As I wander past a scrawled “NO TRESSPASSING: SHOTGUN ENFORCED” sign, I can’t help but recoil and glance around. I am, after all, on private property, and instinct is instinct. My safety at this particular mining site, however, is assured: I’m with a bunch of internationally acclaimed artists and a slew of locals. Even the […]
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Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Farm incubators help would-be farmers succeed on their own
Four years ago, Nelida Martinez’s teenaged son got sick. The herbal remedies she’d learned from her grandmother in Oaxaca, Mexico, didn’t help, so she took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with leukemia. Martinez, a 38-year-old farmworker with a shy smile and laugh lines from a life spent in the sun, had followed […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
The forgotten North Cascades grizzly bear
Scott Fitkin started his career chasing ghost bears. As a biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in the late ’80s, he stalked grizzly bear sightings in the Cascade Mountains. Over two decades, he verified a few tracks but never glimpsed a grizzly or even a photograph of one. Until this June. That’s […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Behind the scenes in the lives of captive wolves
When we started the 2 o’clock tour at the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center in the mountains above Colorado Springs, the wolves were napping, just as wild wolves do in the middle of the day. A woman in jeans and cowboy boots served as guide for our group — eight random travelers, most of whom […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Utah’s ancient Lake Bonneville holds clues to the West’s changing climate
A curious horizontal line runs across the range — a notch cut into the mountains like a railroad bed, visible from many miles away. It snakes around every gully and ridge, 600 feet above the playa where the Donners hauled their wagons. Floating Island Mountain, visible to the east above a perpetual mirage, also shows […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Lake Bonneville
The lake covered most of northwest Utah — and some parts of Idaho and Nevada — 15,000 years ago. Today, all that remains of Bonneville is the Great Salt Lake.
Posted inOctober 17, 2011: A Burning Problem
Life as a fire lookout
Once upon a time, I had a pretty sweet gig at the Wall Street Journal, editing stories about sports, wine, theater, pop music, photography, painting and opera. Every month or so, I reviewed a novel or profiled a jazz musician. The daily “Leisure & Arts” page was a quiet, civilized little backwater, largely untouched by […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2011: A Burning Problem
Lack of medical care on the firelines endangers firefighters
When the three young firefighters first appeared at the Dutch Creek trailhead in California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest, veteran crew boss Tim Bailey felt uneasy. Their green protective chaps were a little too clean, and their chainsaws looked practically unused. But despite their apparent inexperience, the tree-felling crew from Washington’s Olympic National Park was gung-ho, recalls […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2011: A Burning Problem
Good policy and good intentions won’t stop big wildfires
Southwestern wildfires are known to be fast-moving and destructive, but this summer’s conflagrations astonished even veteran observers. On May 29, two cousins abandoned a campfire in a ponderosa pine forest in eastern Arizona. The resulting Wallow Fire, encouraged by dry, windy weather, burned for the next five weeks. It became the largest wildfire in the […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Remediating a Superfund sacrifice zone on Montana’s Clark Fork river
I spent last summer and fall floating down the country’s largest Superfund site in a canoe. I was living in a borrowed cabin near Georgetown Lake, about 20 miles from the headwaters of Montana’s Clark Fork River. I wanted a closer look at a disaster before it was undone. Speak the words “Montana river,” and […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Rebuilding a river as Washington’s Elwha dams come down
In his autobiography, Conquering the Last Frontier, Olympic Peninsula pioneer Thomas Aldwell described his first encounter with the land that would be his legacy: “Below the cabin was a canyon through which the Elwha River thundered, and 75 feet or so in front of it was a spring of crystal clear water, overhung by vine […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
Helping Hummingbirds with Citizen Science
At 6:30 on a Wednesday morning, the early August sun creeps over a rocky ridge at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Dense stands of Gambel oak, Utah serviceberry and rabbitbrush spring up from the grassy meadows around Morefield Campground. Birdsong and the whir of hummingbird wings mingle with human whispers in the chilly […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
Navajo Monster Slayers: a tribe struggles to fight corruption
Window Rock, Arizona The Navajo Nation Council Chamber is a rounded bit of beauty inspired by the traditional Navajo hogan. It’s set against a natural arch of sandstone that gives Window Rock its name, a wide and frequently dramatic sky, and temporary government-office barracks that have been at their task several decades too long. The […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Ganjanomics: bringing Humboldt’s shadow economy into the light
One evening last October, I met with Anna Hamilton in the Northern California town of Garberville. A singer-songwriter with a barbwire voice, Hamilton is known locally for her radio show, Rant and Rave, Lock and Load and Shoot Your Mouth Off — which, it turns out, is a pretty good description of her approach to […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
The Global West: how foreign investment fuels resource extraction in Western states
Douglas, Wyo., population 5,000 and home of the legendary jackalope, lies in an almost puritanical landscape — beautiful, yet shy about that beauty, concealing it modestly under a beige blanket of grass and shrubs. A collection of low-slung stone and brick buildings sits at the town’s center, with tree-shaded residential neighborhoods radiating out from it. […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
Hydrofracked: One man’s quest for answers about natural gas drilling
Pavillion, Wyoming There are few things a family needs more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly Vietnam War veteran with deep roots in the central Wyoming grasslands, had abundant water on his 40-acre alfalfa farm, which is speckled with apple and plum trees, on a rural dirt road five miles from the […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
The key player: Elling B. Halvorson
Born St. Paul, Minnesota, 1932 Education Oregon’s Willamette University, 1955 bachelor’s degree concentrating in economics and engineering Big break Founded a construction company specializing in work in difficult locations, such as remote mountainsides and the Alaska bush. That led to him building a water pipeline from the North to the South Rim of the Grand […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
How developers and businessmen cash in on Grand Canyon overflights
Tusayan, Arizona In the lobby of Papillon Helicopters’ terminal at Grand Canyon National Park Airport, Enrique Ochoa stared at his smart phone, searching for a WiFi signal. Unlike the scores of late-April tourists, who were waiting to board one of Papillon’s noisy helicopters for a $175, 30-minute Grand Canyon sightseeing flight, Ochoa was simply trying […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Park Service finally drafts a solution to conflicts over canyon flights
Hermits Rest, Grand Canyon National Park At the end of the road along the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, past Hermits Rest, a famous rock cabin built in 1914 that’s now a rustic souvenir and snack shop, there’s an inviting rock outcropping where you can stretch out in solitude and gaze across the canyon. On a […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Sounds of the Grand Canyon, followed by a quiet helicopter
The natural sounds of birds and wind in the Grand Canyon, followed by the sound of one of the newer, quieter helicopters used in overflights. Sound clip taken at Dripping Springs trail by Mike Garvey.