My fingers pounded on the sticky keyboard. It was 2 a.m.; I’d given up drinking coffee a few hours earlier and was now chewing coffee beans chased with chocolate chips. In less than five hours, I’d make the 50-mile drive over two high mountain passes to the printer’s in Durango, in western Colorado, fretting the […]
Jonathan Thompson
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Follow him @LandDesk
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Homegrown news: Money can’t buy it
Note: this essay introduces several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. A hissing wind blew against the wavy glass of the single-pane window. My fingers pounded on the sticky keyboard. It was 2 in the morning. I’d given up drinking coffee a few hours earlier and was now mainlining, […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Reborn
The West casts a wary eye on the latest nuclear craze
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Worlds converge in energy’s shadow
Located on a dusty mesa above the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, Alice Benally’s home on the Navajo Reservation sits less than a mile away from the massive smokestacks of the Four Corners power plant. For four decades, the electrons generated by the plant’s steam-propelled turbines zipped past her lantern-lit home on their […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The hazy days of summer … and winter, spring and fall
Air pollution settles over the West’s national parks
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
The Immigrant’s Trail
Note: this essay introduces several feature articles in a special issue about the West’s immigration landscape. Last month, as immigrants and their supporters geared up for the May 1 “Day Without Immigrants,” and the Senate considered another comprehensive immigration bill, an 18-year-old Mexican woman gave birth amid the cactus and mesquite trees of the Arizona […]
Posted inApril 3, 2006: Land of Disenchantment
Tierra o Muerte
Outside the village of Tierra Amarilla in northern New Mexico, a hand-painted placard proclaims “Tierra o Muerte” — Land or Death. The sign gives some indication of just how fiercely northern New Mexicans have defended their land and their culture — a culture that traces its roots back to the conquistadores who claimed this land […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
A struggling mountain town looks for a lift
Silverton, Colo., hopes a backcountry chairlift will boost its fortunes