The news infiltrated the High Country News mothership like a cute animal video (which editors Sarah Gilman and Betsy Marston are particularly fond of) and spread through the North Fork Valley faster than a stomach flu. Soon, from the barstools of Revolution Brewing to the ratty couches of the HCN intern house, the Great Chicken […]
Paonia’s Great Chicken Dump raises the question: what to do with all those old birds?
Posted inWotr
Pioneer league baseball is a slice of heaven
One of the best things about summer is watching these teams strive for major league.
Posted inGoat
Climate change is already pummeling energy infrastructure
A massive cold front settled over the American Southwest in the early days of February 2011. The mercury in Albuquerque hit seven below zero; snow birds in Tucson shivered in sub 20-degree temps; and Nogales, on the border with Mexico, reached a frigid 11 degrees. While such temperatures may seem balmy to northerners, they wreaked […]
Posted inGoat
‘Camping 101 on steroids’ gets minority kids into the outdoors
On a recent Sunday morning, a dozen young boys splashed gleefully in an alpine stream in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Wearing rubber boots and wielding fine-meshed nets, they reached into the icy water, rolled rocks aside, and scooped up the flotsam released into the current. Then they dumped the contents into plastic trays held […]
Posted inGoat
The untouchable sheriff of Maricopa County celebrates a questionable legacy
It costs less than a dollar a day to feed an inmate of Maricopa County’s Tent City. Meals are served without flourishes like salt and pepper, which saves taxpayers a few bucks and reminds inmates that jail is not supposed to be fun, much less pleasing to the palate. So the cake and ice cream […]
Posted inWotr
Wolves still need our protection
As a society, how far are we willing to go and what are we willing to sacrifice to preserve the wild?
Posted inGoat
Yellowstone tower reignites debate over cell phones in the backcountry
I’m probably too young to be a good curmudgeon, but I nonetheless subscribe to Ed Abbey’s view of wilderness: it doesn’t need to be safe and accessible for everybody. Put ramps and roads and signs and cell phones into our cities, but please, leave them out of the backcountry. Sure they make it safer, but […]
Posted inGoat
Undocumented immigrants are not just in it for the jobs, and here’s why
When the Gang of Eight authoring the Senate immigration reform bill, which would be the first major overhaul since the 1980s, recently announced a new provision to create a “human wall” at the U.S.-Mexico border, tensions rose to a new high in the nation’s capital. The move would double the number of border patrol agents […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
What’s wrong with this picture?
Firefighting consumes nearly half of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget (“Stand down from Western wildfires,” HCN, 7/22/13). Arguably, the bulk of this spending is necessitated by the presence of private structures in the wildland-urban interface. That these structures — which include many second homes — are often located in harm’s way is a deliberate lifestyle […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
The Latest: Mining claims halted in some areas
BackstoryBy mid-2011, more than 650 mining claims had been staked on the sites of proposed solar and wind projects on public land in the West — deliberate attempts, some say, to delay or halt renewable energy development (“BLM shields renewable projects from mining speculation,” HCN, 5/30/11). Mining claims trump surface rights, and if salable minerals […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
The ever-shrinking West
When the Endangered Species Act passed 40 years ago, I was a nerdy 13-year-old who subscribed to Audubon magazine. In my suburban Midwestern bedroom, I devoured pictures and stories of species that had gone extinct or were headed that way — the passenger pigeon, the Carolina parakeet, and my favorite, the mighty ivory-billed woodpecker. What […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Suffering from suppression
Western forest fires are inevitable; it’s not a question of if they’re going to occur, but when and how (“Stand down from Western wildfires,” HCN, 7/22/13). Biomass accumulates faster than it decomposes in generally dry Western ecosystems. Fire is nature’s way of balancing the equation. We have to completely rethink suppression, which only works when […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Smokey the Bear gets cuddly
THE WESTTwenty-five years ago, river guides who’d mastered the art of steering boats through the Grand Canyon decided to start a magazine. It would celebrate the history of the ancient place and its band of young Colorado River runners, reveling in the job’s excitement and occasional tedium and revealing the sometimes-deadly hazards of ferrying tourists […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Reading to maturity
Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and MisbehaviorBrandon R. Schrand221 pages, softcover:$16.95. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Brandon R. Schrand’s second book, Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior, retraces the Idaho author’s life through his obsessive love of literature. Each personal essay is paired with notes about a book that influenced […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Indefensible space
Thanks for a clear, well-reasoned argument on a controversial issue (“Stand down from Western wildfires,” HCN, 7/22/13). Unfortunately, whole communities are nearly indefensible because they were settled without much thought for fire, floods and the like. It is one thing to stand down from an indefensible house or two, or a smaller fire. But as […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Flume fever: a monument to gold mining history is reconstructed
A hanging flume, attached to a canyon wall, captures the imagination of locals and heritage tourists alike.
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Ghost of a chance
We Live in WaterJess Walter192 pages, softcover: $14.99.Harper Perennial, 2013. In 13 sharp, witty stories, Spokane’s Jess Walter captures the gritty, quirky and heartbreaking lives of a variety of Pacific Northwesterners. Walter convincingly inhabits each character he creates, from a hungry meth addict wheeling an enormous TV toward a hoped-for pawnshop payout to a blue-collar […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Fracking fashionistas
Oil and gas workers once had few options for on-the-job fashion: standard street wear or heavy-duty firefighting gear. Flame-retardant clothing was bulky, expensive and hot, but the alternative — jeans and T-shirts — proved dangerous in environments where explosions and fires can be all in a day’s work. In 2010, the Occupational Safety and Health […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
‘Firefighting is not war’
John Maclean’s statement that thousands of young firefighters go out every year with the “implicit” understanding that they will fight harder — and take greater risks — when homes are threatened concerns me (“Stand down from Western wildfires,” HCN, 7/22/13). Interagency fire programs have been trying to change that mentality; standards and orders have been […]