The author used to love illegal bike trails, but now there’s too many
Enough already!
Posted inGoat
Pollinator problems
What works twice as hard as a domesticated honeybee? Its wild, free-living relatives. Much of the food we eat is pollinated by bees, and it turns out that wild bees are significantly more effective than domestic honeybees at causing flowers to produce fruit. That finding is just one in a set of new studies reinforcing […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Upon the burning of our house
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert, published the first Monday of each month. When I say that American writers have ignited fires, I don’t mean only that they have fired our imaginations or that they have sparked changes in the […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Will Los Angeles bring its cougars back from the brink?
In fall of 2011, biologists Dan Cooper and Miguel Ordeñana installed 13 remote cameras in a 4,000-acre patch of wild hills known as Griffith Park, above Los Angeles, Calif. Each month, they combed through predictable images of a near-urban ecosystem: Coyotes marking, bobcats stalking, deer browsing the chaparral. One evening last March, however, they got […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
‘We Don’t Give a Damn How They Do It Outside’
An Alaska native struggles to “blend in” in the Lower 48.
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Technology eases access to ancient ruins, for better or worse
My archaeological quest began in an SUV near Blanding Elementary School, where screaming children played kickball with a potato-shaped P.E. teacher. Winsten Dan, my cattle dog, slept on the backseat as I thumbed my smartphone; I had downloaded an app that saves PDFs from Web pages so they’re accessible outside cell reception. I used it […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Students take over HCN Facebook page
High Country News is thrilled to participate in a special educational project with marketing students from Washington State University. Under the guidance of WSU instructors and ActionSprout, a marketing firm that specializes in social media engagement, students are partnering with HCN to develop and implement a marketing campaign. The students will gain real-world experience, and […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Ski industry supports cloud seeding but downplays climate change
About a decade ago, at the dawn of what now seems like an endless drought, some Colorado ski areas made a huge fuss about sponsoring a new effort to create moisture by seeding the region’s clouds. They’d offer tens of thousands of dollars each to a contractor to shoot silver iodide into oncoming storms, generating […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Philip Anschutz’s outsized reach in the West
For the first time since 1981, Montana’s Glacier National Park is seeking bids to operate its lodges, restaurants and shops, set amid the dramatic Northern Rockies. Among those reportedly considering the opportunity is Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the nation’s largest national park concessionaire, which belongs to Philip Anschutz’s Anschutz Corporation. Meanwhile, the same billionaire’s Anschutz […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Making connections to the land
My husband, Delaney, and I wholeheartedly thank you for your incredible Jan. 21 issue on natural resource education. Both of us visited your office in winter of 2010 and talked to your staff about including more articles about education. We are educators ourselves and we love teaching outside in the rural West. We have dedicated […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Letterpress memories
Thank you very much for your “Postcard” about the Saguache Crescent (HCN, 2/4/2013, “There ain’t no app for that”). As a 1977 graduate of Colorado College, I had the pleasure of visiting Saguache on a number of occasions. On one such visit, we were the front-page headline, as in Colorado College Students Visit Saguache. I […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Lessons from Washington State
Your recent placement of Washington’s Chelan County in Oregon could be construed as a benefit in disguise (HCN, 2/4/2013, “Love Wins“). How so? Judging from the polls, Oregon has a very good chance of passing a same-sex marriage ballot measure in 2014 or 2016. We of the critical mass of supporters who desire an equivalent […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Lake Mead’s retreat leaves Nevada ghost town high and dry
Looking down on a Nevada valley from a rocky ledge near the edge of Lake Mead, it was hard to believe that the bustling town of St. Thomas had ever thrived here. A woman shielded her eyes from the October sun and asked our guide, “Is this it?” Eighty years ago, neighbors gossiped under cottonwood […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Good wishes for the Badlands
I read with interest the feature article by Brendan Borrell concerning Badlands National Park (HCN, 2/4/13, “Making Good on the Badlands“). I served as the superintendent there in the mid-1980s and was responsible for the preparation of a revision to the park’s 1982 master plan. This revision was approved by the director of the Park […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Girl in the woods: A review of The Snow Child
The Snow ChildEowyn Ivey416 pages, softcover: $14.99.Reagan Arthur Books, 2012. Eowyn Ivey’s surefooted and captivating debut novel, The Snow Child, begins in 1920, as Mabel and Jack, middle-aged homesteaders in Alaska, try to rough it through their second winter there. They’d moved West to escape painful memories of their only child, stillborn 10 years earlier, […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
(Manmade) snow is for fighting over
Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort is tucked into a narrow valley above the northern New Mexico village of Peñasco. As ski areas go, it’s minuscule, with less than 5 percent of the skiable acreage of Vail. Yet Sipapu has built a reputation by consistently being the first resort in New Mexico to open for the […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Greg Hanscom on ski towns and climate change
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, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talks with HCN contributor Greg Hanscom about his story “Climate change turns an already troubled ski industry on its head.” Thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user slworking2
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Global warming’s reluctant poster child
When a report warning of global warming’s disastrous impacts on skiing garnered national headlines in December, activists hoped the news would encourage a serious response both at home and in Washington, D.C. But the ski industry itself, where bad press means all the difference between a banner year and a bust, greeted the headlines with […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Can Sally Jewell interest a new generation in public lands?
The giant flagship store of REI — Recreational Equipment Inc. — is a steel- and timber-framed temple to outdoor consumerism, complete with a glass steeple that encases an indoor climbing spire. It’s something of a spiritual center for downtown Seattle, where “business casual” includes pants with zip-off legs and Vibram 5 Finger “barefoot running” shoes. […]