In Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, good intentions are responsible for the introduction of exotic buffelgrass – but all the good intentions in the world may not be enough to save the desert now that this invasive and fire-prone plant is spreading.
Fire: Friend and foe
Thirteen years ago, I witnessed a new, hard-edged ecology that operates in the West. I was sitting in the stands of our small rodeo arena, watching irritated bulls throw off a succession of young men like so many rag dolls, when a bolt of lightning ripped the sky, striking the juniper-clad ridge across the valley.…
Two weeks in the West
“I pray that this power plant won’t be built,” Louise Benally told the crowd in the Burnham Chapter House – a sort of Navajo version of a town hall – on July 24. Benally and more than two dozen others, mostly Navajo men in big cowboy hats and older women in velveteen dresses and turquoise,…
The Sultans of Spuds
Battered by their own success, farmers form the ‘OPEC of Potatoes’
Scientists and the city
Urban ecology studies in Phoenix teach lessons for the West’s arid metropolises
Testing the waters
Waves and tides may one day provide electricity to homes – but a backlash is building
Old West meets Old World in Big Horn
Shane Winkler pops open a can of Bud Light and stuffs a wad of Copenhagen into his mouth before turning on the sound system at the Big Horn Equestrian Center just outside Sheridan in northern Wyoming. It’s a hot July afternoon. The only shade is in the top rows of the small set of bleachers…
Give Arnie and diesel their due
Things are slanty all over. It’s no secret that my fellow granola leftys don’t like Hummer-driving meatheads (and John Mecklin really doesn’t) (HCN, 7/23/07). While it’s true that hydrogen is a sham, Schwarzenegger deserves a little more credit than HCN seems willing to give. Your article somehow omitted that the MTV episode that he appeared…
Today, Bozeman; tomorrow, Billings
Some folks just don’t want to see past the stereotypes. Regarding “The Aroma Of Tacoma” by Karen Mockler, how would Ms. Mockler like it if I advertised via a syndicated column in over 40 newspapers across the West that her town of choice, Billings, Mont., suffered perpetual Missoula insecurity syndrome and was populated by nothing…
Keeping up with the Joneses
Isabelle Groc’s article, “When the Joneses go solar,” would have been more properly titled “When the Joneses build an 8,000-square-foot monument to excess consumption on five acres, they go solar to make the neighbors think they give a hoot about the environment” (HCN, 7/23/07). Couldn’t Ms. Groc have found a home that reflected consideration for…
Living precariously with wolves and cattle
Through the end of June last year, we got along fine with the wolves. I was working on a ranch in Montana’s Madison Valley, where the wolves ran elk to exhaustion in the high country while yearling cattle fattened on the lower pastures of the ranch. Peaceful coexistence with predators seemed within our grasp, and…
Sculpting a reason to love the wind
NAME Gary Bates AGE 61 HOMETOWN Amsterdam, Montana OCCUPATION Sculptor, former farmboy KNOWN FOR Creating huge kinetic sculptures SAYS “I don’t know if these pieces are going to work. I hope they are. But you never know for sure.” WHAT THE HECK DOES “KETCHERSCHMITT” MEAN, ANYWAY? It’s a made-up word combining “catcher’s mitt” and “Messerschmitt”…
Heard Around the West
ARIZONA Paradise Valley, a posh town of 14,500 people in the Phoenix area, boasts houses that cost more than $20 million, and it’s nothing if not persnickety about urban necessities such as cell-phone towers. The town’s planning commission recently ruled that the first tower to be erected must wear a disguise as a palm tree…
Dear friends
AMERICAN BIKERS, IRISH DOGS, BRITISH WALKERS Jay Bagley came to town for the “Top of the Rockies” BMW motorcycle rally, held in Paonia every year. Jay says he’s fallen in love with this part of Colorado and might move here from Sacramento, Calif., where he works in Medicaid fraud reduction. Another biker, Vern Holm of…
The Weed-wackers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Bonfire of the Superweeds.” Sue Rutman had been warned: Buffelgrass, she’d been told, loved disturbance. Pulling up the weed would only overturn more desert soil, spread seeds, and encourage its expansion. But as the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument botanist watched buffelgrass cover longer…
Bonfire of the Superweeds
In the Sonoran Desert, good intentions combust