John Muir: a cultural hero lost in his mythology

John Muir, the legendary preservationist who wandered the Sierra Nevada, tends to be viewed as a hero dressed in simple guise; a closer look shows him as a complex man, like the rest of us capable of gloom and hesitation. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.16/download-entire-issue

Recent headlines saying that 22 Indian tribes are meeting with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have brought national attention to the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, an organization that had virtually been ignored since its formation in 1975. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.15/download-entire-issue

Enos Abijah Mills, after years living primitively in the shadow of Colorado’s Long’s Peak, had a chance encounter with John Muir that apparently inspired him to work for the preservation of Colorado’s high Rockies. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.15/download-entire-issue

In the year of the drought, in the middle of Wyoming’s Red Desert, Union 76’s Minerals Exploration Co. faces an ironic problem: what to do with a pesky 11,000 acre-feet per year of good quality ground water that will seep into its proposed open pit uranium mine. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.14/download-entire-issue

HCN editor Dan Whipple takes stock of the environmental movement and its quest for clout in the political system. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.14/download-entire-issue

A ski resort, power line, and timber development threaten efforts to designate one of the nation’s largest contiguous roadless expanses — Montana’s Madison Range — as potential wilderness. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.13/download-entire-issue

A Colorado company called Bio-Gas claims it can provide rural electricity by harvesting and digesting cow manure to produce burnable methane gas. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.13/download-entire-issue

A group led by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Land Management embarks along Wyoming’s Sweetwater Canyon to determine whether this river section measures up to Wild and Scenic status. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.12/download-entire-issue

If anything characterizes Mary Hunter Austin, it is not the disparateness of social reprobation, ill health, or the constant searches of her life, but integration, the harmony of earth and man. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.11/download-entire-issue

A massive Canadian energy complex along the U.S.-Canadian border in Saskatchewan is becoming one of the most complicated legal controversies the West has ever faced. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.11/download-entire-issue

As if in return for the great mineral wealth that the nation is seeking on Alaska’s frontier, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act would give the nation millions of acres of public domain as new national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests, and wild and scenic rivers. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.10/download-entire-issue

The president’s call to nearly double coal development will disproportionately affect the region.