Former Park Service supervisors Bill Wade and Ron Arnberger formed the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees to defend the national parks from what they see as the Bush administration’s ill-conceived changes.
Also in this issue: Six decades after Friant Dam killed off the San Joaquin River’s spring-run chinook, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Friant Water Users Authority are working with the federal government to restore both the fish and the river.
A river dribbles through it
Matt Jenkins did a nice job of covering stream restoration on the middle section of the Deschutes river, but he completely ignored the significant problems in the upper river. He writes, “Upstream from Bend, the river boils silvery green … charging through craggy chutes resplendent with ponderosa pine and Douglas fir (actually there’s a lot…
Travels in a sublime wasteland
It is a gift when an author transports you to the place he loves most. Writer Bill Broyles and photographer Michael Berman accomplish this in Sunshot: Peril and Wonder in the Gran Desierto, an exquisite portrait of place. Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta and Mexico’s Sierra Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar lie at the heart of…
Dancing to Biederbecke in Montana
In his first novel, Montana memoirist William Kittredge serves up a simmering potboiler, a deliberately old-fashioned stew rich with The-Summer-I-Became-a-Man mythology and a poor boy/rich girl romance. The mother of The Willow Field’s protagonist, Rossie Benasco, runs a sort of halfway house in Reno for divorcées: “By the time his voice changed, Rossie had seen…
The art of an alien landscape
Westerners are always surprised to realize that critics often dismiss the region’s art and literature as an inferior, derivative part of the American canon. Luckily, we have Alan Williamson, a poet and scholar with roots on both sides of the country, to set the record straight. In Westernness: A Meditation, he examines what it means…
Dina’s Place
Dina takes me down to the river, to a place behind her house on the reservation. “I want to show you my secret spot,” she says. “C’mon.” The Big Sioux River smells like piss some days, or a wasting body. In my second summer working for the tribe, I have come to know the river’s…
Whistling in the park
Thanks largely to Bob Woodward and his trusty Deep Throat, whistleblowing is a vastly overromanticized endeavor. Government professionals who wish to publicize, and thereby alter, official behavior that they find unethical or illegal actually have few attractive options. Speaking openly about the problems of the agency that employs you is apt to be extremely unhealthy…
Heard around the West
MONTANA The Washington Post couldn’t resist a colorful headline about the outcome of Montana’s tighter-than-tight race for the U.S. Senate: “A true blue libertarian: Stan Jones, the also-ran who changed the hue of politics.” Jones, 67, is certainly known for his ashen-blue face — the unfortunate result of drinking a homemade medicine that contained silver…
Two weeks in the West
“You guys caused the problem.” — John Mudre of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, blaming a biologist and the media for drawing too many people to a public hearing in Eureka, Calif., to consider Klamath dam relicensing. Two hundred people packed a hallway after the room reached its capacity of 350. FERC booked the same…
River Redux
Thanks to a historic and grudging compromise, water and salmon head back to the San Joaquin River, six decades after they were taken out.
Environmental change
In a startling post-election turn-about, Sen. Domenici moves to protect New Mexico’s Valle Vidal
Have knives and hooks, will travel
Name The Mobile Matanza Hometown Taos, New Mexico Measurements 36 feet long by 13 feet, 6 inches tall Items on her wish list Gloves, hook-eye sharpener, meat band saw blades, meat grinder plates, three-way oilstone, platters, long butchering aprons, butchering supplies and knives, brushes and scrapers. She’s sleek, full-figured and gleaming white, though not…
So where does that leave Marie Antoinette?
I am always appreciative of those narrow-minded, ignorant folks who see themselves as bigots and fascists when they openly declare themselves as such. So it is with much thanks that I welcome the neon sign that Laura Pritchett has placed on her forehead blinking “FASCIST” — it will warn others to stay away from her.…
Pie in the sky, a la carbon
In the story about Montana Gov. Schweitzer, Samuel Western seemed confused by the terms “pollution” and “climate change.” In the science community, we rarely refer to either of these words. They tend to be used by people who study policy. Typically, climate change is used to mean changes in long-term average patterns of temperature and…
The Jefferson state bird is not the spotted owl, either
It was exciting to see an article on the State of Jefferson. However, the article was not historically accurate. The State of Jefferson is not “a dream that has been around since 1941” as alleged by Emma Brown. Actually, a state was proposed for northwest California and southwest Oregon in 1852 — the State of…
They should shoot horses, shouldn’t they?
Our national obsession with keeping “wild” horses and burros on public lands that are incapable of supporting them has always struck me as bizarre, especially since it’s the result of our alleged love for them. Ask most any wild horse advocacy group and you’ll be told that wild horses are native wildlife and anyone who…
Old but Faithful
How a feisty group of government retirees faced down the Bush administration and changed the future of America’s national parks
Dear friends
CONGRATULATIONS, RICK CRAIG Former HCN intern Rick Craig (Summer ’91) of Missoula, Mont., recently won top prize in the Chicago Tribune’s 24th annual Nelson Algren Awards. The awards honor previously unpublished short fiction works by American writers, amateur or professional. Nelson Algren, “the voice of America’s dispossessed,” is best known for his novels The Man…
A director from central casting
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Old but Faithful.” She calls herself a “city gal” who emigrated as a child to the U.S. from Leicester, England, where her family owned a large manufacturing company. After a 16-year career working her way up the National Park Service bureaucracy, Mary Bomar is…