In the late 1980s, Western wilderness activists began changing their tactics: Stymied by increasingly anti-environmental elected officials opposed to any new wilderness, they decided to bypass local politicians and “nationalize” the issue. In Utah, led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, they pushed “America’s Redrock Wilderness Act,” a bill that would protect a whopping 9.4 […]
The politics of the possible
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
The end is nigh
I was shocked by the statement of Scott Edwards that, “Drinking water is not a human right … if it costs somebody else money to provide it to you” (“Water Rights,” HCN, 6/24/13). Even the Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed by our “Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
The death of the working class
The most unfortunate legacy of the development over the last 50-plus years of “paradise resorts” for the wealthy like Aspen, Vail, Telluride and Jackson is primarily that the middle-class and working-class folks who perform the day-to-day work that keeps those resorts running have been shut out of affordable housing by the wealthy and by conservationists […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Report from the summer HCN board meeting
High Country News‘ board of directors met in our hometown of Paonia, Colo. at the end of May, to assess the nonprofit’s health, discuss our prospects, and savor the Western Slope’s beauty. The news was good: HCN continues to expand its reach — our website, hcn.org, saw one-third more visitors in the first quarter of […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Obama’s love letter to natural gas
The political and practical potential of gas in the climate fight
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Next stop: Nanny State
It’s a proper function of the law to protect the public from improper actions by others, such as wanton destruction of public lands through thoughtless use of ATVs (“Western kids have fun — and die — motoring off-road,” HCN, 6/24/13). It is not a proper function of the law to protect people from their own […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Migrant mother retold: A review of Mary Coin
Mary CoinMarisa Silver322 pages, hardcover: $26.95.Blue Rider Press, 2013. Halfway through Marisa Silver’s crystalline new novel, Mary Coin, two women’s lives converge near a frost-blighted field of peas in Depression-era California. Vera Dare, a government photographer, aims her camera at a rumpled migrant family. Her thoughts drift to her own children: two young boys sent […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Let them play … Somewhere else
As a cyclist, hiker and returnee to Colorado after a 30-year absence, I was surprised at the level of mayhem that piston-head vehicles have inflicted on the Front Range (“Western kids have fun — and die — motoring off-road,” HCN, 6/24/13). It’s a disappointment. Rather than sacrifice a beautiful state like Colorado, maybe we should […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Is the Rainbow Gathering a natural disaster?
THE WEST Sizzling, blistering, brutal: Whatever adjective you use to describe the West’s recent heat wave, it’s not strong enough. Normally cool places like Portland and Seattle hit the 90s. Phoenix soared above 104 every day in June, reaching 119 once, and a few nights the low was a baking 91 degrees. Rattlesnakes huddled in […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Gold and Silver in the Mojave: Images of a Last Frontier: A review
Gold and Silver in the Mojave: Images of a Last Frontier Nicholas Clapp 187 pages, paperback: $24.95. Sunbelt Publications, 2013. It’s a book of contrasts — a Las Vegas in the days before electricity. A vibrant mining town where today stands only desert. Grizzled prospectors next to voluptuous women. Unimaginable riches in an arid, empty […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Frontier Justice: A review of Little Century
Little CenturyAnna Keesey336 pages, paperback:$16.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. When Esther Chambers moves to central Oregon from Chicago in 1896, she finds herself caught in a range war between cattle ranchers and sheepherders. Anna Keesey’s elegant debut novel, Little Century, resurrects the complex West of those early days, in prose that captures the rhythms and […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Stakeholders
Ashley KorenblatMoab mountain-bike outfitter and public-lands consultant “Folks in the rural West see kids in Grand Junction driving trucks for Halliburton making $80,000 a year. They see these jobs as good jobs, but they aren’t going to last. (Utah Republican Rep. Jason) Chaffetz has said, ‘We wouldn’t want to do anything now that would prevent […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Are you strong? Remembering Randy Udall
I think we will find a solution to climate change, but we will need each other to make it happen. Over the years, the environmental community has become fractured on the issue — arguing over the best approach, becoming frustrated and critical. And all this is healthy, but only if seen as part of a […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Alaska tribes attempt to block the controversial Pebble Mine
Some of the last surviving salmon-based cultures turn to EPA for protection.
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
A half-empty future
I agree with the author’s pessimism (“The Rocky Mountain Front blues,” HCN, 6/24/13). Improvements in energy efficiency alone aren’t enough. What can help is to leave the oil, gas and coal in the ground and to permanently protect the associated lands from development. However, I wonder if any form of “permanent protection” will be able […]
Posted inGoat
Buffalo Soldier history could get a boost in national parks
Two bills awaiting review in the Senate could mean that the National Park Service will recount the history of African-American soldiers in a more complete way. “The Buffalo Soldiers were true pioneers who braved the Western frontier as well as the scourge of racism as they fought for and served our country,” California Congresswoman Jackie […]
Posted inArticles
An interview with John Maclean
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, Nelson Harvey talks with John Maclean, author of Fire on the Mountain, a book about the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado, which took 14 lives. Maclean believes the […]
Posted inGoat
The future of the Tongass Forest lies beyond logging, but the timber industry has a hard time letting go
A friend of mine had her heart broken by Southeast Alaska. After studying forestry, she was dispatched to the tiny town of Hoonah in the midst of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass is huge, a 17-million-acre labyrinth of steep fjords, dripping rainforests and salmon-filled rivers. It’s one of the most rugged and beautiful places […]