It’s been cold, snowy and oddly humid here in Paonia, Colo., but a few intrepid souls still ventured out to visit us. Longtime subscribers Dave Morgan and Bobbie Sumberg dropped by our office while on a trip from their home in Santa Fe, N.M. Unfortunately, by the time they reached HCN, we’d already closed for […]
Departments
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
The road to community
My husband came in this morning and gave me our latest copy of HCN and said “read this article (‘Ending Hunger’)” (HCN, 1/18/10). I read about Silver City, the backpack program to end hunger and how it evolved, and just marveled at it all. “Yes” to standing at our local food bank and packing bags […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Witches and rifles
COLORADO Should the Urantians face persecution for their religious beliefs, they could always consider buying real estate in another part of the West, namely Colorado Springs. There, the U.S. Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worshipping area for “Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers,” according to the Associated Press. The academy has […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
The squeal of silence
Alone in a cabin, a writer finds that silence is more than the absence of noise
Posted inHeard Around the West
AZ End-o’-days
The Divine Administration’s headquarters sits on 165 acres in the Santa Cruz River valley south of Tucson. There, according to the Arizona Republic, Gabriel of Urantia oversees a religious order of about 100 followers, who believe that Adam and Eve were aliens placed on Earth – or Urantia – 38,000 years ago to help earthlings […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
Supreme beings
After gutting campaign finance, the high court may go after the Commerce Clause
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
The paradoxical call of the wild
Dogs Vamped by She Wolves Are Leaving Homes. This was a headline that ran — not on the cover of Cosmo, describing some new coupling trend between more-than-foxy older women and ugly younger guys — but in Western newspapers in 1924. It was meant literally, and it gives insight into the battle against wolves that […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Dangerous game
Western game wardens are hindered by huge territories, budget cuts
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Catch-and-release at HCN
A new and very talented crop of interns has just joined HCN. They’ll be here for the next six months, learning how a nonprofit media outlet works, and researching, interviewing and writing stories for us. A recipient of the Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, Nicholas Neely arrived in Paonia after six months in a remote Oregon […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Still evolving 40 years later
“The Shame of It!” That was the front-page headline of High Country News on Nov. 24, 1972. It was accompanied by a grim photo of a golden eagle that had been killed by sheep carcasses laced with poison by a rancher who was after coyotes. The stark headline proclaimed HCN founder Tom Bell’s unabashed alliance […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Finding freedom in Yosemite
GlorylandShelton Johnson278 pages, hardcover: $25.Sierra Club Books, 2009. Like its protagonist, Gloryland is a medley. In a novel that is part memoir, part historical fiction, and part poetry, Shelton Johnson tells the story of Elijah Yancy, a young man with African, Seminole and Cherokee bloodlines. Born in South Carolina on Emancipation Day, 1863, Yancy is […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
How the West was really won
Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire through Indian TerritoryPaul VanDevelder 352 pages, hardcover: $26.Yale University Press, 2009. Paul VanDevelder, author of Coyote Warrior, digs deeper into the rotten core of the American experience in his new book, Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire through Indian […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Fire and brimstone
Can it really be 20 years since Kierán Suckling, Gina Trott, Todd Schulke and Dan Moore descended on Albuquerque like a chapter out of the Old Testament? I remember them showing up, then marching out of, the slow-boat Wolf Coalition meetings. They looked like wild-eyed college kids. But their hastily assembled Wolf Action Group soon […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Sticks, stones, and enviros
The term “environmentalist,” or its more derogatory abbreviation “enviros” (HCN, 11/09/09), and — most derogatory of all — “en-varmint-alist” (HCN, 11/23/09) is used far too often in HCN without a counterpoint term for those who would place their own economic gain over the good of all. So I’d like to introduce a term for those […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The Group of 10 respond
The big greens grade themselves
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The Shot Heard Round the West
What resulted from activists’ 1990 challenge to the big greens
Posted inHeard Around the West
Odd jobs and animals
THE NATION Attention, unemployed daredevils: Jobs are opening up for athletic non-acrophobics. It helps if you’re the kind of risk-taker who thinks repairing the giant blades of a wind turbine sounds like good clean fun, in a blowy sort of way. The catch: The 122-foot arms don’t lower to the ground for tune-ups; instead, blade […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The grammar of picture writing
Explaining the “locator symbols” in petroglyphs
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The easy way to purify our geography
If it’s named for a scoundrel, change the namesake