Recently I read a story in an outdoor-sports magazine about how “superior” llamas are to horses, burros and mules for backcountry packing. It caused me to spit green grass juice. Over the last decade, I have trained, cared for and packed with burros, horses and llamas. I’ve even gone so far as to enter a […]
Why Juan Valdez doesn’t haul coffee beans on a llama
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
What is a Navajo taco?
The sign at Ambassador Auto’s used-car lot in Moscow, Idaho, is advertising a 1993 Mazda Navaho (sic) in stock for $18,487. Seems like a lot of cash, but then I remember the glossy magazine ads: “Navajo: It knows the land.” Just down the street, Taco Time has launched their new “Navajo Taco,” for only 99 […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Sowing the red suns of August
This was my dream: I wanted vines obscenely thick with tomatoes, a constellation of what my friend John calls his “red suns of August.” Early Girls and Romas; don’t forget peppers and some cucumbers snaking around my feet as well, and a long hedge of basil. I wanted to walk into the garden, maybe barefoot […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
While the vultures circle
The air around the volcanic mesa shimmers with reflected heat; if the temperature rises, surely it will return to molten lava. I’m on Black Butte in the southernmost peak of Arizona’s Vulture Mountain chain, a place where vultures are the only birds ingenious enough to perch atop the black crags: They piss on their feet. […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Searching for grass in a magic valley
In 1980 I was laboring in southern Idaho for the Bureau of Land Management, doing hot, dusty work that belied the local name for the Snake River bottomlands: the Magic Valley. My job was to look for grass, find how much was there and report to my superiors. Then they could determine whether or not […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Of muskrats and mortality
When I am driving up the dugway toward Logan Canyon I think that if I get going fast enough I can fly upward to where my father will go when his cancer finds the kindness to release him. It seems to be a place over the mountains, in the air above the canyon; and I […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
The artist
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: A new breed of artists depicts Montana – cyanide leach fields and all When artist Dana Boussard looks out the window of her studio on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, she still sees a few bison — animals that numbered in the […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
A new breed of artists depicts Montana – cyanide leach fields and all
For Marilyn Bruya, the turning point came one February morning a few years ago when she gazed out the window of an airplane over western Montana and made a startling discovery. “There were more clearcuts than forests,” Bruya recalls, still amazed. By the time she returned home to Missoula, inspiration had bubbled into conviction. Ever […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Heard around the West
Mountain guide Forrest McCarthy told us he had learned a valuable lesson recently: Assume nothing – absolutely nothing. He learned that while leading a couple up a mountain in Grand Teton National Park. The range, he told them, is a 40-mile-long block fault into which glaciers, over the eons, had carved the mountain peaks above […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Doomed park bill just a tool of politicos
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As a young Italian girl once noted, names can be confusing. Take the name, “Presidio.” To the many millions who speak Spanish, it’s no name at all, merely a word for prison. To San Franciscans familiar with their city’s history, it’s the name of a fort the Spaniards built in 1776 when […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Yellowstone cutbacks bring out the politicians
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news story, “Strapped parks look for money.” When Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Mike Finley started to feel the budget pinch this summer, he made sure everyone knew about it. Finley closed a popular campground and two museums in Yellowstone, […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Strapped parks look for money
Visitors who go to Nevada’s Great Basin National Park to tour limestone caves and gawk at wind-twisted bristlecone pines may not notice anything different this summer. Campground gates and visitors’ center doors are open as usual. Rangers lead hikes to Alpine Lake each morning, and lecture campers in the evenings about everything from bats to […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
A green Republican makes a run
Physician Robin Silver of Phoenix is known as an uncompromising environmentalist. Most recently, he forced the federal government to list the Mexican spotted owl as “threatened,” thereby stopping logging in the Southwest (HCN, 9/4/95). He has also fought against construction of a series of telescopes on Arizona’s Mount Graham (HCN, 7/24/95). So some Republicans may […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Dead salmon do more than stink
Not so long ago, when great runs of wild salmon still ruled the Northwest, fish carcasses littered the banks of streams each spawning season. Scientists have long suspected that these rotting salmon helped fuel the food chain. But they didn’t know to what extent. Now, studies by Weyerhaeuser Co. fish biologist Bob Bilby have shown […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
New rules seek to cap canyon flights
GRAND CANYON, Ariz. – Nearly 10 years ago, when Congress set a national goal to restore natural quiet here, surveys indicated that only 43 percent of the park was unaffected by aircraft noise. Now only 31 percent of the park is considered quiet, defined as free from aircraft noise at least 75 percent of the […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Dear Friends
A celebration of essayists We are not calling this issue devoted mostly to essays “special,” but it certainly feels that way. It is the first time we have taken such a large break from straight reporting to feature stories that stem from personal experience in the West. Staff debated the idea and finally plunged. An […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Group sues to stamp out tolerance and diversity
When the National Park Service shows some sensitivity to the religious needs of Native Americans, stomp it. And be sure to also grind a heel into American Indian religious liberty. That’s the way Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver apparently views it. Last month, the foundation filed a lawsuit against the Park Service for respecting […]
Posted inAugust 5, 1996: Disappearing railroad blues
Marching to stop a Montana mine
If a successful protest is any kind of bellwether, Montana’s long tolerance of mining may be coming to an end. When a group composed mostly of Native Americans marched 600 miles from South Dakota to Montana to protest a gold mine last June, people from local communities supported them every step of the way. March […]
Posted inAugust 5, 1996: Disappearing railroad blues
Animas-La Plata hits a wall in the House
An attempt last year in the House to halt funding for the Animas-La Plata dam project in southern Colorado failed by a miserable 151-275. This year, a second try slipped by 221-200. What changed the 75 or so Representatives’ minds? Election year, says Jeffrey Stier, spokesman for Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who led the successful […]
Posted inAugust 5, 1996: Disappearing railroad blues
Feds set “terrible precedent’ with Kolob Canyon settlement
The survivors of an outing that left two Explorer Scout leaders dead in Utah’s Kolob Canyon will get more than $2 million from an out-of-court settlement with public agencies. David Fleischer and LeRoy Kim Ellis drowned in July 1993 while descending a narrow slot canyon near Zion National Park. A surviving Scout leader, four of […]