High Country News

Billboard corporations and other big industries make their own rules

Burning down billboards isn't a good idea, but can a citizen fight the corporate power behind the big signs?

by Ray Ring, Jan 22, 2012
Nostalgia is a moving target

Curmudgeons like Jim Stiles – owner/editor of Moab’s Canyon Country Zephyr – have a lot to teach us about why it is so important for us to cling to the West that we love

by Paul Larmer, May 29, 2006
One war that's worth the fight

In his memoir, Walking It Off, wilderness activist Doug Peacock tries to make sense of a life spent dealing with war, fighting for wilderness, and coping with cantankerous friends like the late Ed Abbey

by Laura Paskus, Jun 26, 2006
The brief but wonderful return of Cathedral in the Desert

Utah’s drought gives proof that Glen Canyon’s Cathedral in the Desert is still in liquid storage underneath Lake Powell

by Jim Stiles, Jun 13, 2005
A prodigal son is honored by his hometown

Controversial writer Dalton Trumbo returns to his hometown of Grand Junction, Colo. -- in a bronze bathtub.

by Andrew Gulliford, Mar 10, 2011
Hits and missives from Cactus Ed

In Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast, David Petersen assembles some of the correspondence of Western writer Edward Abbey into an eminently readable but ultimately unenlightening collection.

by Brian Kevin, Sep 18, 2006
The Terrain of This Ambition

A writer wrestles with the huge shadows cast by the men and women of “Literary Utah.”

by Christopher Cokinos, Sep 05, 2010
Slobs at Lake Powell foment a revolt

Rather than rail against Lake Powell's mere existence, conservationists should try to restore and protect the landscape that is still there.

by Andrew Gulliford, Aug 19, 2010
You ain’t from around here, are you?

In Brave New West: Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed, Jim Stiles rips into the amenity-oriented tourist economy that has transformed his once-beloved Moab, but he offers little in the way of useful alternatives.

by Brian Kevin, Apr 16, 2007
Monkey wrenchers keep on keeping on

Ed Abbey's pugnacious spirit lives on in eco-activists like Tim DeChristopher, who quietly sabotaged a Utah BLM energy-lease auction.

by Peter Shelton, Jul 07, 2010