A recent gathering in Seattle drew a colorful flock of High Country News readers. Longtime subscriber Edith Forbes read from her new novel, The Lawnmower Lady, which opens with the death, in a New England pig shed, of Fay Kirkwood. Fay is surprised to find that not only has she not blinked out of existence, she is very much still present — and becomes privy to the capers that ensue when her niece honors Fay’s request that her remains be turned into “coyote lunch.”
Specifically, Fay had imagined that, rather than being embalmed or burned into so many greenhouse gases, her body could be left out to “be eaten by crows and coyotes and shat back into the soil to bloom as a trout lily.”
Is that so much to ask? Maybe. The request sets in motion what Forbes called “a comedy about death” in which she explores the question, “What if heaven or hell actually consist of finding out the results of everything we did while we were alive?”
In the audience were Edith’s sister Julia Forbes and her husband, Ed Waddington, also longtime subscribers. Edith and Julia, who grew up on a ranch in Sheridan, Wyoming, recall that it was their mother, Sarah Paine Forbes (“Sal” to her friends), who first introduced them to HCN. Sal strongly supported conservation, and she let lawmakers know it. After her passing in 2011, the kids were surprised to learn that her Xerox machine, which she used to make copies of letters that she sent to members of Congress, somehow found its way to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
We’re not sure if Sal knew HCN’s founder, Tom Bell, but they were certainly kindred spirits and probably traveled in the same circles. (Tom ranched near Lander, Wyoming.) Julia and Edith’s sister, Cherry Wunderlich, was also a longtime subscriber before her death a few years ago. We were sorry to hear of her passing, and that of her husband, John.
Also at the reading were subscribers Susan Yates and Patti Brandt. Susan, who said she’s been reading HCN for decades, introduced Patti to the publication. Patti said she especially appreciates our Indigenous Affairs coverage.
And speaking of books, we recently heard from longtime journalist/conservationist Peter Carrels, who just published a new volume called Cascades of the Big Sioux River. It documents the influence of the national environmental movement on Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the early 1970s, and the visionaries who saved the falls from industrialization.
Pete covered the Northern Plains for HCN in the 1980s and ’90s, and was part of the team that produced “Western Water Made Simple,” the project that won HCN the prestigious George Polk Award in 1986. (Shameless plug: You can buy an updated version of the map that was created as part of that project, which reimagines the Colorado River Basin as plumbing, at HCN’s online store at hcn.org/co-river-plumbing.) This is Pete’s third book, and it’s dedicated to HCN’s former editor and publisher, Betsy and Ed Marston.
Finally, we should have known better! Last month, I wrote that wolves would soon be introduced to Ouray County, south of HCN’s homebase on Colorado’s Western Slope. Erin McIntyre, co-publisher of the Ouray County Plaindealer (and one of HCN’s partners in the newly formed Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative) wrote to say that “the state’s wolf reintroduction plan is on hold now, after much controversy. This happened in January and there are no plans to release wolves here soon.”
Erin also said that the best way to support the Plaindealer’s environmental reporting is through Report for America, which serves as a “fiscal sponsor.” Make a donation.
Our apologies for the mix-ups!
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This article appeared in the May 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “What happens when we die.”
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