High Country News

Filling empty pages: A review of When Women Were Birds

In her latest memoir, When Women Were Birds, writer Terry Tempest Williams tries to solve the mystery of the cloth-bound journals her dying mother left her -- all of them completely blank.

by Devon Fredericksen, May 27, 2012
Traveling Arizona Highways, in your dreams and on the ground

In 1960, an Illinois mailman falls in love with the desert through the pages of Arizona Highways and hands on his dream -- and a piece of Mohave County --to his son and grandson.

by Tony Fitzpatrick, Mar 29, 2012
Generosity of voice and heart: A review of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild describes her arduous trek along the Pacific Crest Trail as she seeks to recover from life-changing grief.

by Melissa Hart, Mar 18, 2012
A life measured in cordwood: A review of Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men

Cindy Bellinger's memoir, Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men, introduces us to a determined, 60-something, chainsaw-wielding Western woman.

by Gussie Fauntleroy, Feb 19, 2012
Home on the range

In one Montana family, it's a father-daughter Thanksgiving tradition to do things like build makeshift ramps to help trapped wild animals escape from stock tanks.

by Marian Lyman Kirst, Dec 05, 2011
Prey at the waterhole

The experience of watching a mountain lion is utterly transformed when the watcher realizes he is the one being watched

by Craig Childs, Jul 24, 2006
The merry — and meditative — farmer

In Blithe Tomato, Mike Madison writes engagingly about working the land on a small farm in California’s Central Valley

by Laura Paskus, Jul 24, 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
Trading goods, and stories, on the reservation

In Along Navajo Trails, Will Evans tells the stories of the Navajo Indians who came into his Shiprock Trading Post during the first part of the last century

by Erica Olsen, Jun 12, 2006
A very brief conversation with a Jet Fighter

A long solitary hike through an empty, pristine desert is interrupted by a close encounter with an F-16 fighter plane

by Craig Childs, May 01, 2006