Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Updated 4/9/13 The only map I have shows the way out of Las Vegas — always a good thing to know. It is crisp and folded-up on the passenger seat and it says to take the eastbound interstate, […]
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Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
A photographic journey through Montana’s vanished towns
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. We recommend that you use the Gallery View option to enjoy these photographs. When I arrived at the crossroads of Cartersville Road and Highway 446, I expected to photograph only a decrepit old schoolhouse; after all, I was […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Tribal casinos expand and go upscale
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. The Navajo Nation’s first casino opened in 2008 with a dramatic design — a simple, massive structure shaped like a tent. Prominently located between Interstate 40 and the red-rock cliffs just east of Gallup, N.M., it’s a shell […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
A (futile) line in the oil sands
As a lifelong conservationist and the former head of the Izaak Walton League of America, I think environmental opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is wrong (“Taking it to the streets,” HCN, 2/18/13). Climate change is a vital issue that must be addressed, but drawing a line in the oil sands will not help. Canada’s […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Visitors to public lands seek different experiences than in the past
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. People who visit Oregon’s state parks have a surprising desire to stay in yurts, even booking them months in advance. Eighteen state parks offer 96 “standard yurts” described by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department as “really cool” […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Beijing’s toxic brew, explained
The really big difference between air quality in Salt Lake City and Beijing — indeed, any city of size that lies north of the Yangtze River — stems from particulates and other emissions in the exhaust from many widely dispersed furnaces whose associated boilers feed into district heating systems, which are the primary means for […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
It’s time to get real
The San Luis Valley is a wonderful place that needs to be preserved (“Farming on the Fringe,” HCN, 2/18/13). The water issues will only get worse as the climate goes into this hotter drier spell — one that could last thousands of years. I’m glad the local people are working on a solution to their […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Travel, HCN-style
Note: This is an introduction to a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. My wife, Linda, and I try to avoid the expected when we travel. When our kids were young, for instance, we all vacationed for several days in Orlando, Fla., the site of Disney World. But we didn’t spend […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Trouble for more than one Arizona river
Thanks for spreading the news of growing threats to the San Pedro (“Standoff on the San Pedro,” HCN, 2/18/13). However, the San Pedro is not “the Southwest’s last free-flowing major desert river.” In fact, the Verde River is the longest surviving living river in Arizona. A much larger river, it supports a healthy riparian habitat […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Field notes from a solo paddle in Alaska’s Inside Passage
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Mid-day on the last Fourth of July, I sat in my kayak and watched a parade like nothing I’d ever seen: Icebergs shaped like elaborate floats bobbed past me, one resembling an eagle, another a house, still others […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Kids in the backcountry: The earlier, the better
Note: This essay is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. The three of them race out in front of us — dots of colorful energy bushwhacking across the tundra, elevation over 10,000 feet, deep in the northern Wyoming’s Washakie Wilderness. Ruby, 11, Sawyer, 13, and Eli, 14. They […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Westerners love erotic landscapes
Note: This essay is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. On this October morning in southern Idaho, the air is dry and frosty, and the shifting sand dunes reflected in the lake at Bruneau are soft and curvy –– feminine shapes. The woman I love becomes one with […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Lost and Found Montana: Cartersville
Photographer Jeremy Lurgio unexpectedly finds that life carries on in Cartersville, a small Montana town whose name was struck from official state highway maps in 2000. Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West.
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
HCN takes a break
Note: This Dear Friends is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. In mid-March, as the last of the scanty winter snow melts here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox, […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Craig Childs on hidden, trail-free BLM gems
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talks with HCN contributing editor and Western adventurer Craig Childs. Thumbnail photo licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Flickr user Conservation Lands Foundation.
Posted inHeard Around the West
Football players and other thugs
MONTANA After former Democratic Congressman Pat Williams attacked a certain sacred cow at the University of Montana, reaction was swift. Here’s what he told The New York Times: “We’ve had sex assaults, vandalism, beatings by football players. The university has recruited thugs for its football team, and this thuggery has got to stop.” Williams, now […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Scaredy-cats and dogs
IDAHO Some state legislators like to rail against government intruding into people’s lives — unless, of course, those same legislators want to do the intruding themselves. Idaho Republican State Sen. John Goedde recently introduced a bill requiring all high school students to read “and comprehend” Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a doorstop of a novel about […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Lake Mead’s retreat leaves Nevada ghost town high and dry
Looking down on a Nevada valley from a rocky ledge near the edge of Lake Mead, it was hard to believe that the bustling town of St. Thomas had ever thrived here. A woman shielded her eyes from the October sun and asked our guide, “Is this it?” Eighty years ago, neighbors gossiped under cottonwood […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Global warming’s reluctant poster child
When a report warning of global warming’s disastrous impacts on skiing garnered national headlines in December, activists hoped the news would encourage a serious response both at home and in Washington, D.C. But the ski industry itself, where bad press means all the difference between a banner year and a bust, greeted the headlines with […]