Essays

If the Spanish explorers could have foreseen the many bitter conflicts over the Colorado, speculated historian Norris Hundley, they might have named it “River of Controversy.’ Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/24.21/download-entire-issue

To those of us who grew up in the 1950s reading I.F. Stone’s Weekly, with its regular exposes of the dangers of above-ground nuclear testing, the accompanying coverups and denials, and the silence of the mass media on those subjects, the end of all nuclear testing is a shock. Download entire issue to view this […]

“Wise-users” may not have much influence, but they should give environmentalists pause to reconsider their long-run strategies. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/24.15/download-entire-issue

These two special issues of High Country News say that we have overbuilt our electric power system by up to five times. We could shut down up to four out of five power plants, coal mines, and hydroelectric dams while providing the same services and a higher quality of life. Download entire issue to view […]

I’d always had this urge, possibly primeval, to live in a cave for a while. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/24.11/download-entire-issue

Unless he returns to tell it himself, we’ll never know his fate for certain, but it appears that he began to realize that his love of wilderness, his quest for oneness with nature, had him trapped. He knew he could never go back. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/24.10/download-entire-issue

When meeting a black bear, friendly or otherwise, it is best simply not to move … Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/24.9/download-entire-issue

Minutiae matters in rural South Dakota. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.24/download-entire-issue

A head-on. From the skid marks it looked like the Camaro had been cutting the inside of the curve, way over the double-yellow centerline … Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.23/download-entire-issue

We proudly say that ours is a government of laws, not of men. But there are times when we expect too much of laws and not enough of women and men. This is the case with the failure of the Endangered Species Act. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.15/download-entire-issue

One weekend in April, I was planning to be on the Colorado River, spending some time in Horsethief and Ruby canyons. Winds and cold temperatures cancelled my plans. Instead I found myself in the office reviewing the” Application for Preliminary Permit” for the Horsethief Canyon Water Power Project. Download entire issue to view this article: […]

Today I sat in a stand of lodgepole pine trees that met death during the Beaver Creek fire in Grand Teton National Park. Their charred trunks bristled the hillside like quills on the back of a porcupine huddled in self-protection. Unlike people, these trees remain standing after their deaths, sentinels in their own graveyard. Download […]

In Yellowstone, managerial control is not love; biology and philosophy, to say nothing of politics, economics, theology and the rest, ought to cooperate to form an ethics that seeks to appreciate, rather than to manipulate. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.10/download-entire-issue

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is landscape that loves bison, bear, elk, deer, moose, coyote, wolf, rabbit, badger, marmot, squirrel, swan, crane, eagle, raven, pelican, red-tail, bufflehead, goldeneye, teal, and merganser. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.10/download-entire-issue

The National Energy Strategy, revealed earlier this year, is not really an energy strategy at all. It is an economic program, aimed toward the short-term benefit of the domestic oil industry and other existing energy corporations. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.9/download-entire-issue

This essay takes as its starting point the blowing dust of March 1988, a virtual dust bowl over the eastern half of the Dakotas. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.4/download-entire-issue

The more one becomes involved in conscious law-breaking, whether nonviolent civil disobedience or monkeywrenching, the more one needs to be scrupulously deliberate about doing so. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.3/download-entire-issue

A posh development near Santa Fe riles locals. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/23.2/download-entire-issue

This reader, for one, does not agree with HCN’s analysis of why overgrazing has occurred and the proper course for resolving its tragic environmental legacy. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/22.24/download-entire-issue

The Forest Service is becoming experienced in listening to messages it would not have chosen to hear a few years ago. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/22.19/download-entire-issue