Evidence suggests that wolves may have returned to Colorado, and they are here to stay.
Skeletons in the closet
Utah State Archaeologist Kevin Jones knows his bones
The other Big One
Can the West handle the coming storm?
Cross(border) winds
California looks to Mexico for renewable energy projects
Water is for fighting
The article on the Westlands Water District is on the whole a good review of the problems arising from conflicting demands on a limited resource (HCN, 1/18/10). However, the balance between viewpoints is skewed in favor of agricultural interests by omitting the role of the Bureau of Reclamation, which encouraged agribusiness by failing to enforce…
Visitors, after hours
It’s been cold, snowy and oddly humid here in Paonia, Colo., but a few intrepid souls still ventured out to visit us. Longtime subscribers Dave Morgan and Bobbie Sumberg dropped by our office while on a trip from their home in Santa Fe, N.M. Unfortunately, by the time they reached HCN, we’d already closed for…
The limits of memory
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life NovelJeannette Walls288 pages,hardcover: $26.Scribner, 2009. In some respects, Lily Casey Smith, the heroine of Jeannette Walls’ Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, is a classic example of an independent, hardworking Western woman: a rancher, schoolteacher, businesswoman, wife and mother. Lily, however, is in the unique position of being both the…
Learning to live landlocked
When I lived in southern Alaska, everything revolved around the ocean. Our island was reachable only by plane or boat, and you couldn’t get anywhere dry or metropolitan without hopping an Alaska Airlines jet. The sea was the only constant in a place that seemed beset by continual change — people moving in and out…
A nature lover’s bucket list
Lately, I’ve been struggling to stay positive about the climate. It’s not easy. The 190 nations at the November summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on greenhouse gases, and Congress seems determined to avoid the issue. Worst of all, polls show cooling anxiety about climate change among Americans; these days, we are too consumed…
A dark and disjointed journey
Day out of DaysSam Shepard304 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. The short stories in Day out of Days, Sam Shepard’s new collection, have an unhinged, out-there appeal, reflecting their eclectic, mostly Western settings. Some individual stories are even named after their locations: “Williams, Arizona,” for one, and “Cracker Barrel Men’s Room (Highway 90 West).”…
Fast and loose with facts
Ed Marston’s piece on Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America can hardly be called a “review” (HCN, 1/18/10). Marston’s article simply rehearses — much more succinctly than Brinkley’s 900-plus pages — the life and political accomplishments of an amazing American leader. What Marston fails to do, is to evaluate…
One long haul
On Jan. 7, a train hauled 136 containers of uranium tailings away from the old Atlas mill site along the Colorado River just north of Moab, Utah — the biggest load since the colossal cleanup effort began last May. Twice a day, locomotives chug off from a siding near the 439-acre site (130 acres of…
Quicksilver questions
The subject of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and cement plants has always been fraught with uncertainties (HCN, 1/18/10). Industry influence at the congressional level often got transferred down as pressure on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Stephen Johnson, Bush’s administrator of the EPA, and his deputy, Marcus Peacock, seemed intent on reducing EPA’s…
The road to community
My husband came in this morning and gave me our latest copy of HCN and said “read this article (‘Ending Hunger’)” (HCN, 1/18/10). I read about Silver City, the backpack program to end hunger and how it evolved, and just marveled at it all. “Yes” to standing at our local food bank and packing bags…
Prodigal Dogs
Have gray wolves found a home in Colorado?
The squeal of silence
Alone in a cabin, a writer finds that silence is more than the absence of noise
Supreme beings
After gutting campaign finance, the high court may go after the Commerce Clause
The paradoxical call of the wild
Dogs Vamped by She Wolves Are Leaving Homes. This was a headline that ran — not on the cover of Cosmo, describing some new coupling trend between more-than-foxy older women and ugly younger guys — but in Western newspapers in 1924. It was meant literally, and it gives insight into the battle against wolves that…