I’ve been reading back issues of HCN while living and working in Vientiane, Laos. As a native Coloradan, outdoor enthusiast, and anti-corporate child of hippies, I tend to oppose commercial development of public lands and natural resources. However, on a small point, I found myself agreeing with the mining representative in “Hardrock Showdown” (HCN, 11/22/10). […]
Departments
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Of (captive) wolves and men
“Possessing the Wild” illustrated two truths: First, the birth of any wolf into captivity is a tragedy (HCN, 11/14/11). Despite their close genetic relationship to dogs, wolves are not suited to living with people. Second, there is no universal captive wolf or wolf-dog experience. The vast majority of animals do not live in the facilities […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Jon Huntsman Jr. — a pragmatic Westerner for the White House
For proof that Western politicians, at their best, have a pragmatic nonpartisan streak, check out the only one seriously trying to win the presidency in 2012: Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. Not only is Huntsman the best-qualified candidate in the Republican primary, he’s also seeking to revive fact-based, reasonable Republicanism. As Utah’s governor from 2005 to […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
The year 2011, in apocalyptic weather events
Worried that the world may end in 2012 à la the alleged Mayan prophecies? You might want to get your head out of those New Age clouds and look around: 2011 was plenty apocalyptic worldwide and in the West. Here’s a month-by-month roundup of the region’s freakiest climate and weather events. January 2011 is ushered […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Girls gone wild — 1900s style: A review of Nothing Daunted
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the WestDorothy Wickenden304 pages, hardcover: $26.Scribner, 2011. “We did not want strays. We had serious matrimonial intentions, and we decided that young, pretty schoolteachers would be the best bet of all,” cowboy Ferry Carpenter recollected about his part in the effort to attract “schoolmarms” to […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Animal migration occurs all around us and yet remains a mystery
Every spring and fall, I’m surprised by an odd sound above my house in Colorado. It’s somewhere between a creak and a hoot, an eerie, echoing call, like the one I imagine some dinosaurs used to make. It always takes me a minute to place it, but suddenly it’s unmistakable: It’s the sound of sandhill […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Love and loss on a Wyoming ranch: A review of Lime Creek
Lime CreekJoe Henry160 pages, hardcover: $20.Random House, 2011. Woody Creek, Colo.-based Joe Henry studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with John Irving, but then detoured from writing fiction to work as a rancher, becoming a successful lyricist along the way. Henry’s ravishing first work of fiction, Lime Creek, must have been inspired by the Western […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Stitching habitat together across public and private lands
In October 1983, ahead of an unusually harsh winter, groups of pronghorn in south-central Wyoming began what should have been a routine journey to their sage-freckled winter range on the Red Rim near Rawlins. But a newly completed, five-foot-tall, 28-mile-long woven wire fence blocked the way. Rancher Taylor Lawrence said he’d erected it around the […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Holiday break
While you snuggle up with your last issue of High Country News for 2011, our editorial staff will be taking a two-week publishing break to catch up on editing, writing, reporting and other projects, and, of course, spend time with family and friends. Expect your first issue of 2012 around Jan. 25. We wish you […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Cream of the crop
“Milk and Water Don’t Mix,” was wonderfully interesting (HCN, 11/28/11). I was especially impressed when writer Stephanie Paige Ogburn mentioned the origin of feedlot dairying by Dutch immigrants in southern L.A. County, its subsequent shift to Chino in San Bernardino County, and more recently to the Bakersfield area. I didn’t think many people who didn’t […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
What is that dead deer thinking about, and why is he hanging there?
Ten points. That’s what my hunter friends would have noticed. They would have coveted the owner of those 10 points, would have risen early in the autumn morning chill, crept toward him silently as the sun warmed their backs, until they heard the echo of his hooves in the distance, caught a flash of brown, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Deer smugglers and avocado thieves
THE WESTWe won’t go into the Freudian implications of hunters who covet wall decorations fashioned from the enormous antlers of the deer or elk they “hunted” on a fenced game ranch, but in Texas, where everything is supposed to be bigger than life, the desire for giant racks has gotten entirely out of hand. Smugglers […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Water-quality standards unfairly burden rural communities
Updated 12/14/11 When Clarence Aragon began managing the half-century-old Mora Mutual Water and Sewer Association 12 years ago, he thought he was helping the environment. Hundreds of households around Mora, N.M. — a small river-valley community on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains — flush wastewater through subpar septic systems, sending trickles […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
A tree-climber’s tale of harvesting cones to save whitebark pines
You wipe the sweat out of your eyes with a sap-stiffened glove, clinging tightly with your other hand to the one live branch, thick as a hammer handle, that is keeping you up here and alive, 30 feet or so above the rocky earth, while your boots struggle to balance on twigs and your knees […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Tribes try selective fishing to boost catch without harming wild salmon
“Power up!” yells Capt. James Ives as a pulley motor begins hauling a heavy fishing net onto the Dream Catcher‘s deck, here on the Columbia River in northeastern Washington. Three crewmembers from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation fold the net, piling its floats on one side of the boat and pleating its lead-weighted […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The joys of ‘virtual hiking’
THE WESTCouch potatoes, rejoice: Pretty soon, you won’t have to actually set foot on a trail through the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone national parks. Instead, you’ll be able to enjoy an online “virtual hiking expedition,” compliments of the energy-bar maker Nature Valley. The company hired crews with 360-degree cameras to hike 100 miles through each […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Land trusts thrive despite, and because of, the Great Recession
The Great Recession, it turns out, may have been good for one thing in the West: private land conservation. From the tiny Orient Land Trust in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which has nearly doubled its holdings to 2,260 acres, to the 138,041 acres of ranchland protected by the California Rangeland Trust over the last five […]