I am from, as they say, an “old” New Mexico Anglo family. I did not grow up in New Mexico, but have always thought myself from there — tied to the place by blood and property and predilection, and by the way the smell of sagebrush and cast of light remind me that I am […]
The soul in Suite 100: A ghost story
Posted inGoat
Gettin’ down with cap ‘n trade
Next month, California will hold the first auction as part of its carbon cap and trade program. The program, which will be the second largest CO2 emissions trading system in the world, has been in the works since 2006, when the Golden State passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, a piece of legislation that mandated […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Existential nomad: A profile of author Ruben Martinez
In Rubén Martinez’s new memoir, Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West, the author examines the fertility kit that he and his wife had ordered, taking particular interest in its clean hypodermic syringes and needles. It is 2007, and the couple is living beneath northern New Mexico’s famed Black Mesa, in Velarde, […]
Posted inWotr
Singing about a land where free rivers flow on
Woody Guthrie is 100 years old this year, and alive as you or me. Music has a way of cutting the corner on mortality. What do you hear in his songs about America? I’m swept into a tangle of love, gratitude, unease, anger, respect, heartbreak, awe, curiosity and joy. His songs contain that jumble of […]
Posted inGoat
Bureaucracy and the birds
In 1975, the Department of Interior reassured Native Americans they would not be prosecuted by the federal government for using eagle feathers for cultural or religious purposes. But the “Morton Policy,” as the directive is known, didn’t answer several important questions, leading to confusion on the part of tribal members. For example, was it okay […]
Posted inWotr
Arizona voters face an IQ test on public lands
Arizona voters face two land-related ballot measures this November, and together, they reveal not just the state’s split personality but that of the West as well. You can think of Proposition 119 as a respectable Dr. Jekyll, a 19th century gentleman who wants the state and federal government to exchange land to improve management and […]
Posted inGoat
Drilling into the data
I’ve written here before about how the natural gas glut has led to low prices which has led to a drilling drought in many Western regions. But even I was surprised when I received the latest numbers from the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission and saw that drilling in my state had slowed to […]
Posted inRange
Putting a price tag on existence
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House There’s an important change brewing in the protection of endangered species. It appears to push economic considerations higher up in the part of the law dealing with critical habitat designation. The shift comes in the form of a proposed rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The West in my blood: A profile of Eddie Chuculate
Two years ago, on a cool October evening at Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts, Native author Eddie Chuculate read his story “Dear Shorty” aloud. He spoke with a rolling rhythm, peppered by alliteration. With his head cocked, glasses in one hand and the book almost touching his nose, Chuculate held his listeners entranced. […]
Posted inGoat
BLM looks for balance
“We need to be smart. The future of how public lands are going to be managed is going to be based upon how they’re being used today.” — Retired Bureau of Land Management chief Bob Abbey, who stepped down in May, speaking to HCN in a recent interview. Judging by the way much BLM land […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The fossil record: How my family found a home in the West
When I was a kid, I sometimes wished that my family went on normal vacations. Normal was what my elementary and middle-school classmates did over spring and summer break, flying to wave-kissed beaches or hitting flashy amusement parks. Not my family: My parents would load my two half-sisters, my brother and me into a big […]
Posted inGoat
TransCanada expects your stall tactic
The environmentalist style of warfare is to stall the enemy into submission. Climb up in a tree, stand in front of feller bunchers, block traffic, throw stink bombs on whaling ships, etc. It’s worked, and it hasn’t. Last January, environmentalists claimed a victory when the State Department denied construction of the Keystone XL pipeline pending […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Western literary journals give voice to story and place
“We are out loud and proud as a regional journal,” says poet Maria Melendez, publisher of Pilgrimage, a literary magazine based in the former steel-mill city of Pueblo, Colo. “Our mission is to nurture the voices of the Southwest — and beyond.” Literary journals like Pilgrimage are devoted to publishing inspiring and innovative fiction, nonfiction […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Vagabond writer Craig Childs on 20,000 years of wanderlust
Savoonga is the place to be on the Fourth of July. The village is a cluster of roofs on the north side of St. Lawrence Island, a treeless hump of capes and dormant volcanoes rising out of the Bering Sea, battered by Arctic weather. The Native Yup’iks here celebrate the holiday with more gusto than […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The wild without and within: A review of Wilderness
Wilderness pulls no punches. The novel’s descriptions are so visceral, the main character’s struggles so gut wrenching, that it demands an equally full-bodied response from its reader. Within the book’s pages are violence, yes, and death, sickness and guilt –– all the hard things. But the most powerfully moving moments are those in which dark […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The place where you are
In 2007, I heard a radio interview with a Chinese author who talked about visiting the mountain village where his ancestors had lived for thousands of years. When he stepped onto that soil, he knew instinctively that he was home, felt in his bones that he was where he belonged. At the time, I’d been […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Student essay: Lost and found in the sagebrush
Editor’s note: This is a runner-up essay from our annual student essay contest. This year’s theme was “How I Became a Westerner.” Learn more about student subscription offers here. Artemisia tridentata. Commonly known as sagebrush, it’s seen as ugly, a terribly widespread eyesore — a dead-looking, twisted piece of scraggly shrubbery that fills the landscape […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Student essay: How I became a Westerner and why it doesn’t matter
Editor’s note: This is a runner-up essay from our annual student essay contest. This year’s theme was “How I Became a Westerner.” Learn more about student subscription offers here. I grew up in Fircrest, Wash., population 6,497, a small suburb of Tacoma. There’s a house on our street with an unkempt front yard; the neighbors despise […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
On Science and dogma
As a former resident of Colorado’s Front Range, I found Emily Guerin’s fire-science story, about forest ecologists’ disagreement about whether all dry Western forests are to be considered overly-dense and in need of restoration, to be fascinating (“Fire fights,” HCN, 9/17/12). While the article interprets the “controversy” as a lack of consensus among forest ecologists, […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Keep what’s public public
Hats off to Neil LaRubbio and HCN for the quality article on federal land exchanges, which beamed some welcome sunlight into dark corners (“Big Timber games for better ground in Idaho,” HCN, 9/3/12). There is fierce and widespread opposition to the fatally flawed proposed Northern Idaho Lochsa Land Exchange. Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for […]