Magazine
June 27, 2005
A writer takes a 1,600-mile Greyhound bus ride from Salt Lake City into Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, and listens to the stories of the Westerners he meets. Also in this issue: The Bureau of Land Management is tightening its standards on what it considers worthwhile, "substantive" public comments from citizen activists.
Feature
A writer takes a 1,600-mile Greyhound bus ride from Salt
Lake City into Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, and listens
to the stories of the Westerners he meets
Editor's Note
If there’s a theme in this summer reading issue,
it’s that of crossings, an idea that really hit home when a
group of people from Kazakhstan recently spent time at
High Country News
Uncommon Westerners
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is striving to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and make his city environmentally
sustainable
Essays
The death of her old horse, Fury, leads a northern
Colorado writer to think about the changing aspects – and the
unchanging quirkiness – of her old hometowns of Bellvue and
LaPorte
A writer considers what he’s learned from living on
a rugged Western river in the New Mexico mountains
Dear Friends
Skipped issue; corrections and clarifications to Write-Off
on the Range and other stories; our mailbox runneth over
News
The Bureau of Land Management is tightening its standards
on what it considers worthwhile, "substantive" public comments from
citizen activists
Army Corps of Engineers will have to release water from
Columbia and Snake river dams to help salmon; Montana mining ban is
not a property "taking"; kinks in plan to drill for natural gas at
Colorado nuclear site.
A landowner locks a gate on a road into Arizona’s
Aravaipa Canyon, highlighting an increasingly bitter debate over
access to public lands in the West
A rocky western escarpment and the Petroglyph National
Monument have long held back Albuquerque’s sprawl, but now
the Volcano Heights development is coming, and a controversial road
through the monument may be built
Texas developer Rusty Nichols has barred public access to
Wilson Peak, a Colorado "fourteener" popular with
climbers
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it does not have
to consider new scientific information about genetics when
preparing recovery plans for rare species
California sea lions ate so many chinook salmon at
Bonneville Dam this year that some fishermen are calling for the
removal and even killing of the protected mammals
The Hilmar Cheese Company near Modesto, Calif., wants to
dig a deep well to dispose of its salty, milky wastewater
The Washington State Department of Transportation is
planning to build innovative wildlife passages and over-crossings
on a 15-mile section of I-90 east of Seattle
Book Reviews
In Ahead of Their Time, editors
Broughton Coburn and Leila Bruno collect the stories of the heroes
and heroines of the Wyoming wilderness movement
In Gardens of New Spain, William W.
Dunmire tells the story of how Mediterranean plants and foods came
to North America and changed the way its inhabitants eat
Photos and drawings from Candace Savage’s Prairie: A
Natural History give glimpses of a beautiful, diverse
region
In DeVoto’s West, Edward K.
Muller has collected 22 of Bernard DeVoto’s entertaining and
thought-provoking Harper’s magazine columns about the
West
In Stalking the Big Bird, wildlife
biologist Harley Shaw tells the story of his 27 years with the
Arizona Game and Fish Department
Heard Around the West
Giant-tire shortage; the rufous hummingbird "red menace";
preparing for death; potato problems; Spokes Spud Mr. Potato
Head
