As a hunter, fisher and full-time outdoor writer, it pains me to admit that most hunting-and-fishing magazines are right down there with supermarket tabloids. You can tell the really important articles by the number of exclamation points after the title, as in: “Sportsmen’s group in all-out battle for shooting and hunting rights!!!” Fact-checking departments are […]
Writers on the Range
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Spring comes grudgingly to Wyoming’s high desert
Although I expect more heartless wind and freezing nights, I think winter’s tight grip has been loosened. Summer lies ahead.
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Mickey Moose and the West’s newest frontier
The Walt Disney Company is coming to Yellowstone National Park, and already the “Mickey Moose” jokes have started. What’s not funny is the way this venture by a multinational corporation marks a new frontier for the West. In a quiet announcement last month, Disney said it intended to test-launch a “Quest for the West” weeklong […]
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Pets gone wild have no place in nature
I recently learned that an old acquaintance died — was killed, in fact. No, tortured to death, actually. It was a threatened desert tortoise I knew in Yucca Valley, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park. Its home was the scrub and rocks near a former neighbor’s rural home, and it would trek to her doorway […]
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What the West needs is an honest discussion
Life was much simpler when I viewed the battle to “save” the West through a black-and-white lens. As a young environmentalist, it was easier to condemn my adversaries’ beliefs without scrutinizing my own. And it was easier to attack my adversaries when I didn’t know them. I have agonized over this for years now. At […]
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If Pedro needed help, I would have given it
Last September, while on an early morning walk with my dogs, I spotted an orange knapsack on a steep west bank of the Santa Cruz River here in Rio Rico, Ariz. I also saw two baseball caps lying near the water’s edge. I waded across the foul-smelling river and opened the orange knapsack. Inside, I […]
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Bumper stickers are a serious thing
I have two bumper stickers on my truck, and one I’d like to add if I could find it. The sticker I’ve had the longest is also the best, making Gary Snyder’s poem, “Jackrabbit eyes all night, breakfast in Elko,” seem wordy. Some of you will recognize it: SILT HAPPENS. It was, for years, the […]
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Religion loses to recreation in Arizona
Jones Benally stands in the city park of Flagstaff, Ariz., and holds a chunk of basalt as if it is an injured bird. He looks down at his cupped hands and the words come steady and soft: “Everything has a life. You got to respect it and think about what you’re doing. Like when you […]
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How not to fix conservation easements
One of the most useful, cost-effective methods of conserving land in America is in serious crisis. A series of scandals has revealed major abuses of conservation easements — a legal tool increasingly used to protect private land from development by compensating landowners for development rights. It is true that some landowners who donate easements to […]
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Montana tells the federal government to butt out
No one knows just when the West decided it had had enough of being run from Washington, D.C. The indications that Montanans have had it with federal mandates became evident in the state Legislature this March. Although the capital routinely ignores the opinions of a state like Montana, which boasts fewer than a million people […]
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Death Valley wakes up with a bang
I stood among the multi-colored stones of Death Valley, gazing at the greatest wildflower bloom I’ve ever seen — the greatest bloom of a generation. I had driven from my home in Oregon through the night to see this spectacle, and now that I’d arrived, I found I was unprepared for the power of its […]
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Do you want fries with that mustang?
I’ve threatened to turn Vinnie Barbarino, my horse, into mustang burgers. After a long day struggling with the stubborn creature, my stomped-upon toes swelling in my boots, I have promised to ship him off to France to be served with a side of pommes frites and a nice red wine. Of course, I would never […]
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Requiem for Yucca Mountain
Without a miracle of some sort, it is all over. Yucca Mountain, the federal government’s choice for storing nuclear waste from Cold War-bomb production and power plants, will never open. The project that began with a congressional mandate 22 years ago seems perennially stalled, even though $8 billion has already been spent on everything from […]
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Can the New West rescue an old town?
First came the Thai restaurant, then the jazz nightclub. Pretty heady stuff for a dead railroad town with a population of 1,900 in the far northern reaches of California. There’s a sense of anticipation, of wondering what will happen next. Along with our fancy restaurant and a couple of art galleries, we’re starting to attract […]
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Spring
My friends warn me of the perils of moving to the mountains outside Boise, Idaho, in December, just as winter rolls into the Northwest. “You’ll get depressed,” they say. “And don’t expect to see us until spring.” My friends are city folk. The worst they can imagine is snow piling in the drive and power […]
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Gov. Schwarzenegger is the nation’s newest Progressive
Heeee’s back. Only this time, Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t come from the future as the Terminator. He’s come from the past, a time when some politicians took contentious issues straight to the people. Schwarzenegger has announced that he’s fed up with the Democratic-majority state Legislature and will appeal directly to voters to impose a cap on […]
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You’ve come a long way, bison
With its return to the nickel after 67 years, the bison bears messages that went unmentioned during the coin’s recent unveiling. The new nickel was designed to commemorate the government’s 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition — initiated by Thomas Jefferson — whose face also appears on the coin. But although bison provided […]
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Ski areas must move to end white on white
It certainly isn’t obvious when you arrive at a ski resort in the West, but nearly all are located primarily on publicly owned lands. It is, to use the U.S. Forest Service’s pet phrase, a “partnership.” The federal government provides most of the land; the ski area operators run the lifts and cafeterias. In theory, […]
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Those who choose risk should bear the cost
Americans are not generally regarded as fatalistic. Christianity, the prevalent religion in America, teaches that individuals possess free will and are therefore responsible for their actions. The nation was founded and shaped by immigrants intent on building new lives in which they — not oppressive governments, intolerant clerics or class distinctions — would determine their […]
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The secret of Wyoming winters is the snow-eating chinook
I’m often asked by relatives and friends back East how I stand the winters in northwestern Wyoming. I put on a stoic facade and tell them: It’s tough, but we Cody folks can suck it up. What I don’t mention is that an average of 300 days of sunshine annually isn’t hard to take, nor […]