek, Colo. Just a few weeks ago, while I was working at the Black Canyon of […]
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Our mini-farm is probably someone else’s real thing
Our neighbor spent the past few years living near Seattle, where sprawl has made it impossible to see where the city stops. He feels lucky to have moved next to us, because in his mind, our little place on an acre and a half is a farm, and that adds to the out-in-the-country atmosphere he […]
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The beginning of everywhere, as seen on Lolo Peak
I have no doubt that I stand here at the very center of creation. Every fir tree, each of its needles, the movement of wind, all that I perceive and even more that I don’t, all resonate with a vital hum. It is the hum of the universe, what the Chinese call the ten thousand […]
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County Fair: ‘I hope he is good eating’
In the rural West, July and August are months of heat broken up by haying, a wedding or anniversary celebration and the county fair. It’s the time when 4-H projects ripen and months of work culminate in a coveted ribbon. I was raised on a northern Montana cattle ranch and participated in 4-H despite my […]
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Dead birds off the coast tell us what we don’t know
Just 26 miles from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Northern California’s rugged Farallon Islands are a perfect backdrop for a mystery. Home to the largest seabird colony in the continental United States with about 250,000 birds, the islands are the Manhattan of the bird world. Yet things are far from normal in this avian city: […]
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Nuclear energy isn’t clean or a solution
Uravan, in southern Colorado, was once a bustling uranium mill town in the remote West End of my home county. There, employees transformed uranium ore into green sludge, not knowing that it would be used in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, Uravan is a deserted cleanup site, too hazardous for anyone […]
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Who will call the shots in Sandy, Utah?
After battling city officials all the way to the Utah Supreme Court over whether enough petition signatures had been collected to force a referendum, the residents of Sandy, Utah, will decide the fate of “big box” retail development at the ballot box. In a state where controlling growth often is equated with communism, the court […]
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Topsy turvy weather may be a sign of worse to come
We roll into camp at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California around 4 p.m., tumble from the car eager to stretch our legs, and are soon scrambling to dig winter clothing out of the heap of gear and garb that swamped the back seat somewhere in Oregon. The weather ought to be at least warm, […]
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A lesson from the old ones at Mesa Verde
A green-tailed towhee is down in the canyon, hidden amid the green leafy oaks, singing his heart out as all male towhees do. I am in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park, gazing at the spectacle of Cliff Palace. Just then, a ranger appears announcing some spare tickets to Cliff Palace; someone, it seems, has reconsidered […]
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Stubborn people appreciate the ‘barren’ Great Plains
When people who don’t live here write about the Great Plains, they usually use the words “bleak,” “empty” and “wasteland” to describe it. The writer often suggests that our economy and people are “depressed” because their “lifestyles” are “vanishing.” Photographs show sky and clouds above miles of windblown, rolling — not flat — grass. Prairie […]