A police sergeant in Arvada, Colo., said that in his 15 years in law enforcement, he’d never charged a guy on a horse with drunk driving. But when the tipsy rider ambled into a busy strip mall on his horse, you couldn’t help but notice that he was falling out of the saddle, reported 9news.com. […]
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Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
We’re Listening
Below are some of the comments you sent us on the most recent reader survey. Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think. We’ll be mulling over your responses during the coming weeks, and using them to help chart our course. Keep the mag as it is with stories like “My […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
Modern-day La Mancha
Are environmentalists re-enacting Don Quixote’s crusade against windmills — while ignoring the real monster of climate change?
Posted inHeard Around the West
Houseboaters beware
During the West’s last nine years of drought, the level of Lake Mead, which backs up behind Hoover Dam, has plummeted 100 vertical feet, causing unexpected and peculiar things to happen. Where there used to be flat water with no pizzazz on the reservoir’s edge 120 miles east of Las Vegas, a dangerous rapid has […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Visitors from underground
VISITORS FROM UNDERGROUNDPat Jablonsky and Bill Yett of nearby Delta stopped in to our Paonia, Colo., office to renew their subscription and tell us about their recent trip to New Mexico’s Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area. They showed us astonishing photos of the Snowy River passage, named for the miles-long formation of bright […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
Let’s Get Small
Can ‘hamster power’ help save the West’s landscapes — and the world?
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
The other Trail of Tears
Selling Your Father’s Bones: America’s 140-Year War Against the Nez Perce TribeBrian Schofield 368 pages, hardcover: $26.00.Simon & Schuster, 2009. A white 30-something British guy might not seem like the obvious source to turn to for a definitive history of the persecution and flight of the Nez Perce — one of the most complex, tragic […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
See you in July
This will be the last issue you receive for a month; we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around July 20, and in the meantime, visit hcn.org for fresh blog posts, new Writers on the Range columns and other exciting content. VISITORSOn her only day […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
Catching the sun
This March, a massive photovoltaic panel at SunEdison’s Alamosa solar power plant broke loose in a strong wind and began to spin atop its pillar. So plant service technician Joe Valdez, a thick-armed 36-year-old with an easy grin and expertise in everything from alfalfa farming to hydraulics, got creative. He lassoed the sun-sucking device and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Yuck
Here’s a conundrum: How do you convince 2,000 backpackers to use human poop bags at a crowded camping area high in the mountains this summer? Over the years, Conundrum Hot Springs has become the most heavily visited overnight wilderness destination in the Aspen area. You might also call the 11,000-foot-high hot springs slob central: The […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Land of many uses?
As the Denver Post blithely put it, “the geyser was not erupting at the time.” The time, that is, when two seasonal workers at Yellowstone National Park urinated into Old Faithful. But something almost as startling was happening, thanks to technology: The destructive silliness was covered live by a Webcam. As NewWest.net put it: “If […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Rise up swinging
Northern Cheyenne boxer Duran “Junior” Caferro takes on challenges inside the ring and out
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Rebooting Urban Watersheds
Activists restore blighted Bay Area creeks — and impoverished communities
Posted inHeard Around the West
The love that shall not be named
Kelley Coffman-Lee is a vegan who likes tofu so much she wanted her license plate to proclaim it to the world: ILVTOFU. Not acceptable, reports the Denver Post; the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles bans “FU” altogether, even with “TO” placed in front of it, because “FU” so often refers to something entirely different from […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
Visitors going and coming
On his way out of town, Nick Berling stopped into HCN‘s headquarters in Paonia, Colo. He had just quit his job on a local farm and was Boulder-bound — picking up the books again to study environmental engineering at the University of Colorado. Nick is an avid skier and an artist. While hunting for property […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Old trees, new ideas, and humility
Old Growth in a New World:A Pacific Northwest Icon ReexaminedThomas A. Spies and Sally L. Duncan, eds.344 pages, softcover, $32.00.Island Press, 2009. Many of this book’s 28 authors are the usual suspects — Jerry Franklin, Jack Ward Thomas, Tom Spies and other experts on the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. In Old Growth in […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Forestry from the inside
The Forester’s Log: Musings from the WoodsMary Stuever264 pages, softcover: $24.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Forester Mary Stuever started writing newspaper columns “to share my love for forests and my passion for my chosen profession.” It’s a profession that has changed dramatically during the last 25 years, and in her new collection, The Forester’s […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
California prepares for the next burn
Officials — and homeowners — start to accept the inevitability of wildfire