On a crisp May morning, Madeleine Pickens, a 65-year-old businesswoman and the soon-to-be-ex-wife of billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens, steps out onto the weathered porch of her old Nevada ranch house wearing taut white riding pants, suede boots and movie-star glasses under glossy platinum hair. She points briskly, using a dachshund mix named Tommy that […]
BLM “ecosanctuaries” unlikely to provide relief for wild horses
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Inslee’s opportunity
I hope Jay Inslee wins the Washington gubernatorial race and takes a courageous and legacy-making stand with the governor of Oregon to remove the Snake River dams to restore the salmon runs (“Races where the environment matters. Sort of.” HCN, 10/29/12). The science on this is conclusive. If Jay can win his race, it will […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Getting involved with the West
The High Country News Board of Directors gathered in Santa Fe, N.M., in late September to toss around story ideas with readers, discuss HCN‘s growing digital audience, and strategize about the future. The context for the discussions was a proposed $2.2 million budget that aims to improve the quality of the magazine and website, while […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Enough (political stories) already
I was disappointed with what appears to be a new political stance on the part of HCN (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). First came an article devoted to electoral politics in Montana and Denny Rehberg. Now comes the most recent edition on the politics of Utah. While I recognize the essential nature of politics as […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Economics, not environmental regs, are battering coal power
This fall, as temperatures cooled down and politics heated up, red, white and blue signs sprouted in Delta County in western Colorado, just down from the North Fork Valley’s three huge underground coal mines. “Stop the war on coal. Fire Obama,” they say. By the time you read this, the world will know who won […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
BLM mission fail?
The following comments were posted at HCN.org in response to Jodi Peterson‘s Oct. 16 blog “BLM looks for balance,” which concerned the recent wave of criticism the agency has received for its outsized focus on fossil fuel extraction. I retired after almost 35 years in BLM field offices. I believe the concept of public lands […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
A review of On Arctic Ground
On Arctic Ground: Tracking Time Through Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve,Debbie S. Miller,142 pages, hardcover:$29.95.Braided River, 2012. The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is the largest single chunk of public land in the country — more than 10 times the size of Yellowstone National Park and home to caribou, polar bears and large populations of migratory […]
Posted inGoat
Great minds think alike?
On Tuesday night, Paonia, Colo.’s non-television-owning crowd packed the local theater to watch the election. Over cans of PBR, bags of popcorn and the glow of our smartphones, we watched as announcers flicked through graphics of county-by-county results on their touch-screen TVs. Looking around the theater, you never would have known that our rural western […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Fire Wall: Escaping Four Mile Canyon
In the 18 minutes it took to evacuate my board-and-batten cabin in Colorado, I operated under a mountainous range of delusions, not least of which hinged upon my faulty understandings of metals, the flukiness of wildfires, and the persistence of history and memory. Danger, for one, didn’t seem imminent. When a neighborly deputy drove by […]
Posted inWotr
We’ve been picking up what you throw away
Since March 2010, I’ve become intimately acquainted with many of the things that people in our society no longer want to live with: empty liquor bottles, deflated soccer balls, the guts of deer, aluminum siding. My team and I have picked up this stuff on roadsides from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast. It’s […]
Posted inGoat
Pot measures pass
“Federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don’t break out the Cheetos or goldfish too quickly.” That was the word from Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s office Tuesday night in response to voters passing a ballot initiative legalizing pot sales for recreational use in the state. A similar initiative passed in Washington State, […]
Posted inWotr
Shoot it yourself
People hunt animals for a lot of reasons, from filling a freezer to festooning a wall with antlers. As a meat hunter, I’m looking for a year’s worth of protein, with or without antlers attached. Even though I don’t hunt for the post-kill posing or big racks, as a hunter I’m lumped together with everyone […]
Posted inRange
Sportsmen sealed reelection for Sen. Jon Tester
Outside special interests dumped some $30 million dollars on the Montana race for the US Senate between Democratic incumbent Jon Tester and Republican challenger Denny Rehberg, but the race came down to something that costs $19: A Montana resident hunting and fishing license. Sportsmen issues of access, wolves and gun rights headlined both the news […]
Posted inGoat
HCN’s take on Western elections
(Updated November 8) Political trends established over the last several years, or decades, in the American West mostly continued in yesterday’s elections — providing more evidence that our region is not coherent politically, but instead is really two opposing sub-regions. Democrats held or even gained ground in the coastal states (California, Oregon and Washington) as […]
Posted inGoat
King Coal is still King
Last week, as I was working on a story about the so-called “War on Coal” being waged by Obama (spoiler alert: It’s cheap natural gas, not the current administration, that’s the culprit), I ran into an article indicating that Peabody Energy, the biggest coal company in the world, plans to lay off about a thousand […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Wyoming Conservation Voters closes after 11 years
Wyoming pronghorn trek 120 miles, leaving Grand Teton National Park to winter near Pinedale, in one of the longest overland mammal migrations in the U.S. Although it’s less photogenic, the winter migration of Wyoming environmental lobbyists to Cheyenne for the legislative session is similarly epic. This was especially true before 2001, when the League of […]
Posted inRange
In the West, the rare earth rush is on
Recent news about the scarcity of rare earth minerals caught my attention just as I was reluctantly learning how to use my new Droid Razr. I am about a decade late for the smart-phone revolution, as I am with most gadgetry. You are welcome to laugh at me for this. I think I have the […]
Posted inGoat
Citizen oversight fizzles in Wyoming gas patch
The Pinedale Anticline gas field is a striking spot to visit. Even with the West-wide drilling slowdown caused by a recent bottoming out of natural gas prices, the place was hopping one hot evening last July as I explored its confusing web of roads during a reporting trip. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be […]