Feature

Boom! Boom!

An energy boom of unprecedented proportions is transforming western Colorado towns like Rifle, which just recently recovered from the last big energy boom – and a catastrophic bust.

Editor's Note

CRASH?

Just as western Colorado towns like Rifle have begun a new life as thriving “amenity” economies, an energy boom of unprecedented proportions has taken over the landscape.

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Ray Ring wins Hillman journalism award; Sopris Surfers gives free Internet to intern house; hcn.org; welcome, Mandela Lou Hoffman; Camas literary magazine; corrections.

News

The gospel according to Ron Gillett

Ron Gillett brings his anti-wolf crusade to the small farming town of Ashton, Idaho.

Climate Revolutionary

Law professor Mary C. Wood wants to use “atmospheric trust litigation” to tackle global warming in the courts.

The West’s wacky weather

The West’s weather is full of surprises this spring, with snowstorms, windstorms, rain and wildfires all happening at the same time.

Book Reviews

Words that mountains speak

In Contact: Mountain Climbing and Environmental Thinking, Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy has assembled 23 essays from a wide range of authors.

Small-town struggle in a big land

In his first book, The Enders Hotel, Brandon R. Schrand describes a childhood spent growing up in a funky hotel in the small town of Soda Springs, Idaho.

Essays

The mysticism of mud

Ernest Atencio ponders an exceptionally muddy Mud Season in New Mexico, and notes how readily most Westerners forget that we live in an arid landscape.

Coffeepots and climate

Shane Bondi seeks to understand the connection between a lump of coal, a power plant and that first cup of coffee in the morning.

Heard Around the West

Heard Around the West

John Slemp takes the ride of his life, into a volcano; Douglas Bruce strikes again; cow-pie tossing and other delights; imposter dog?; “jingle mail”; and “virtual” border fence is a botched-up bust.

Letters

Language is a virus

A quietus made ... Is no sin

No country for old men

California protestin'

Two Weeks in the West

Two weeks in the West

Wind and solar energy projects ramp up across the West; Conservation Reserve Program ramps down; the West’s volcanic history; potatoes are good for you.