Here in Paonia, Colo., March brought us 60-degree days and 20-degree days, glorious sunshine and freezing sleet — sometimes during the same half-hour. Zac and Lisa Tuthill stopped by on one of the wet, snowy days, on their way home from Moab to Laramie, Wyo., where she’s a psychotherapist and he’s studying civil engineering. A […]
Departments
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
It’s the population, stupid — part I
Thanks for Charles Bowden’s grim but clear-eyed view of events along the border and Jonathan Thompson’s editorial relating them to too many people and too much consumption (HCN, 3/1/10). There’s no doubt that our addiction to consumption creates social and environmental costs, but I have a quibble regarding Thompson’s statement that it is “the most […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
A once and future abundance
The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World Rowan Jacobsen 176 pages, hardcover: $20. Bloomsbury USA, 2009. The Olympia oyster — small, slow-growing, sensitive to heat and cold, copper in color and taste — is a rarity among shellfish. Yet this fussy bivalve, the West Coast’s only native oyster, once carpeted intertidal areas from Alaska to […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
It’s the population, stupid — part II
I am sorry that Charles Bowden, in “The War Next Door,” does not mention Mexico’s population growth among the causes of Mexican migration into the United States (HCN, 3/1/10). It is, he says, “a natural shift of a species.” Perhaps, but it is also a case of the mushrooming of a people. Since I was […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Saving the U.S. Forest Service
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved AmericaTimothy Egan336 pages, hardcover: $27. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. The United States of America leaped into the 20th century with a surfeit of natural resources and a flamboyant leader. Early in his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt proposed a radical idea: Set aside and protect certain parts […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Out of the cubicle, into the canyon
Wilderness provides consolation after a layoff.
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
“Just journalism or hegemonic narrative?”
Thank you for doing a series on environmental justice (HCN, 2/1/10). The successes of the environmental justice movement stand undeniably. After reading the first article in the “Green Justice” series, though, I felt confused and puzzled by your framing of the EJ movement, one of its national leaders, and those who have worked and continue […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
More grousing
Greater sage grouse — whose numbers have declined by 90 percent over the past century — deserve federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on March 5. For now, though, they won’t get it: The feds say they have to deal with other species first. As non-decisive as it was, […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Pioneer stock
Finding the ivory-billed woodpecker of the plant world
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
March Madness in Indian Country
Wyoming Indian High School dominates the basketball court
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Untold tales of the American frontier
Images of the black experience in the West
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Cutting away from the pack
Keith Allred chats about his run for governor in uber-Republican Idaho … as a Democrat
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
When you carry your home with you, when are you home?
At High Country News, we think a lot about that overused but still relevant term, “a sense of place.” I don’t know exactly what it means, either. But I think it involves knowing that we’re here, rather than, well, over there. And that we understand at least some of the characteristics that make this place […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Mobile Nation
A motorhome metropolis blooms each year in the Arizona desert.
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Ewe-haul
About 50 years ago, state wildlife officials decided to try to restore bighorn sheep to Wyoming’s Seminoe Mountains. Between 1958 and 1985, they brought in six new batches — 236 total — from the more prolific Whiskey Mountain herd to the northwest. But the Seminoe herd failed to sustain itself, and by last fall, there […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
See you in Spring
In our 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule, we’ll be skipping the next issue. Look for HCN in your mailbox again around April 12, and in the meantime check our Web site, hcn.org, for news and commentary. SMALL-TOWN DISCOVERIESIntern Nick Neely had only been working at High Country News for three weeks when he happened to stroll past […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
More DNA debunking
Kevin Jones was certainly the first person with any kind of authority to step forward and dispute the claim that Everett Ruess’ bones had been found, but Paul Leatherbury should get a bit of credit, too, for locating Ruess’ dental records, which David Roberts of National Geographic Adventure overlooked at the University of Utah special […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Nano-scale activism
Regarding Ray Ring’s article about executive change at large environmental organizations, I understand the “frustration with boards of directors, low pay and constant fund-raising pressure” (HCN, 3/1/10). That’s why I started Community for Sustainable Energy (www.cforse.org) in 2006. I worked with Clean Water Action and an affiliated national network for six years. I started CFORSE […]