GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Four years ago, Jerry Townsend and his family drove from their ranch in the shadow of the Highwood Mountains in the middle of Montana, bound for their children’s track meet a few hours to the west. They climbed the Continental Divide and descended into the famed Blackfoot River Valley on their […]
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Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
A community seeks to feed its own
ETHETE, Wyo. – A tribal elder on the Wind River Indian Reservation is relying on Arapaho traditions of generosity and prayer to fight hunger here. The elder is Laverne Brown, who has donated seven acres of river-bottom land for a community garden. Vegetables grown in the garden are made available free to families who need […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Dreams of new industry go up in smoke
WILLISTON, N.D. – An empty warehouse, a crooked smokestack and a few tons of hazardous waste in a decayed industrial district on the edge of town are all that remain of a company that five years ago opened to fanfare. This isolated Missouri River town of 14,000 people on the northern prairie had welcomed Dakota […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Southwest cows have friends in high places
The Forest Service is once again pinned down in a shootout over grazing in the Southwest. If the agency moves one way, it dodges lawsuits from environmental groups that say cows imperil endangered fish and birds. If it steps the other way, it faces fire from the livestock industry and its powerful allies in Congress. […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Could I see your permit to pray?
Anxious about protecting its $200 million telescope complex, the University of Arizona recently required a “prayer permit” for Native Americans who want to visit the summit of Mount Graham. San Carlos Apaches and other native peoples who hold sacred the high peaks of the Pinaleno Mountains, 120 miles southeast of Phoenix, say the permits attack […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
There goes the neighborhood
-We’re basically Middle America, except we’re off the grid,” says Diane Mitsch-Bush, a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her neighborhood, only a few miles from the center of town, has powered itself with solar and propane energy since the early 1980s. But Mitsch-Bush and other residents say their low-key and environmentally conscious lifestyle is […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
The Wayward West
Climbers are off the hook and back on their bolts (HCN, 8/17/98). Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons halted a U.S. Forest Service ban on fixed anchors in wilderness – for now. USDA official Stephanie Hague says public groups will begin “negotiations’ about a new rule in the next few months. Climbers and wilderness advocates want […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
National parks pull the plug on jet skis
The National Park Service will ban personal watercraft by mid-September on all of its waterways except 11 national recreation areas and two national seashores. The prohibition follows bans by individual parks, including the Everglades in Florida, Canyonlands in Utah, and most recently Olympic National Park in Washington, where Lake Crescent will see its last jet […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Only Grand Teton knows
Who was first to reach the top of 13,770-foot Grand Teton in Wyoming? Was it Yellowstone National Park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, who said he did it in 1872? Or a group of climbers who documented their ascent later, in 1898? No one will ever know for sure, but the Park Service did not take […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Air Force drops a sweetheart deal onto ranch land
In an unorthodox move, the U.S. Air Force plans to offer an Idaho rancher around $1 million to turn his grazing allotment into a bombing range. The deal, which was added to the defense appropriations bill by Idaho Republican Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, would pull Bert Brackett’s cattle off 12,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
New Mexico Greens here to stay
When New Mexico held a special election to replace the late Republican Rep. Steve Schiff this June, people compared the race to a mud-wrestling match, only less dignified. The Republican was Rhodes Scholar Heather Wilson; the Democrat, millionaire Phil Maloof. He mailed videotapes in black boxes questioning Wilson’s ethics, and she countered with a flier […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Timber mills close in the Northwest
BOISE, Idaho – When an angry mob of Boise Cascade Corp. sawmill workers gathered in front of the Idaho Conservation League office in late July, staffer John McCarthy thought twice about going outside. At a similar rally earlier this year, a timber worker grabbed McCarthy by the neck and said, “If I was younger, I’d […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Writing on native ground in New Mexico
ZUNI PUEBLO, N.M. – From far out in the high desert of western New Mexico, green-leaved Chinese elms create a sharp burst of color, an island in the sagebrush and juniper and high red mesas that make up the Zuni landscape. This is home to 6,400 Zunis, one of 19 Indian pueblos that spread across […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Who will be the president?
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – Navajo Nation presidents have been playing musical chairs for the past six months, and it’s not over yet. After President Albert Hale resigned last February to avoid charges that he’d accepted gifts or loans from companies doing business with the tribe, his replacement was Vice President Thomas Atcitty. Atcitty lasted only […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
The Wayward West
Western Republicans are tightening the noose on an inland Northwest ecosystem study. Riders on the appropriations bill in the House and Senate would give the 4-year-old Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project 4 months to live (HCN, 6/23/97). “We made an endangered species list for bureaucratic boondoggles and (the project) just got listed,” Idaho Rep. […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Grab your place in paradise
The pearly gates to Montana’s Paradise Valley will soon open. The Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age religious sect headquartered there, wants to sell 3,000 acres of a 10,000-acre Montana ranch that spokesman Christopher Kelley calls “a kind of Mecca.” He says the sale will generate cash for “satellite churches’ growing around the world. […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Prairie dogs get a cease-fire
Prairie dog shooting means big business for many small towns across the Great Plains states. So when the U.S. Forest Service recently closed the 70,000-acre Conata Basin in South Dakota’s Buffalo Gap National Grasslands to shooters, many prairie dog shooters and businesses across the plains grew wary. Shooters “make up about 70 percent of my […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Not so hog wild in Colorado
When D&D hog farm moved its South Dakota-based operation to northeast Colorado, Sue Jarrett thought she was getting a good neighbor. What she got instead, she says, were overpowering smells and polluted water. “The odor is so sickening that at times it drives you back in your house,” says Jarrett, who was born and raised […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Mining the crown jewels
-We’ve put our blood and sweat into this for 50 years,” says 81-year-old A.J. Jackson, an owner of the Rainbow Talc Mine in Southern California’s Death Valley. Jackson is talking about the mine he ran sporadically between 1952 and 1972. Now, Jackson and his partners want to dig again. The only problem: Rainbow Talc now […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Tribe wins a third of a lake
A big chunk of Lake Coeur d’Alene, the crown jewel of the Idaho Panhandle tourism industry, is once again owned by the people that share its name. In late July, a federal court ruled that the 1,450-member Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe owns the lake bed and banks of the southern third of the lake, as […]