Cowboys and East IndiansNina McConigley195 pages, softcover: $15.95.FiveChapters Books, 2013. In her captivating debut story collection, Casper-raised author Nina McConigley examines with wit and empathy what it means to be “the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming.” Although prejudice and ignorance surface, there are few bad guys in this game of cowboys and Indians, […]
The ‘wrong kind of Indians’
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
The reading season
After the summer’s whirl of activity, after the mountains have been hiked and the rivers have been run and the garden has been weeded for what we hope to God is the final round, it’s a good time to kick back with a book. Fall invites a slower pace, gives us lazy afternoons by the […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
See you in October
As we do four times a year, High Country News is skipping an issue. We’ll be back in your mailbox around Oct. 14. In the meantime, keep up with us at hcn.org, and eat as many homegrown tomatoes as you can; they won’t last forever. Summer visitors Longtime subscriber Brian Jatlin came by our Paonia, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Reconstructing a volatile past
Son of a Gun: A Memoir Justin St. Germain 256 pages, hardcover: $26. Random House, 2013. Murdered in her trailer just days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sensationalized on TV news, labeled a “black widow” by a marshal — Justin St. Germain’s mother was judged for her lifestyle both in life and in death. […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Mountain goats, cats, glampers — that’s short for glamorous campers — and more
What have you heard?
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Mapping our place in the West
I’m a Coloradan because of a map. Six years before I was born, my newly married parents, seeking to leave cloudy Tacoma, Wash., for a bigger, sunnier city, spread out a Rand McNally map of the West. Phoenix was too hot; L.A. seemed alluring but unreal, a land of movie stars and palm trees. Drawn […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Learning to bend: Settling Utah’s road wars
Roads in the Wilderness: Conflict in Canyon CountryJedediah S. Rogers242 pages, hardcover: $39.95.University of Utah Press, 2013. Some fear that we will saddle our children with trillions of dollars in federal debt. That would be too bad, but it would be a minor inconvenience compared to what our forefathers cursed us with: the 1866 federal […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Craig Childs narrates a Canyonlands adventure
Images from a month-long trip with friends in 1999.
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Heart-Shaped River: Craig Childs finds his center in Canyonlands
“Not all maps are made of paper. The best ones are spooled in memory.”
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Desert solitude, desert community
Brother and the DancerKeenan Norris266 pages, softcover:$15.Heyday Books, 2013. Gang wars, drive-by shootings, drug sales, poverty — San Bernardino County was, as Keenan Norris explains in his debut novel, Brother and the Dancer, “one of the most violent places in America” at the millennium. The area surrounding his hometown of Highland, Calif., he notes ruefully, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
A puzzle of memory and vision
Boneland: Linked StoriesNance Van Winckel196 pages, softcover: $16.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Loss — real and potential — casts a shadow over the lives of the characters in Washington writer Nance Van Winckel’s poignant, deeply interconnected short stories. At the center of the collection is Lynette, who seems as trouble-prone as she is resilient. In […]
Posted inGoat
Environmentalists turn on California’s first real fracking law
Earlier this month, the Environmental Working Group — the D.C.-based nonprofit that helps the green-conscious decide which sunscreen to wear and what to wash their dishes with — was rallying California followers to contact state legislators in support of a bill to regulate fracking. The sun was about to set on California’s 2012-2013 legislative session […]
Posted inGoat
What IS glamping, anyway?
Retired Associated Press editor William Kronholm and his wife recently spent six days on the Salmon River in Idaho, rafting during the day and enjoying a gourmet meal with wine each night before retiring to their tent, complete with a mattress, fluffy pillows and floor rug. Kronholm, whose previous standard for wilderness luxury was simply […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The story of Gimpy
An injured black bear draws sympathy from the community.
Posted inRange
Fight the Green River nuclear reactors project in Utah
Drive south from Price, Utah for about an hour until Route 6 intersects with I-70. On your right, toward the west, the stunning San Rafael Reef rises. And on the left, the eastern Book Cliffs rise. And, just there, to the east of Route 6, if the energy development company, Blue Castle Holdings, and Utah […]
Posted inGoat
The wilderness therapy industry seeks to reinvent itself
In the basement classroom where the first Wilderness Therapy Symposium was held in 2002, event director Jim Lavin put out a plate of cookies and a bowl of Doritos and hoped for the best. Today, the event is held at an upscale hotel in Boulder, Colo., and Lavin spends a couple thousand dollars on hors […]
Posted inWotr
Why don’t you relax, already?
Some vacationers take days before they finally notice the natural world and truly let go.
Posted inWotr
In Alaska, fishing can be a true harvest
Fishing on the Kenai Peninsula and realizing what we’ve lost in the Lower 48.
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
New musical celebrates the nation’s first openly transgender mayor
‘Stu for Silverton’ debuted this summer in Seattle.
Posted inGoat
Montana takes another step toward restoring free-roaming bison herds
When 34 Yellowstone National Park bison bounded off a trailer into north central Montana this August, their century-long absence from Fort Belknap Reservation ended. The repatriation comes at a time when Montana is making gradual progress towards fostering free-roaming bison herds. While hundreds of thousands of bison live in Montana, most are commercial stock carrying cattle […]