Essays

Standing outside, late, in a charcoal forest

My short tenure with a blind pigeon

Laura Pritchett reluctantly – and guiltily – agrees to take care of a blind pigeon for her mother.

Field notes from the front steps

From the front porch of her house in Montana, Kim Todd studies bees and marvels at the world.

A former Hot Shot looks at the West’s wildfires

Lincoln Bramwell looks back on years of firefighting and concludes that it’s just not a good idea for people to keep building houses in forests.

Bury it standing

When his old canoe shows signs of aging, Alan Kesselheim decides to bury it upright in his yard, a contemporary totem pole.

The Sunflower State says a historic no to coal

Allen Best applauds Kansas for denying permits to two proposed coal-fired power plants because of concerns about greenhouse gases.

Even four-footed employees deserve to retire

Susan Ives tells the story of Edith Ann, a faithful horse that narrowly escaped euthanasia when the Park Service decided she was too old and gimpy to be of further use.

Six Good Places

David Oates ranges from the Sierra Nevada to Aix-en-Provence as he considers the particular qualities that make a place worth living in.

In Large and Sunlit Land

Peter Chilson ponders the parallel fates of two lovely and ravaged lands: The Southwest desert in America and the West Coast of Africa.

RV Nation

On a Western road trip, Evelyn Spence ponders the peculiar names – and increasing numbers – of gigantic RVs.

Nothing out there can be a very good thing

Julianne Couch surveys the vastness of Wyoming’s Adobe Town badlands and hopes that oil and gas drilling does not invade its beautiful emptiness.

This dog believes

An undergrown Australian shepherd mix named Pika offers advice on living in the moment despite frightening and challenging times

A Proud Member of PAOBHA

Today’s rural West with its monster homes and Hummers sorely needs a group like PAOBHA, People Against Ostentatious and Boorish Housing

A decade of difficult questions

Outgoing High Country News editor Greg Hanscom muses on the stories and issues the paper has covered in the 10 years he’s been with it

Just another giddyup

The New Mexico Gay Rodeo Association’s Zia Rodeo brings out all kinds of cowboys and cowgirls

What we love will save us

We are all, too much of the time, captives of the wreck and the mistake. Can’t take our eyes off it, can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop picking that scab. We slide into our merely negative identity — defined by what we refuse...

Our Green Mountain

A writer recalls the adventures he had had in Quincy, Calif., 20 years ago, when he was the youthful editor of a small-town independent paper called the Green Mountain Gazette

The memory of mountains

The author remembers a long-ago hike up Pikes Pike with her mother, who later died having no memory of that hike, or of her daughter.