A town’s July 4th celebration says a lot about a community, and this holiday in Bozeman, Montana, promises to be relatively laid-back, with locals typically heading for nearby Livingston or Ennis to catch their parades, then back home for stirring music and fireworks at the fairgrounds. Just five years ago, however, Bozeman woke up to controversy when […]
About those gay loggers for Jesus and July 4th
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Salmon go down the tubes – literally
Washington biologists test pressurized tubes to transport salmon over dams.
Posted inWotr
Let’s protect all our nation’s water
The Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed a new rule to define the term “the waters of the United States” as used in the federal Clean Water Act. If you care about protecting our nation’s waters and wetlands, and if you care about government efficiency, then you should support this rule. Here’s why. For largely historical […]
Posted inWotr
Reflections on the fire that killed 19 firefighters a year ago
The terms fire control and fire management are really just euphemisms for firefighting. Think tornado control or the impossibility of tornado management. We can prepare for fires, we can study them and even learn how to dance with them, but controlling fires is always a gamble. And sometimes we lose. Last year, on June 30, we […]
Posted inGoat
Is the Clean Water Act under attack?
Big Ag wants rollbacks in fundamental legislation.
Posted inGoat
A 700,000-gallon replica of the Sea of Cortez in the Arizona desert
The coral reef that once lived in the 700,000-gallon tank of ocean water in the Arizona desert, hauled in from Belize after breaking off in a storm in the late 1980s, is now pretty much dead. It met the same fate as another Biosphere 2 experiment, which involved eight men and women living off their […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
The man behind a New Mexico county’s fracking ban
Last year Mora became the first county in the nation to permanently ban oil and gas development.
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America by Valerie K. Verzuh
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America Valerie K. Verzuh, 219 pages, hardcover: $34.95, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013 Few Native American languages have a word for “art.” Basket-weaving is not considered art, in the sense of work made for display; rather, as one Apache elder says, it is the creation of “pieces […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Which tributaries should be protected like the rivers they feed?
New rules may help regulators enforce an ambiguous law.
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
What hides in the waters
My mom spent part of her childhood in a tiny Illinois town along the Mississippi River. During spring, as the upper Midwest’s snowmelt collided with drenching rains, the river often jumped its banks, flooding cornfields with silty waters and thrashing catfish, and turning the town into a sort of Huck Finn-style Venice, its few houses […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Wannabe gonzo drivel
The false-equivalence tagline ” ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate,” plus the Hunter S. Thompson wannabe photo should have been warning enough, but I went ahead and read Dan Baum’s article (“The Great Gun-Rights Divide,” HCN 5/26/14). It didn’t fail to disappoint. While not nearly as amusing as Thompson’s gonzo journalism, it was […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
The catbird seat
Rick Bombaci hit many nails on the head in “The Big Nasty” (HCN, 5/26/14), but he missed a few. Before my horses and I got too old and lame to hit the mountain trails, I resorted to hanging a trash bag from my saddle horn to carry out the beer cans left by snowmobilers during the […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Summer publishing break
In our 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule, we’ll be skipping the next issue. Look for High Country News in your mailbox again around July 21. You can keep up with Western news and views on our website, hcn.org, for fresh articles, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. June board meetingAt the tail end of May, 10 […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Duwamish sludge, from source to sink
A little over three miles from the mouth of the Lower Duwamish Waterway (once known as the Duwamish River), there is a small piece of property wreathed with chain-link fence and signs that warn in various languages of various threats to life and limb. This is Terminal 117, or T-117, former home of roofing material […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Out here meets out there
Calamity JaneBernard Schopen270 pages, softcover:$16.95.Baobab Press, 2013. After two decades of silence, former mystery writer Bernard Schopen is back with Calamity Jane, a new novel that asks serious questions about the West. His protagonist, independent filmmaker Jane Harmon, returns triumphantly from Hollywood to Blue Lake, Nevada, to showcase The Last Roundup, a documentary she’s made […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Hooligans etch on a petroglyph, a cow breaks a natural gas line and a new website helps ranchers navigate drought.
NORTH DAKOTAEveryone knows that ravens can manipulate sticks as tools, and that squawking magpies enjoy teasing dogs and cats, but who knew that cows – with their bodies alone – could make pipes spill natural gas? In Bismarck, North Dakota, one cow apparently did just that, simply by trying to satisfy an itch or maybe […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Farmstead photo
Kudos to Michael Hudson for the spectacular image of the abandoned Kansas farmstead (“These were called the High Plains,” HCN, 5/26/14). I’d be pleased to have Julene Bair refer to me as “a grass man” and would be even more pleased if I had been there when Hudson took that sad and glorious photo. Ray […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Diversity as cynical distraction
Like many in the National Park Service, as well as retirees, I think this elevation of diversity to one of the most important issues facing the agency is a cynical distraction from more serious issues like commercialization, invasive species and climate change (“Parks for All?” HCN, 5/12/14). No one is against diversity, but how serious […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
A Refugee in Her Own Land
Katie Gale: A Coast Salish Woman’s Life on Oyster BayLlyn De Danaan336 pages, hardcover: $29.95.Bison Books, 2013. In Katie Gale, anthropologist Llyn De Danaan chronicles the life of a 19th century Salish woman who married a white man, gave birth to four children, became a successful oysterwoman, suffered greatly in a divorce settlement, and watched […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
A new mapping tool shows how states value wildlife
Habitat seen as a crucial resource in some states more than others.