Feature

Ground Zero

A life-threatening stroke in Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument puts the author’s fight for wilderness into perspective

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

Mountainsmith supports HCN; visitors from La Mision; corrections; our new look

News

How much is wilderness worth?

Frustrated by Utah’s anti-wilderness moves, the national outdoor-equipment industry threatens to move its twice-yearly giant Outdoor Retailer show out of Salt Lake City

The Latest Bounce

Congress exempts military from Endangered Species Act; Fish and Wildlife Service approves mining project in Montana’s Cabinet Mountains Wilderness; New Mexico lets Phelps Dodge post "corporate pledge" in lieu of bond for three open-pit copper mines; and G

Giant sequoias could get the ax

The Forest Service’s new management plan for California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument encourages logging

Park Service guts budget to fight terrorism

The Park Service will cut millions of dollars in trail and building repairs to cover its share of the "war on terror"

Mammoth airport expansion on hold

A judge’s ruling against expansion of Mammoth-Yosemite Airport may slow down plans to turn California’s Mammoth Mountain Ski Area into a destination resort

County commission stands down on gas wells

Colorado’s Delta County commissioners back down in the fight against Gunnison Energy’s planned coalbed methane wells

A dirty use for Clean Water Act money?

A Forest Service project to thin trees in New Mexico’s Santa Fe National Forest is using money obtained through the Clean Water Act

Tribes recognized at Little Bighorn

This summer, the National Park Service will unveil a memorial to the American Indians who fought Custer at the Little Bighorn

Calendar

Calendar

Book Reviews

Gulf of California Dreamin’

In Red Delta: Fighting for Life at the End of the Colorado River, writer and photographer Charles Bergman looks at what happens to the Colorado River once it flows into Mexico

Barren, wild and worthless? Anything but

Barren, Wild and Worthless: Living in the Chihuahuan Desert, Susan Tweit’s New Mexico memoir, is back in print

Glen Canyon Voices

InThe Glen Canyon Reader, editor Matthew Barrett Gross collects 200 years’ worth of musings about "the place no one knew" and the dam that buried it under Lake Powell

Women take the wheel

A Road of Her Own: Women’s Journeys in the West is an anthology of contemporary women’s adventures on the road

Look before you eat

In Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology and Bioterrorism, Marion Nestle takes on the long and often shameful history of food safety in the U.S.

Inside HCN

Inside HCN

Essays

Editor's Note: Essays for thought

There are as many ways to look at the West as there are lookers, as this special issue’s six essays demonstrate

Tourist tales from the New West

Guiding tours in the West for the ultra-rich can be more than a little surreal

A ‘nature girl’ remembers a dying lumber town

An ardent conservationist remembers her childhood in a California timber town that cut itself out of existence

Running home

A writer talks about seeing the West as an archaeologist, and unearthing what’s "good and right"

Love and loathing on the interstate highways

The writer loves Western highways even more than he hates them, especially in summer when his gas-pedal foot gets twitchy

Seeing the mysterious in the everyday

An artist writes about learning to love the less-dramatic landscapes of the West

Why I fight: The coming gas explosion in the West

A New Mexico rancher takes a stand against out-of-control oil and gas development

Heard Around the West

Heard Around the West

California Anti-Terrorism Information Center is scary; polite police in Santa Fe; spotted owl babies in Oregon; Who is Karl Rove?; ice cream but no spoons; cooking fire burns pot on border; and "Sex Abstinence Week," more or less

Letters

The best memorial

The best memorial

The grief is real

The grief is real

Go Natives!

Go Natives!

A better read

A better read

Happy Sounds in Arizona

Happy Sounds in Arizona

Ray Ring's Wrong

Ray Ring's Wrong