Review of “Relicts of a Beautiful Sea” by Christopher Norment.
Refugees from a well-watered West
Photos and recordings of Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska
Review of “Wilderness” by Debra Bloomfield.
Knowledge, a wrecking ball
Until I was 18, I lived in the same house, in the same town, just a handful of blocks from the hospital where I was born. Ours was a neighborhood of unremarkable ranch houses on a mesa in Boulder, Colorado. My friends and I knew every backyard shortcut and nook, including a tiny pink house […]
Gnome magnifique
The March 16 “Heard around the West” contained a lovely account of Boulder, Colorado’s gnome liberation movement. Somewhere out there is a gorgeous French movie showing a young lady kidnapping her father’s garden gnome and subsequently sending him photographs of his gnome in various exotic settings — Roman ruins, Golden Gate Bridge, rodeo arenas, etc. Boulder […]
Westerners need to stand up for public lands
As Google Earth flies, it’s five miles and change from the Echo Lake Café in the Flathead Valley, one of Montana’s great little restaurants, up to a parking area at a trailhead that leads to Jewel Basin. Down here in the valley, we’re at 3,000 feet. Up where the gravel road dead-ends, you’re looking at […]
Can our own ingenuity upend natural laws?
Reflections on the health of my heart and the making of Hoover Dam.
Bust happens
“The Winter of Oil’s Discontent” is one of the best articles I have ever read in HCN! The article hit the nail on the head. I was born and raised in San Juan County, New Mexico. My family has a long history of “patch” employment in the San Juan Basin. We have endured multiple booms […]
Boom, gone
The boom/bust cycle happens quite often in history with different industries (“The Winter of Oil’s Discontent,” HCN, 3/16/15). For example, in the 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s, it was uranium. We had various oil boom/busts from the ’40s to the present. We had natural gas boom/busts, with the most recent one going from the ’90s […]
A defender of North Dakota’s badlands wonders if it’s time to leave
Theodore Roosevelt National Park is not immune to effects of the Bakken oil boom.
A trophy fish, a cactus doctor and an anatomically-correct bull statue.
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Tribal fishing on the Klamath River
Photographs of sturgeon, steelhead, salmon and lamprey fishing.
A plague on the Klamath River
The race to prevent a repeat of the West’s worst salmon-kill.
A crystal ball for the Pacific Northwest’s climate
This year’s drought is as bad as scientists predict for mid-century.
Should oil pipelines be better regulated instead of flat out opposed?
Conversation with an author of a new book on pipeline rust, regulation and safety.
A Latino sportsman talks with the BLM’s Utah director
Juan Palma discusses states’ rights, landscape-scale planning and how personal history affects public decisions.
How an international trade deal will impact Western states
The Trans-Pacific Partnership could mean more beef imports and natural gas exports.
Navajo election shakes up Grand Canyon development plans
How will the tribe’s new president handle the controversial Escalade project?
Author Craig Childs talks about his ‘barbaric’ children with KDNK
In the Alaska backwoods, Childs tested the boundaries of the belief that kids should play in the wilderness.
The Latest: Court bans shooting in Arizona national monument
BLM suddenly reversed its ban on shooting, leading to a lawsuit.
The Latest: Feds consider uplisting northern spotted owl to endangered
Only about 4,000 owls remain, despite logging cutbacks.
