On his first Father’s Day as a parent, John Deshler is in Portland’s Forest Park. When I called several days ago, he was checking on a northern pygmy-owl nest site, carrying 5-month Henley with him. “My baby’s been good luck,” Deshler says. “I don’t bring her out here very often, but we did find a […]
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Afield with a vegan gas man
“I probably don’t look like a typical oil and gas guy,” says Eric Sanford. Wearing clogs — his “driving shoes” — and a wide cloth belt that looks right out of the 1980s, he sure doesn’t. Sanford, 39, who jokingly describes himself as the “vegan son of Nebraska farmers,” grew up in a town of […]
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Rantcast: Bumper sticker sloganeering
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker sloganeering, licensed under […]
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The Excursions Episode
Just in time for summer travel season, we’ll spend this episode of West of 100 wandering the West. Journalist Scott Carrier and poet Alex Caldiero visit the Sun Tunnels, a far-flung art installation in the Utah desert. High Country News editorial fellow Neil LaRubbio gives us a peek into the world of modern hoboes. (Neil is producing […]
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Protection versus promotion at Brown’s Canyon
Editor’s note: This is a final column submitted to High Country News by Ed Quillen, who died Sunday, June 3. He was 62 years old. Can you protect an area by publicizing it and attracting more visitors? That question first hit me a few years ago when I encountered a guidebook that featured Colorado’s waterfalls. […]
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Rantcast: Sorry, Utah
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. If you like this podcast, you might also enjoy West of 100, our […]
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There’s (still) gold in them thar hills
In this episode of West of 100, High Country News contributing editor Jonathan Thompson visits a gold mine and ponders the illusory nature of gold prices, and Hadley Robinson reports from the Klamath River, once a popular destination for small-time gold prospectors that’s now at the center of the controversy over California’s ban on suction-dredge […]
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Rantcast: The silence of desert greetings
In May’s Rantcast, also available in written form at our community blog, the Range, Mike wonders why he and his fellow desert dwellers tend to be so laconic. He recounts three different interactions he has had with others living in the desert; each of which casts a light onto the nature of those who choose […]
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Lost and found waterways
How is it that, in a region where we allocate and litigate many rivers down to their last drops, others are entirely forgotten? In this episode of West of 100, we explore waterways in Los Angeles and Tucson that have fallen into obscurity, despite the fact that they’re largely responsible for those cities existing where […]
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The itch that riles Frontera author Denise Chavez
Year after year, artists and authors, wrestlers and dancers, mariachis and chefs and people of all ethnicities have gathered in the tiny town of Mesilla, N.M., for the Border Book Festival, an unusual celebration of Frontera art and literature. The festival, which attracts internationally known writers and publishers to this impoverished region, features Latino-centric craft […]
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Could doing chores save the world?
A version of this essay originally ran in Sage Magazine, a publication run by students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. On the day I arrive at Lama, N.M., it takes me a few minutes to find the people. When I find them, they are all holding hands around a large octagonal […]
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Margaret Hiza Redsteer uses Navajo memories to track climate change
Margaret Hiza Redsteer has long known the Navajo Nation. Of Crow descent, she grew up near the Montana-Wyoming border, and in the 1970s moved to an area of Arizona then shared by the Navajo and Hopi tribes. She married a Navajo man and they had three children. While living on the reservation, she often heard […]
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Rantcast: The leprechaun trap
In April’s Rantcast, also available in written form at our community blog, the Range, Mike mistakenly thinks a garden gnome is a good Mother’s Day gift, and then creates an elaborate leprechaun trap with his two daughters. If you like this podcast, you might also enjoy West of 100, our mid-month podcast covering nature and […]
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The sound of silence
There are few places left in the world where you can experience the sounds of nature uninterrupted by planes, cars, off-road vehicles. Scientists are now working to quantify the impact of all that noise on the natural world, and to monitor how soundscapes — the collection of sounds in a landscape made by critters, wind, […]
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The postal service is slipping away
On many days, it seems as though the things I like best about our country are all under attack: public lands, the Bill of Rights, passenger trains and the U.S. Postal Service. Especially if you live in the boondocks of the West, the Postal Service means more to you than it does to most urban […]
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Picking ranchers’ brains, from Colorado to Mongolia
As a college student in the mid-1980s, Maria Fernandez-Gimenez worked as a seasonal interpreter for the National Park Service. That’s when she was first exposed to the great Western debate over public-lands ranching. She soon became familiar with environmentalists’ gripes about grazing impacts, but realized she knew nothing about the ranchers’ point of view. So […]
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On Keystone XL route, states allow different risks, reap different benefits
This article was first published by InsideClimate News. If the Keystone XL oil pipeline were approved today, residents in the six states along its route would not receive equal treatment from TransCanada, the company that wants to build the project. The differences are particularly striking when it comes to tax revenue and environmental protection. States […]
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Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time
In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process. The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to […]
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The times, they are a changin’
Dear Friend: Evolution happens. For the first 25 years of its existence, High Country News delivered its unique blend of in-depth reporting, essays and humor via a black-and-white tabloid printed on newspaper stock. Sometimes the ink got smeared and stained your fingers. In 1995, the “paper” was joined by a website, hcn.org, that served primarily […]