Essays

From the outside, to a casual observer, Two Forks is inexplicable. From the inside, Two Forks is the only solution to the Denver metro area’s — and the West’s — dilemma that existing leadership can conceive of. Understand Two Forks, and understand the West. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.9/download-entire-issue

Above, there once was a mountain; below, a new one is rising, a jumbled mound of steaming magma. Surrounding it, striped spires of rock shoot 2,000 feet straight up from the bottom of North America’s most famous volcano. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.1/download-entire-issue

Argue with radio preachers. Sing hymns with Jimmy Joe Bobby and his Swinging Salvationeers. Defend secular humanism as a religion. And more … Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.14/download-entire-issue

There is a quickening in the land. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.7/download-entire-issue

Although we are now in a transition stage, forces are in motion that will bring to an end the domination of national forests by timber harvesting. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.6/download-entire-issue

The great wilderness experience, at times, becomes a continuing obsession with inappropriately placed pop-tops, cigarette butts and Jiffy Pop tins. I am hopelessly addicted to collecting wilderness trash. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.4/download-entire-issue

“Perfect skipping stones” sold in the Early Winters catalogue provide the strongest single piece of evidence yet that Western civilization is collapsing on itself like a dwarf star. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/18.23/download-entire-issue

If your car is as hot as an oven, use it for one. Give a whirl to the newest summer craze — car cookery. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/18.16/download-entire-issue

I’ve come to identify coyotes by the moods they’re in when I see them or by the “lifestyles” they seem to have. First is the hair-trigger-what-the-hell-was-that coyote. Next is the don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy    coyote and last is the “sellout,” or as I prefer, the let’s-make-the-best-of-a-good-thing coyote. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/18.15/download-entire-issue

Back in 1986, as environmentalists rallied to push ranchers off public land, nobody could have predicted how the issue would finally be resolved. A new movement was born: the most powerful and sweeping ever seen in natural resource management. It was born with the battle cry: “Get the public off public lands.” Download entire issue […]

An enterprising reporter has uncovered the secret of low air fares out of Stapleton Airport. Airlines are indeed losing money on each ticket sold. But they are simultaneously raking in enormous commissions from parking lots, news stands, food dispensers and bars. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/18.7/download-entire-issue

There are no mysteries in the story of the demise of the desert tortoise. They are the same factors that have led to the demise of the Southwest itself. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/18.4/download-entire-issue

Considering the educational priorities of most forestry schools, it is not surprising that our national forests are badly mismanaged as ecosystems. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/17.18/download-entire-issue

If dogs were totally incompatible with wilderness living, our ancestors wouldn’t have bothered having them around back in the days before concrete and the Gross National Product. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/17.4/download-entire-issue

Don Snow recounts a day fishing in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/13.18/download-entire-issue

Horace Greeley, best know for saying ‘Go West, young man,” also said “Nature offers us good bargains, but she does not trust and will not be cheated.” Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/13.7/download-entire-issue

Nowhere in human history has fiction so outdistanced fact as in the lore of the wolf. Along with spiders, snakes and sharks, Carl Jung lists the wolf as generating almost universal fear in the human psyche. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/11.24/download-entire-issue

The quiet sounds of the sage grouse cannot be heard in places where men talk of energy crises, tradeoffs, balance of payments or national commitment. The burden of all this is too much for public servants to bear alone; now you share it. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/7.21/download-entire-issue

Entering a blue heron rookery is like stepping back into prehistoric times with great, reptilian birds. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/7.15/download-entire-issue

The Gila Wilderness — the world’s oldest formally protected wilderness area — is an area of startling contrasts. In the canyons, brilliant red-flowered cacti bloom from crevices in the walls and purple violets flower in the damp maple, alder and oak streamside forests. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/7.7/download-entire-issue