COLORADO: Gives “bare-back” riding a whole new meaning. Courtesy Cherie Morris NEW MEXICO Magdalena, a high-plateau town of about 1,000 people southwest of Albuquerque, N.M., once served as a center of mining for lead, zinc and silver in the 1880s, before it took on another role as a shipping center for cattle. The cowboying peak […]
Queen of the Old Timers
Posted inGoat
The two-wheeled stimulus plan
On an overcast, unseasonably cool, late August morning, a roar, a cacophonous clatter of cowbells and a riot of horns and sirens rose up from the streets of downtown Durango, Colo., as the second annual USA Pro Cycling Challenge got its start. From there, the peleton — 126 riders, including some of the world’s best […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell on the U.S. as an Arctic nation
Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell isn’t what you’d expect of a man rising in the GOP’s ranks. He’s a conservationist who loves John McPhee and uses New Yorker cartoons about climate change in presentations about Arctic issues — and not mockingly. He’s also a staunch supporter of oil and gas development and a former pipeline […]
Posted inWotr
Just don’t call the condors wild
The success of the California condor captive breeding program is easily exaggerated. From the standpoint of the number of young birds that have been hatched — over 400 of them — there’s no question that it’s a stunning achievement. But beyond that, some observations are in order. In particular, it seems reasonable to question the […]
Posted inGoat
Everything you thought you knew about camping is wrong
If you’re a chick with a backcountry bent, you’ve probably heard more than once that packing off into the woods while it’s your time of the month is akin to chumming the water while swimming near great whites. Only with hungry bears. (Or maybe shark bears.) Indeed, bears have such super noses that we’ve all […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Western states’ transportation spending reveals their priorities
With President Obama authorizing $105 billion for transportation spending this July, you might wonder: Just how does that federal dough get spent? Turns out about 80 percent is funneled into highways. Given the West’s size and far-apart cities, you might also expect this road-centricity to be more pronounced here, with spending on public transit and […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Tunneling under California’s Bay Delta water wars
On July 25, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced to an expectant press corps that the state plans to construct a pair of multibillion-dollar tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta in order to modernize and possibly expand the export of Northern California’s water, mostly south to farms and cities. After decades of rancor over what […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Summer visitors
The folks keep flowing in, despite the heat. Virginia archaeologists Allen Hard and Marjorie Siegel dropped by our Paonia, Colo., headquarters to cool down. They were headed to Gunnison, where they plan to spend a couple of months surveying the old mining town of Tin Cup, elevation 11,500 feet, for the Forest Service –– a […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Stump appreciation
Becca Hall captured our town perfectly in her essay “Stump Proud” (HCN, 7/23/12). I am fortunate to live on the opposite side of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley. On my acre and a half, I have some of those old stumps left from the clear-cuts of the early 1900s. In fact, I have 90- and 100-foot-tall […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Slip-slidin’ away
Thank you for the excellent story “The great runoff runaround” in the July 23, 2012, edition. The article focuses on logging roads, but landslides are another important source of sediment pollution. Landslides are natural in the young, steep, unstable mountains of the American West, but clear-cutting and logging roads increase their rates by one or […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Sleuthing swifts in Indiana
I couldn’t help but smile while reading about Larry Schwitters’ pursuit of Vaux’s swifts (“Swift sleuth,” HCN, 7/23/2012). One of our favorite restaurants near downtown Indianapolis is the Rooftop Restaurant at Fountain Square, atop an old five-story brick building with a magnificent view of the downtown skyline and Midwestern sunsets. In the back of the restaurant, […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Old West versus New West in Taos, N.M.
I am essentially rootless. That aspect of my life began the moment I was born in suburban Los Angeles — already in motion, in an ambulance rushing my mother to a hospital. (That might be why I’m unusually sensitive to loud noises like sirens, and why I feel at home driving anywhere.) My family moved […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Lights, camera, life: A review of Beautiful Ruins
Beautiful RuinsJess Walter352 pages, hardcover: $25.99.Harper, 2012. Beautiful Ruins, Washington author Jess Walter’s dashing sixth novel, spans two continents and five decades, creating a panoramic view of the lives it encompasses. The paths of its nine main characters intersect in places as various as Italy, Hollywood, Seattle, and Sandpoint, Idaho, in the course of this […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Don’t ‘live and let live’ with polygamy
High Country News deserves praise for publication of Debra Weyermann’s article, “The Darkest Shade of Polygamy” (HCN, 6/11/12). The article appears to be well-researched and firmly based on verifiable fact, and in several respects even more compelling than Jon Krakauer’s earlier book, Under the Banner of Heaven. Readers might also question the reasons for the […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Conservation-business alliances
I enjoyed “The Hardest Climb” (HCN, 7/23/12), Greg Hanscom’s cover story about the outdoor recreation industry’s influence on conservation and public policy, as seen through the lens of Black Diamond Equipment and its CEO, Peter Metcalf. I’ll admit self-interest while suggesting one meaty strand that Greg touches on but doesn’t develop: the steady growth of working […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Atlas of Yellowstone
Atlas of YellowstoneW. Andrew Marcus, James E. Meacham, Ann W. Rodman and Alethea Y. Steingisser274 pages, hardcover: $65University of California Press, 2012. The Atlas of Yellowstone details the Greater Yellowstone Area from A to Z. It goes beyond the region’s iconic geysers, wildlife and vegetation, with charts and maps that cover subjects ranging from the […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
A long, strange trip: A review of Pot Farm
As blunt as its title, Pot Farm, a memoir by poet and professor Matthew Gavin Frank, goes straight to the point: You, the reader, will take a trip through the world of medical marijuana cultivation and sales, in the process becoming familiar with the unusual and even bizarre cast of characters at Weckman Farm, and […]
Posted inGoat
When Robert Redford speaks, I listen
A dignified Eastern lady who enjoys spending days at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art and nights at the theater, my grandmother doesn’t know, or care, very much about water issues in the West. But when the phone rings in her apartment, she often shoots me a sly look and remarks, “that must be Robert Redford, […]
Posted inWotr
“Friending” nature
As someone who writes about nature and the West, I’ve been urged to get more involved with social media. “Search out your readers” I am told; don’t just sit back like a wallflower too shy or too proud to dance. But as a writer in rural Silver City, N.M., I have to wonder: Who wants […]