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The Mog Squad

In the quest for the ultimate firefighting machine, the BLM in Nevada has turned to some very big, very strange, and very foreign vehicles.
The old man and the stream

A brief encounter with an elderly fisherman moves W.S. Robinson to think about the mysteries of life and death -- and fathers and sons.
All along the watchtower

Andrew McNair, who works weekends at a computer in Olympia, Wash., is not your typical Western firefighter.
Not even the privileged can deter a porcupine

Judy Muller contemplates the humble porcupine, which is wreaking havoc among pricey houses in Telluride Mountain Village.
Portrait of a threatened land

In Travels in the Greater Yellowstone, Jack Turner celebrates and fights for the preservation of an incredible but endangered landscape.

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Riparian repair

River restorationists tackle the Clark Fork River near Milltown, Mont., in a project that demonstrates how hard it is to revive a damaged waterway.
An unlikely Shangri-la

Steve and Marc Jenson have ambitious plans to turn a failed ski resort near Beaver, Utah, into a private enclave for the ultra-rich, but not everyone is thrilled about the idea.
Crash of the cottonwoods

Across the West, cottonwoods are dying, and no one is sure how to save these iconic trees.
Going to the gasroots

In western Colorado, oil and gas companies mobilize in a publicity blitz to pack a Grand Junction hearing about proposed changes to the state’s natural gas drilling rules.

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High Country News April 02, 2007

Feature

Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields

Without a college degree, work on the oil and gas fields is the best job you can get in the rural West – unless, of course, it kills you

Editor's Note

It tolls for us

The energy boom in the Rocky Mountain West has been shadowed by a much darker boom: a frightening rise in death and serious injury

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Wilf Bruschke visits; singer John Winn writes a song inspired by Patricia Walsh’s column on green burial; Claire Anderson helps dogs in Mexico; clarification and corrections

Two Weeks in the West

No yellow snow for Snowbowl; gonorrhea and meth: a match made in hell; split-estate bills in New Mexico and Colorado; Montana’s green energy bills languish; “Rocky Mountain High” second Colorado state song, bolo tie is official New Mexico neckwear.

Uncommon Westerners

Lewis’ Web

Wyoming microbiologist Randy Lewis is fascinated by spiders – particularly by the remarkable silk they produce.

News

Harvesting the sky

Thirsty Santa Fe, N.M., considers an innovative law requiring all new buildings to install rainwater-harvesting systems.

Book Reviews

Thomas McGuane’s lonely freaks

The powerful short stories in Thomas McGuane’s Gallatin Canyon prove him to be the New West’s answer to Flannery O’Connor.

Essays

The single women who homesteaded the West

The women who homesteaded the Old West defy the stereotypes we make of them.

Heard Around the West

Reckless unicorns; dogs and kids will stay in those truck beds; calling Jesus in Idaho; Stardust reduced to dust; can’t afford to live in Seattle; moose takes on helicopter in Alaska.