Our most memorable excursions often involve glimpses of wild creatures: “It was amazing, we crested the hill and the bear was as startled as us. …” Or “The beaver was dragging a giant branch and never noticed us” and “first we heard the bugling, then the elk appeared … huge.” We all revel in these […]
How do you define “wild” in the West?
Posted inArticles
Plans are percolating to remake the management of southern Utah
Before he leaves office, President Barack Obama has the chance to significantly alter the landscape of Utah by using his ace in the hole, the Antiquities Act, which was signed into law in 1906 by my hero ¾ Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. He could set aside thousands of acres in southern Utah as a new […]
Posted inArticles
Huge new ‘communities’ planned for Tucson, Albuquerque
Sprawl rises from its slumber, but urban renaissance is still thriving.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Wyoming tough?
A recent article in Time magazine reported that the best place to be an old person is a city, primarily because of easy access to health care. If Time’s experts on aging are correct, those of us who choose to live in remote Western places will feel increasing pressure to urbanize, abandoning the landscapes that […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Wyoming coal, Cliven Bundy and megadrought
HCN.org news in brief.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Water grab
The in-depth profile of Pat Mulroy made the mistake many others have made in evaluating her, abandoning balance and working to explain away the hypocrisies of her tenure as Las Vegas’ water boss (“Unite and Conquer,” HCN, 4/13/15). Her hard-nosed tactics may be viewed by admirers as feints meant to foster collaboration among other water […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Tucson’s rain-catching revolution
In the Sonoran Desert, rainwater harvesting is finally going mainstream.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Spring visitors
Visitors, speeches and long-time subscribers.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Refugees from a well-watered West
Review of “Relicts of a Beautiful Sea” by Christopher Norment.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Photos and recordings of Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska
Review of “Wilderness” by Debra Bloomfield.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
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 […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
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 […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
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 […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Can our own ingenuity upend natural laws?
Reflections on the health of my heart and the making of Hoover Dam.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
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 […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
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 […]
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
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.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
A trophy fish, a cactus doctor and an anatomically-correct bull statue.
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Tribal fishing on the Klamath River
Photographs of sturgeon, steelhead, salmon and lamprey fishing.