THE WEST Back in the late 1970s, Doug Weinant, a just-retired range boss in the Crawford country of western Colorado, had the reputation of being a genius with hummingbirds. He and his wife, Alma, who lived in a remote mountain cabin, would put out a bunch of sugar-water feeders in the spring, and dozens of […]
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Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Hidden in plain sight: A review of The American Wall
The American Wall: From the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of MexicoMaurice Sherif 224 + 160 pages, two volumes, hardcover: $150.University of Texas Press, 2011 In its ungainly proportions, Maurice Sherif’s The American Wall mimics its massive subject, the U.S.-Mexico border fence. The “book” is actually two giant volumes enclosed in a slipcase. Heft one […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
FLDS continues abusive polygamist practices in Utah and Arizona
Rumors swirled around the courthouse in San Angelo, Texas, last summer. Prosecutors had charged Warren Jeffs — leader of the nation’s most notorious polygamous sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — with sexually assaulting two underage girls in the group’s Texas compound. For weeks, spectators whispered that the prosecutors possessed a […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Surveying the oft-snubbed (and very cool) spider with citizen scientists
It’s Saturday morning in early May at the Bluff Lake Nature Center, a modest suburban oasis in northeast Denver. An eager posse of spider hunters clusters around its intrepid leader, Paula Cushing, a petite woman with a dark braid, deep-set eyes and a fearless affection for eight-legged creatures. “Without spiders, we’d be up to our […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Sea lion squatters in So-Cal
CALIFORNIA “A large gang of sea lions” is occupying three docks at Ventura in Southern California, the first time the 800-pound animals have squatted within the harbor itself. Until recently, the sociable sea lions congregated on large buoys that lead out of the harbor, but now, thanks to what rawstory.com describes as the animals’ “hostile […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Gregory Jaczko’s resignation weakens federal nuclear regulation
Two weeks before he resigned as chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on May 21, Gregory Jaczko publicly wrist-slapped Southern California Edison, whose two-gigawatt nuclear plant now sits idle on the Southern California coast. Utility spokesman Stephen Pickett had just announced that the troubled facility could be back online before midsummer. Jaczko swiftly dashed […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Learning a landscape by tracking its rivers
I follow a blue thread on my atlas. The line labeled “Clark Fork” appears to end at Lake Pend Oreille. To confirm it, I turn from my atlas to my computer and consult Google, Wikipedia, the Clark Fork Coalition’s website. I feel guilty; it seems like cheating to use a computer screen to learn about […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Calling for a crackdown on polygamous crime
Once, on a rural Western highway, my wife and I came upon a small settlement we’d never noticed before. Curious, we turned off and discovered an unusual place. Many of the houses were huge — almost like dormitories. The women wore bonnets, long braids and pioneer-style dresses over homemade-looking pants; even their ankles were covered. […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Helping hikers before they get hurt
“Search and rescue” conjures up adrenaline-pumping images: rescuers rappelling down cliffs, stretchers dangling from helicopters. But it rarely evokes rangers simply offering advice, e.g., “That 12-ounce water bottle may not get you through an 18-mile hike in 110-degree heat. But there’s another great trail. …” About 20 national parks however, have added such preventative search […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Fantasy politics
“Over the last 30 years,” says (Arizona state Sen. Al) Melvin, “mining, lumbering and grazing have come to a screeching halt, snuffed out by the so-called environmental practices of the Forest Service and BLM” (HCN, 5/14/12, “Sagebrush skirmish”). Is there any chance that reality could enter into this debate? The first 10 of those 30 […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
On the hunt for abalone poachers in Northern California
Last spring, Don Powers steered his government-issue pickup down Highway 1, the thin ribbon of blacktop that hugs California’s North Coast. The sun shone bright, the scent of salt hung on the wind, and the world felt rapturous. In fact, a crackpot preacher Harold Camping had prophesied that the Rapture would actually take place then […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Keep what’s public public
One of the very best things about the West is the availability of public land for all kinds of outdoor recreation (HCN, 5/14/12, “Sagebrush skirmish”). Conversely, a major shortcoming of the East is the lack of the same. Unfortunately, some of the very best public land has been misused and abused for decades by grazing, drilling, […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
L.A.’s wild underbelly
By publishing such an indispensable, comprehensive account of an issue that has been all but forgotten by local news organizations, HCN has filled a critical role in keeping an accurate narrative of the sediment management issue in Los Angeles alive and well (HCN, 5/14/12, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”). As Emily Green so eloquently explained, […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Let gravity do its thing
This round of the sediment management plan won’t provide a sustainable solution to the problem (HCN, 5/14/12, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”). But now is a good time to make the case for long-term solutions. For that, we’re going to have to rethink the flood control system, or rather, remember it as a functioning riparian […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Three cheers for Emily Green
You have done us all a great service by publishing a very important story about the oak woodland and the sediment dump (HCN, 5/14/12, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”). I consider myself a member of the “environmental” community in Southern California, and I am an avid HCN reader. It is good to see a piece […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
High Country News gets visitors and a new employee
Angela Caldwell started as HCN’s new circulation assistant in May. She’ll help us keep track of new subscriptions and renewals here at our home office in Paonia, Colo. A resident of the North Fork Valley for 14 years, Angela says she doesn’t miss the hustle of her hometown, Aurora, on the state’s busy Front Range. In […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Dancing with wolverines
When a wolverine splayed his huge clawed paw onto my shoulder, the tip of each powerful nail pressing firmly, I was filled with a reckless elation. But I remained still, because I recalled that wolverines have a special molar angled sharply inward that allows them to tear muscle and hide from carrion, pulverize bone. A […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Rattlesnakes in Walmarts, deer in malls
WASHINGTON AND IDAHO There are many things to expect when pushing a shopping cart around the outdoor garden department of a Walmart, but a poisonous snake is certainly not one of them. So when 47-year-old Mica Craig of Lewiston, Idaho, saw what he thought was a stick lying in the aisle of Walmart in Clarkston, […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Do subdivisions designed for conservation actually help wildlife?
For millennia, Colorado’s Yampa River Valley has followed the rhythms of wildlife mating and migration, the habits of elk and grouse and bear. The arrival of ranching in the 1880s altered the pattern a little, but radical change didn’t occur until the last half of the 20th century. That’s when the big ranches began to […]