Updated April 17, 2012 Last November, University of Wyoming economist Ben Rashford traveled across North Dakota to see the area’s famed prairie pothole region, a patchwork of wetlands and grass running from Iowa up through the Dakotas into eastern Montana. He rode with a member of the conservation group Ducks Unlimited, who showed him the […]
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Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Colorado’s only full-time water reporter
In 2004, Pueblo Chieftain publisher Bob Rawlings, assisted by his daughter, Jane, was running full-throated editorials against water transfers and occasionally making news himself. The not-exactly-impartial coverage of the controversy bothered Chris Woodka, then a managing editor. So he asked to be assigned to the water beat. “I said, ‘OK: I’m going to do it […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Colorado water diversions, urban and rural
I was born in Boulder, Colo., just long enough ago to witness the merging of the state’s Front Range communities into a megalopolis at the eastern foot of the Rockies. In my early 20s, I moved to the more sparsely populated Western Slope, spending time in Gothic, Leadville and Aspen before finally ending up in […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
HCN takes a spring break
In mid-March, as spring starts to sneak back to our hometown of Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox around April 16. ALL THINGS DIGITALAs an HCN subscriber, you get free access to all content on our website, […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Falling to pieces
I’ve lived in Tucson for more than 30 years and I have mourned the steady erosion of social cohesion, the death of the village that raises the child (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). Whether due to a transient population only invested in selfish seasonal pleasure, or to rugged land and a challenging climate, to dry air […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Generosity of voice and heart: A review of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest TrailCheryl Strayed336 pages, hardcover: $25.95. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. A well-worn hiking boot dominates the cover of Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail. It’s a striking symbol of tenacity and a visual reminder of how travelers braving the […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Limbaugh of the Left?
I read HCN religiously and hold it out to my right-wing friends as a source that can be trusted to present a Western perspective. But this lead story was flabbergasting (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). I felt like I was listening to a left-wing version of Rush Limbaugh. As a third-generation native Arizonan who lives two […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Stroke of insight: A review of Before the End, After the Beginning
Before the End, After the BeginningDagoberto Gilb194 pages, hardcover: $24.Grove Press, 2011. Before the End, After the Beginning, Dagoberto Gilb’s remarkable new fiction collection, begins with an arresting story written in lowercase letters, titled “please, thank you.” The reason becomes clear when a nurse reminds the narrator that he’s suffered a stroke, much as Gilb […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Requiem for Arizona
Better access to mental health care in Arizona is an admirable goal, but it will do little to mitigate the madness of 6.5 million people trying to hustle a living in a nearly waterless state (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). I grew up in Arizona in the 1950s, when it was a much more livable place. […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Watershed investments
National forest lands are the headwaters of some of our most coveted river systems and provide water for a range of uses (HCN, 2/20/12, “Trickle-down economics”). In the West, we rely on national forests to supply over half of our water. Climate change is increasing pressure on these water resources. The resulting threats — insect […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
What describes us doesn’t define us
Tom Zoellner has some great points about how Arizona fails the mentally ill, but I take issue with his assertion that Tucson neighborhoods are among the “coldest and most distant,” implying that we’re a hollow community and partially to blame for Gabby Giffords’ shooting (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). Zoellner says that he can attest to […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Scars of an unfinished ski area
South of Missoula, Mont., there’s an intriguing albeit unnatural landscape feature. Nine years ago, Tom Maclay cut 30 ski runs through his 2,900-acre family ranch, pursuing his vision of a ski resort on Lolo Peak. His proposed Bitterroot Resort resembled other popular ski ventures — an all-season, upscale residential village augmented by shopping, restaurants, a […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
The BLM struggles to get ahead of oil and gas development in the West
About 20 miles east of Lander, Wyo., cliffs rise from a sagebrush-laden basin between the Wind and the Sweetwater rivers. The erosion-carved rocks display unusually intact geological layers from 10 to 53 million years ago. Golden eagles and ferruginous hawks soar high above; greater sage grouse and pronghorn winter at the base. All this helped […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Unfinished zombie housing developments haunt the rural West
Matt Hail grew up in sweltering metropolitan Phoenix and spent 11 years selling women’s clothing, mostly wholesaling to department stores on the West Coast and across the Southwest. The job was boring, but he enjoyed vacationing at ski resorts, including Colorado’s Vail and Breckenridge. Like many other people, he imagined changing his life by moving […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Watching the weather in California
At 15, I waited for storms. I wanted drama in my placid life. But when I finally got one — the 1991 Oakland firestorm — it destroyed a few thousand houses, including ours. Afterwards, my dad sank into a depression, my younger brother started climbing out of windows and into trouble, and for years, I […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Exploding hog farms and mysterious missing birds
ARIZONAPerhaps it was the “intense public scrutiny,” as Jeff Ruch, head of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, put it, or it may have been a sudden attack of common sense, but the director of the National Park Service, Jon Jarvis, recently reversed himself and announced that Grand Canyon National Park can soon ban disposable water […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Of cowboys and Indians: Ravi Malhotra helps rural businesses
Delta, ColoradoRavi Malhotra steps from an air-conditioned SUV and inhales the stench from mounds of human waste chips and rows of evaporation ponds cooking in the rising summer sun. This is the CB Industries-Delta Inc. Composting Facility, tucked along a back road among adobe buttes and gullies just outside of Delta, Colo., a conservative agricultural […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Teton County subdivisions
Distressed subdivisions (shown in red, above) have little or no infrastructure. Many more subdivisions, though empty or nearly so, aren’t called “distressed,” because they have completed infrastructure.
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
The paradox of the housing boom and bust
For the past several years, I have marveled at a basketball court planted in the middle of an empty field on the outskirts of Delta, Colo., a town of 9,000 people in rural western Colorado. It’s a good-looking court with a smooth cement surface and nets on the rims. But I never see anyone playing […]