Feature

Got warriors?

On Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, Stanford Addison – a quadriplegic Northern Arapaho horse gentler – helps Indian boys through their difficult teenage years.

The Growth Machine is Broken

Phoenix land-use planners want to use a chunk of state trust land as a laboratory for future, more sustainable real estate development.

Surprise!

Surprise, Ariz., exemplifies the Arizona real estate collapse along with what many see as the rise and fall of the car-dependent Western exurb.

Editor's Note

It's the economy -- and growth and the environment -- stupid!

The economic collapse – with its attendant slowdown in mining, drilling and development – gives Westerners a chance to pause and rethink the way we use the land.

Dear Friends

A Paonia love story

David Anderson is High Country News new advertising rep; skiers and farmers visit; Matt Klingle wins book award; corrections.

Uncommon Westerners

The collected Sierra Nevada

Meteorologist Hal Klieforth has collected a lifetime of knowledge – and a museum’s worth of artifacts – from years spent exploring the Sierra Nevada.

Book Reviews

Renewing a battered land

Richard Manning looks at the prairie and considers its future in Rewilding the West: Restoration in a Prairie Landscape.

A conflict of values

Michael J. Yochim writes the primer on the Yellowstone snowmobile conflict in his admirably balanced Yellowstone and the Snowmobile: Locking Horns over National Park Use.

Essays

The vitality of language

A mother introduces her newly adopted child to the birds at a raptor rehabilitation center and teaches her their names.

Letters

Conservation before compromise

A shortage of leadership, not water

The mythic Westerner

Let's paint Wal-Marts

Land of contradiction and mystery

Two Weeks in the West

Champions go both ways

The Obama administration appoints environmentalists to some important positions in the Interior Department and other agencies. Also: The West faces a growing shortage of food-supply animal veterinarians.

How it Works

Coming to blows

Tribal infighting is delaying a wind farm planned for Gray Mountain on the Navajo Reservation.