High Country News May 12, 2008
Feature
Boom! Boom!
An energy boom of unprecedented proportions is transforming western Colorado towns like Rifle, which just recently recovered from the last big energy boom – and a catastrophic bust.
Editor's Note
CRASH?
Just as western Colorado towns like Rifle have begun a new life as thriving “amenity” economies, an energy boom of unprecedented proportions has taken over the landscape.
Dear Friends
Dear friends
Ray Ring wins Hillman journalism award; Sopris Surfers gives free Internet to intern house; hcn.org; welcome, Mandela Lou Hoffman; Camas literary magazine; corrections.
News
The gospel according to Ron Gillett
Ron Gillett brings his anti-wolf crusade to the small farming town of Ashton, Idaho.
Climate Revolutionary
Law professor Mary C. Wood wants to use “atmospheric trust litigation” to tackle global warming in the courts.
The West’s wacky weather
The West’s weather is full of surprises this spring, with snowstorms, windstorms, rain and wildfires all happening at the same time.
Book Reviews
Words that mountains speak
In Contact: Mountain Climbing and Environmental Thinking, Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy has assembled 23 essays from a wide range of authors.
Small-town struggle in a big land
In his first book, The Enders Hotel, Brandon R. Schrand describes a childhood spent growing up in a funky hotel in the small town of Soda Springs, Idaho.
Essays
The mysticism of mud
Ernest Atencio ponders an exceptionally muddy Mud Season in New Mexico, and notes how readily most Westerners forget that we live in an arid landscape.
Coffeepots and climate
Shane Bondi seeks to understand the connection between a lump of coal, a power plant and that first cup of coffee in the morning.
Heard Around the West
Heard Around the West
John Slemp takes the ride of his life, into a volcano; Douglas Bruce strikes again; cow-pie tossing and other delights; imposter dog?; “jingle mail”; and “virtual” border fence is a botched-up bust.
Letters
Language is a virus
A quietus made ... Is no sin
No country for old men
California protestin'
Two Weeks in the West
Two weeks in the West
Wind and solar energy projects ramp up across the West; Conservation Reserve Program ramps down; the West’s volcanic history; potatoes are good for you.
