This issue, we get to spend time with Gary Paul Nabhan as the legendary writer, activist and ethnobotanist wanders the Borderlands and discusses everything from books and borders and seed banks to the deep-rooted Indigenous cultures of a landscape he has loved and defended for the last 50 years. The Trump administration’s cuts to Bears Ears National Monument will not only devastate an irreplaceable landscape, they have sidelined five tribal nations’ involvement in managing their own ancestral territory. In Bozeman, Montana, a wildlife official works to prevent human-animal conflicts. Land transfers in Arctic Alaska could industrialize the region’s wildlife habitat and damage Alaska Native lifeways. Is a proposed large-scale solar project just another attempt to exploit Navajo Nation resources? The construction of California’s massive water infrastructure in the 1960s was thoroughly chronicled in contemporary photographs. What’s it like to be a Montana rancher who lives much of her life online? In the Southwest, the work of LGBTQ+ artists illuminates unique alternative spiritualities.
Even cowgirls get the Instagram blues
A Montana rancher wonders what is lost in her urge to share her Western life online.
‘Everyone deserves to have a good quality of life’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
The massive infrastructure projects of the 1960s wouldn’t work today
When people thought infrastructure could solve the arid West’s water problems.
Hexing AI slop with queer magic
LGBTQ+ artists showcase alternative spiritualities in an exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Large solar project on Navajo Nation leaves residents skeptical
As renewable energy expands, questions about how renewable the projects are regulated on Diné land emerge.
How Bozeman is preventing human-wildlife conflicts before they start
A ’wildlife first responder’ is developing a tool for coexistence.
On the road with a desert sage
A writer travels the Borderlands with ethnobotanist and author Gary Paul Nabhan.
The GOAT of all goats, a mystery solved, and the rez dog who chose not to ‘stay’
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
The Perseids remind us to shine on
On endings and new beginnings.
HCN farewells
A few staff departures and a HCN road trip.
Letters to the Editor, September 2026
Comments from readers.
In Arctic Alaska, 1.4 million acres of federal land is shifting to state hands
A cascade of changes is underway along its only northern highway.
Bears Ears cuts also end first-of-its-kind tribal land commission
A presidential proclamation slashed the monument by 90% despite a promise to involve tribes.