A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona. Richard C. Brusca and Wendy Moore, 232 pages, softcover: $24.95. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Press, 2013. The Santa Catalina Mountains in southeast Arizona “easily become a good friend,” writes philosopher Bill Broyles in the introduction to this new book by two Southwest naturalists. A Natural History explores the […]
Book review: A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Big eyesore on the prairie
The plain fact regarding wind farms is that they are terrible in and for the environment (“Haywired,” HCN, 5/27/13). One day, on a beautiful plateau or prairie, there are small and large game, wild birds of all types and little human interference. The next day, there are large white windmills, roads, fences, people, pickup trucks, neatly groomed pasture, and all the game is gone. A complete […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Becoming pronghorn: an essay
Remembering wildlife biologist James Yoakum
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Acting the part
The Five Acts of Diego LeónAlex Espinoza304 pages, hardcover: $26.Random House, 2013. Diego León, the protagonist of Alex Espinoza’s second novel, makes his way to the U.S. during the turmoil of the Mexican revolution, hoping to achieve stardom at a time when Hollywood’s major studios each “had a Latin actor under contract.” Espinoza, who was […]
Posted inGoat
Plugging in
Cross-posted from The Last Word on Nothing, a blog about science Two weeks ago, for the first time in 15 years, I flushed the toilet inside my house. This — and by “this” I mean the 15 years of non-flushing — was not quite as gross as it might sound. Until very recently, my family […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Oval Intention: an essay
In the buttery early morning light at Tuolumne Meadows, my 8-year-old son and I contemplate a heap of fabric and jumbled poles. We’d woken early to claim a good campsite, but only now do I recall the difficulty of assembling my father’s ancient tent. He and my daughter are still sleeping, miles away. The instructions […]
Posted inWotr
My public land pup
My dog is the best dog in the world. Now, he hasn’t always been that way. He’s a springer spaniel-Labrador or a “springador,” and he was the puppy from hell. He chewed up three pairs of reading glasses and nibbled the top off of one of my cowboy boots. He didn’t do too well in […]
Posted inGoat
The summer of our discontent
Confession: While my homeland dries, and pillars of smoke pour out of some of my favorite places, I am far, far away in a place where I must jump over puddles in the park and almost swim my way through air thick with oxygen and humidity. I’ve moved my mobile office to Manhattan for a […]
Posted inWotr
Five windshield visions
One: Nevada. A few miles from the California line, heading into the setting sun, I have to put my hand up to shade my eyes, so bright is the starflash on the windshield. Signs have warned, in wordless silhouette, of horses on the highway, and in fact I have seen two small herds of wild […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Latino radio stations connect immigrant communities
“Si, buenas tardes?” Miriam Ceja chirped into the microphone at La Nueva Mix’s studio in Glenwood Springs, Colo. It was 5 p.m., “prime drive time,” on a Wednesday evening in late March. La Nueva Mix is primarily a music station, playing Norteño ballads and other Latin American tunes. But since its debut six years ago, […]
Posted inGoat
Death in the desert
Updated 6/24/13 Two weekends ago I traveled to Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado to do some reporting for a future story on diversity in the parks system. On Monday morning, the 10th, I was waiting in the administration office for my appointment with Cliff Spencer, the park’s black superintendent, to begin. I heard […]
Posted inGoat
The blue window
“Buy this book and read it on the plane (!)” This was David’s advice to me for our upcoming expedition to Alaska’s Harding Icefield, sent with a link to Glacier Mountaineering: An Illustrated Guide to Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue. I am no stranger to mountains, having grown up in Colorado and spent several seasons […]
Posted inWotr
Clinging to coal on the reservation is looking backward
“Courageous,” “an opportunity,” “a venture into a new era,” “a vision for the future.” To hear glowing words like these from some leaders of the Navajo Nation, you might think the tribe had decided to head boldly into renewable energy or some other modern economic model. But no, the officials were describing the tribe’s desire […]
Posted inGoat
So long, San Onofre (in like 700 million years)
In the winter of 2005, I took a tour of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, a two-gigawatt power plant near San Clemente, Calif., 70 miles south of where I live. I was willing to entertain, if only for the sake of a story, that nuclear power offered a solution to impending climate catastrophe, as […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Conservation goals in Jackson Hole collide with a need for worker housing
Jackson, Wyoming As I roam around this resort town in April to meet conservationists who battle affordable housing projects, I’m struck by a tongue-in-cheek take on the argument in the Jackson Hole Daily. Smack on the front page is a photo of a pair of geese facing off against two ospreys over possession of a […]
Posted inGoat
What’s eating the snowpack?
The water gods created haves and have-nots this year, and nowhere more dramatically than in Colorado. In March, after another dry winter, the whole state was biting its nails. Then: Snowpacalypse! An unusually stormy April built up the snowpack in most of northern Colorado to just about average. In the southern part of the state, […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Arctic ship logs help scientists reconstruct climatic history
May they whose Lot this Log to keepBe worthy of the Task completeAnd never leave a sentence outWhich should occur the voyage about — Inscription on the cover of a 19th century ship’s logbook The morning of April 19, 1875, dawned cool and foggy in San Francisco Harbor. Aboard the United States Coast and Geodetic […]
Posted inGoat
Tribes battle austerity with energy development
The Albuquerque ambience, as we rolled into town to cover a tribal energy conference, was tinted with doom. It was 7:30 on a June evening, and the car thermometer read 99 degrees. To the north, a massive plume of smoke rose up from the newly ignited Jaroso fire, joining the plumes of the Tres Lagunas […]
Posted inWotr
Hard choices for an uncertain future
Stepping onto the stage of the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, Colo., his biceps bulging after chopping vegetables six hours a day for 21 months while in prison, Tim DeChristopher got a standing ovation for an act of insurrection. DeChristopher became the public face of climate-change activism in 2008 with an audacious act of principled […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Shooting yourself in the foot–literally
COLORADO AND THE WEST The western Colorado town of Nucla only has about 730 residents, but its council is eager to tell them how to live — only in the name of freedom, of course, and to protect the Second Amendment. Recently, that meant telling residents that they must own a gun. There were loopholes: […]