An American creation story.
Items by Craig Childs
Craig Childs recalls the fearless conservationist who loved an undammed river.
After a series of deaths, a writer considers his own close calls in canyons.
As parents, we watch our kids walk into vast new worlds — like it or not.
An off-roading conservationist navigates some gnarly landscape on the road to more protection for the Utah desert.
Images from a month-long trip with friends in 1999.
Not all maps are made of paper. The best ones are spooled in memory.
A desert hiker finds a lot to like in little-known Bureau of Land Management gems.
The author traces the paths of peoples that have wandered the earth for centuries, from Alaska to the Southwest.
Craig Childs goes time-traveling in the buttes and basins of south-central Oregon, and ponders signs of early human occupation.
In the West's rural lands, you might think you're invisible, but the old-timers -- and their dogs -- know you are there.
Craig Childs narrates his paddle down the Lower San Juan, with photos and video he took on the trip.
A float down the Lower San Juan teaches surprising lessons about dams, water and silt in the West.
The author tries to walk like a ghost through a wild and haunted landscape.
Bull riding explodes from its rural Western roots to become a modern spectacle along the lines of NASCAR.
Unexpected encounters with an injured bull elk and a couple of teenage boys lead a writer to consider the meaning of fatherhood.
Craig Childs explores the fine line that separates
archeology from grave-robbing in the American Southwest.
Craig Childs lifts the rug of modern-day Phoenix, Ariz.,
to examine the remnants of the civilization that preceded it
– the Hohokam people, who also built a great city in the
middle of the desert, and flourished until the day they ran out of
water.
In a dark, narrow storm drain below the border town of
Douglas, Ariz., eight illegal immigrants drowned in the summer of
1997
The experience of watching a mountain lion is utterly
transformed when the watcher realizes he is the one being
watched
A long solitary hike through an empty, pristine desert is
interrupted by a close encounter with an F-16 fighter
plane
The name "Anasazi" has fallen out of favor, but none of
the other names now used for this vanished civilization are
satisfactory, either
Susan Ryan, a young archaeologist, has some unusual ideas
about why the Anasazi left their homes in the Southwest, 700 years
ago
On a 10-day walk through the northwestern New Mexico
desert, the author follows an ancient road that leads him from
silent Indian ruins into noisy, modern gas fields
As Baghdad’s museums are stripped bare by looters, a
desert wanderer recalls the experience of finding a perfect Anasazi
pot, hidden in an unnamed Utah canyon
In Cities of Gold, his first historical novel, William K.
Hartmann interweaves the conquistadors of the 16th with a
contemporary murder mystery in Tucson.
A visit to the biggest forest fire in Colorado history -
the Hayman Fire - and time spent with some of those battling it
leads the author to speculate on the mystery and complexity of
humanity's relationship with fire.
An essay from the author's book, "The Desert Cries," in
which he tours Antelope Canyon, where a flood once took the lives
of hikers.
In Arizona's Galiuro Mountains, desert streams appear and
disappear during the course of a day, and the native fish that have
adapted to this complex ecosystem face extinction due to introduced
non-natives.
A hike through the old growth of Olympic National Park
with former millworker Jim Podlesny reveals more than one way to
look at a giant Douglas-fir, and also at the life of a one-time
logging community.
A river trip through Utah's Canyonlands National Park
leads a winter-naturalist to muse about the geologic chaos inside
the park's human-imposed boundaries.
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