Can the enormous, intricate and fragile electric grid play nice with increased renewable energy production? Plus, Alaska’s bald eagles, selling a Utah ghost town, hummingbird-inspired drones, and more.
The power grid may determine whether we can kick our carbon habit
Minutes before 4 p.m. on a sizzling September day two years ago, right at the time when they were most needed, San Diego’s air conditioners suddenly died. Thousands of television and computer screens also flickered into darkness. Stoplights stopped working, gas stations ceased pumping, and traffic slowed to a snarl. Trains ground to a halt…
War Bird: An essay on robot hummingbirds
Probably he was bigAs mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big.Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.– D.H. Lawrence, “Humming Bird” The other day, a friend of mine sent along a story he thought I’d enjoy. It described how some engineers had developed a robot they called the Nano-Hummingbird. Barely 3 inches long…
A Utah realtor’s quest to sell a ghost town
Woodside, Utah Mike Metzger strides through a row of cracked wooden headstones decorated with faded plastic flowers. The 35-year-old wears a button-down shirt and gray pants. He has lightly-gelled short dark hair and a trim goatee. “These graves are silent now,” he says, staring wistfully at the camcorder. “But if they could speak, the stories…
Jonathan Thompson on the grid
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Electrical sounds courtesy of Lonemonk, freesound.org Horns courtesy of Robinhood76, freesound.org Yelling courtesy of stephsinger22, freesound.org Wind turbine courtesy of Andy Gardner, freesound.org
Book review: Ground/Water: The Art, Design and Science of a Dry River
Ground/Water: The art, design and science of a dry river, edited by Ellen McMahon, Ander Monson, and Beth Weinstein, 112 pages, hardcover: $48. The University of Arizona Press, 2012. Arizona’s Rillito River runs from the Santa Catalina Mountains through Tucson to join the Santa Cruz River. “Except it doesn’t run,” writes journalist Nathaniel Brodie in…
Could an Alaska mining project jeopardize Earth’s largest bald eagle gathering?
Mineral exploration threatens the Chilkat River, the chum salmon and the raptors that rely on them.
Listening to the secret heart: a review of The Last Shepherd
The Last ShepherdMartin Etchart203 pages, softcover: $22.University of Nevada Press, 2012. Arizona author Martin Etchart’s compelling second novel takes readers to the heart of a Basque family, originally from the French Pyrenees, that has been whittled down to two: a father and a son. Mathieu Etcheberri, the son of Basque shepherds who built a hardscrabble…
Of Muir and Pinchot
In “A New Forest Paradigm,” Nathan Rice refers to “John Muir’s preservationist ideals” and “Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian forestry” (HCN, 4/29/13). Muir certainly fit the mold of a preservationist, believing nature should be preserved for its own sake. But many would argue that Pinchot was more of a traditional conservationist rather than a utilitarian. The latter…
Saving the real old growth
I read with interest Nathan Rice’s excellent article “A New Forest Paradigm” (HCN, 4/29/13). I was around in the 1970s, when the last of the old-growth giants were being felled in Oregon and Washington. I deplored what was happening then and cheered any means of saving those venerable trees, some of which were over 500…
Sippings of memory: a review of “100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do”
100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother DisappearedKim Stafford202 pages, softcover: $16.95.Trinity University Press, 2012. One of the happy consequences of reading Kim Stafford is that he makes you want to become a better person. The Portland-based author of 12 books of poetry and prose writes with a quiet gentleness, intimacy and kindness.…
Subscriber Warning
High Country News subscribers should be aware that an Oregon company is mailing unauthorized offers for HCN subscriptions and renewals. Please note: These are not authentic solicitations from High Country News. The company name on these solicitations is Publishers Billing Emporium. The solicitation we have seen offers a renewal for $85.95 and includes a lot of…
The Latest: Quagga mussels invade Lake Powell
BackstoryIn the 1980s, invasive quagga and zebra mussels hitchhiked on ocean vessels from Eastern Europe to northeast North America. There, the thumbnail-sized bivalves proliferated, clogging water intake pipes, crusting boats, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and causing billions of dollars in damage. Measures were taken to prevent their westward spread, but in 2007 quaggas arrived, eager…
The West’s Big Data colonies
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The West’s Big Data colonies.
Wanted: Wolves in Colorado
Being an avid elk hunter in Colorado, I hope the trapping and hunting pressure on wolves in Wyoming brings some of them here (“Wolf bycatch,” HCN, 4/29/13). The presence of wolves in Colorado might reduce the number of cattle that overgraze national forest land and ruin the riparian habitat for six months of the year,…
A spark leads to a story
When I moved to the rural West, I found myself curious — in a way I never was while living in an urban area — about the infrastructure that makes civilization possible. Who built all those ditches that carry brown waters to the hayfields and homes, and how is the water parceled out? Where do…
Word watch
The new buzzword in the woods is “ecological forestry,” to replace “new forestry,” which academics advocated and promoted in the 1990s. I applaud the desire to provide ecosystem management that somewhat mimics nature, but I often question motives (i.e., “to get the cut out”). What “A New Forest Paradigm” fails to acknowledge is that every…
Alaska’s populist, Sarah Palin-era oil tax gets the ax
The TransAlaska Pipeline System is in trouble. During its 1970s heyday, 2 million barrels of crude coursed through it every day from Alaska’s northernmost oilfields to the southern port in Valdez. Now that flow is down by more than two-thirds. The pipeline was not designed for lean times. If the volume of oil declines again…