With bats in the attic, skunks and marmots under the floor, deer mice in the corners and cluster flies throughout the house, Kathleen Meyer may want to sleep on the deck, but at least she no longer has to shit in the woods. In Barefoot Hearted: A Wild Life Among Wildlife, Meyer, author of the […]
Book Reviews
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
The fission of a New Mexican nuclear family
In this richly layered novel, author Bradford Morrow peels back the geography of New Mexico to reveal its unforgiving core of rock and scree. The Land of Enchantment is also a landscape haunted by nuclear testing during the 1950s, and it is within this rough physical and emotional terrain that Morrow sets his tale about […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
Is it possible …
It is possible for a ranch to maintain a healthy ecosystem during a drought – and stay in business? Ranch expert Kirk Gadzia is leading an Outdoor Classroom on Rangleland Health at Jim and Joy Williams’ ranch near Quemando, N.M., Sept. 14-15. Gadzia, co-author of the National Academy of Sciences book Rangeland Health, believes watershed […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
If you’re tired …
If you’re tired of gloomy environmental books, visit the Sopris Foundation’s Web site for its handbook, A Call to Action. Jammed into 32 entertaining pages is everything from Grist Magazine’s “Energy saving tips for the very lazy,” to energy expert Randy Udall’s cerebral link between a Joni Mitchell song and his thoughts on carbon dioxide. […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
Visit awhile with Molly …
Visit awhile with Molly Ivins, sharp-tongued Texas columnist, on Sept. 21 at the Western Colorado Congress meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. Inspired by her book, You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You, her discussion will examine – with, inevitably, great sarcastic delivery – how campaign finance distorts the political process. Call the WCC […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
When good tax-evaders go bad
Back in the halcyon days of the Northwest militia movement in the mid-’90s, a curious breed of man emerged from the moist backwoods and unemployment lines of the disenfranchised West: the wannabe Patriot. In Whatcom County, Wash., the commander in chief of the Washington State Militia, John Pitner, was experiencing New World Order visions. The […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
She left the ranch to save her soul
Picturesque and nostalgic as the pioneer era might seem in hindsight, to be a prairie woman must have been, on most days, pure hell. But that story is sometimes absent from the pioneer literary history, a genre written largely by white men, about white men. Until now. If you continue west from the stage for […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
A kick in the grass for restoration
Looking back on the disastrous wildfires of 1999 and facing a devastating future in the Great Basin, the Bureau of Land Management saw an opportunity to try a holistic restoration effort that would break the cheatgrass-induced fire cycle (HCN, 5/22/00: Save Our Sagebrush). This landscape-sized idea spawned the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, a nonprofit partnership […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Utah gases up
Major oil and gas development is one step closer to fruition on 2 million acres of public land in northeastern Utah. Geophysical surveying company Veritas DGC Inc. recently submitted a draft environmental assessment, proposing two-dimensional seismic exploration in the Book Cliffs area. Instead of using behemoth thumper trucks, Veritas plans to detonate 7,500 underground explosives […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
A sonnet to a problem river
The Pecos River begins its 900-mile run high in the Sangre de Cristo Range of the Colorado and Northern New Mexico Rocky Mountains, and descends through New Mexico’s lowlands “of Western myth and solid American values,” as Emlen Hall writes in High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River. Finally, the author […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Human wildness on the range
Frank Clifford has no trouble holding two clashing ideas in mind. The first is his love of wild country, the second is his love of the wild people most of us see as the enemy of wild country. A gold miner’s son who is now an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford comes […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
The garden of good and evil
Follow the simple steps listed on the back of any of the popular wildflower seed mixes for sale, and voila! A thick carpet of kaleidoscopic blooms will grace your garden. Problem is, you probably just broke the law. At least, that’s what researchers with the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture discovered when they […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
New museum takes visitors beyond Yellowstone
Dr. Charles Preston wishes he had better understood the Yellowstone region during his first visit there as a teen-ager. Now, as curator of the new Draper Museum in Cody, Wyo., his job is to bolster the knowledge of a new generation of Yellowstone visitors. The Draper, part of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, links geological, […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Spreading seeds of knowledge
When Greek scholar turned cattle rancher Claude A. Barr died in 1982, he left behind a lifetime of discoveries and observations about South Dakota flora. He was “a self-taught wizard of Great Plains native plants,” says Cindy Reed, a South Dakota native and protege of Barr’s. To preserve Barr’s legacy, Reed founded the Great Plains […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Writing Naturally
“Words, your words, can make all the difference in the world,” renowned nature writer David Petersen asserts in his highly readable Writing Naturally: A Down to Earth Guide to Nature Writing. He wants to help you make that difference. Over the course of 16 short chapters, covering grammar, research, style, editing, and publishing, Petersen guides […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Woody leviathans
Robert Van Pelt, a forest ecology researcher at the University of Washington and Evergreen State College, has two lifelong obsessions: trees and curious facts. So it seems inevitable that he would hunt out the woody leviathans showcased in his book Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast. Measuring trees is a science, and Van Pelt takes […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Mountainfilm
In 1979, a group of mountain enthusiasts put together a festival of 25 films in Telluride, Colo., to celebrate mountains and the people who love them. Twenty-four years later, Mountainfilm still focuses on rocks, but has expanded to include cultural and general environmental topics among its more than 40 films and art exhibits, symposia, slide […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Sagebrush artistry
Nevada potter Dennis Parks celebrates his exit from the rat race in a new memoir, Living in the Country Growing Weird. With his wife and two sons in tow, Parks left a tenure-track professorship in Southern California 30 years ago, settled in Tuscarora, Nev., a ghost town, and founded a pottery school that today attracts […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Sprawl is in the numbers
Westerners are all too familiar with the phenomenon of “urban sprawl,” as development creeps farther from city limits and eats up more land. A study released by the nonprofit Numbers USA offers new insight into the causes of sprawl, emphasizing the contribution of population growth to changes in land use. Weighing Sprawl Factors in Large […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Fateful harvest a scary read
Sometimes recycling is more pernicious than we’ve all been taught to believe. In 1997, Patty Martin, mayor of the small town of Quincy, Wash., discovered that the local agricultural chemicals provider had been mixing leftover pesticides with other chemicals and passing the “recycled” mixture off to farmers as a beneficial soil additive. The crusading mayor […]