“How do we grieve? How do we grieve for all that disappears into the maw of human appetite? How do we grieve for something as beautiful and terrifying as the polar bear?” The white-haired woman’s voice broke as she stood to ask her difficult question, the other audience members turning somber faces toward her — […]
Mourning the world we’ve lost
Posted inHeard Around the West
Aggressive, cat-eating lizards
COLORADO As if the recent local wildfires weren’t trouble enough, now Woodland Park, Colo, has to worry about a “strong, aggressive” 6-foot monitor lizard that might find itself tempted to dine on cats and dogs. The “pet,” known as Dino, snapped its mesh leash and wandered off in the tourist town northwest of Colorado Springs, […]
Posted inRange
Desert solitaire: Las Vegas bets big on rural water
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A water mining project that’s been a quarter-century in the making took a major step forward last week, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended approval of a plan for diverting groundwater from three counties in eastern Nevada to Sin City. In its final environmental impact statement (FEIS), the […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
In search of camas, a Native American food staple
Skull Island sits in Massacre Bay, in Washington’s San Juan archipelago. Here, in 1858, Haida raiders killed a band of Coast Salish and left the bones behind. I can think of other, perhaps more cheery spots to look for flowers, but Madrona Murphy’s enthusiasm is unstanched. “Look!” she calls as our boat nudges against shore. […]
Posted inGoat
Help us cover the New New West
Dear Reader, I need your help. No, I’m not asking for money, or even a couch to crash on or your extra ramen noodles to dine on during reporting trips. I’m just looking for your ideas and observations. When I was brought on as High Country News’ senior-editor-at-large number two in July, it was with […]
Posted inGoat
Don’t let it burn
A long plume of red smoke covered the sun as I drove back from Gunnison, Colorado on Sunday afternoon. The East Coal Creek Fire, started by lightning two days earlier, had torched 100 acres of Douglas fir by the end of the weekend. As it grew, it headed deeper into the West Elk Wilderness, away […]
Posted inGoat
Dam that methane
Updated 8/13/2012 10 a.m. Last summer, visitors to Lacamas Lake, a reservoir outside the town of Vancouver, Wash., may have seen some strange devices floating on the reservoir’s surface. “It look(ed) like an alien lander,” says Washington State University doctoral student Bridgit Deemer. The mysterious objects were traps designed to catch air bubbles spurting up from the […]
Posted inGoat
Get on the bus
One of the first things we did when we moved back to my quasi-rural hometown of Durango, Colo., this summer was ride the “trolley.” It’s actually a bus that is made to look like an old street car, complete with wood benches for passengers, but it’s mass transit, and it’s free, and it gets you […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
The Salt Pond Puzzle: Restoring South San Francisco Bay
FREMONT, CALIFORNIA We were on patrol. Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen, a young biologist in shades and a ponytail, steered the 4WD Explorer along a muddy levee in Fremont, Calif., and I rode shotgun, staying vigilant. She surveys snowy plovers –– adorable, six-inch, two-ounce, skittering shorebirds, with black collars and eye-patches –– as the waterbird program director for […]
Posted inRange
Digital detox in the high Cascades
Turns out, I’m so far behind the curve in the electronic media I’m cutting edge. Years ago, I realized my basic neo-Luddite constitution did not square with making a living in the modern communication industry. So I learned to download and up-link. I “blog” and “friend” as verbs. I’ve got desktops, laptops, tablets and a […]
Posted inGoat
Pipe conflict
For over 20 years the vision of a nearly 300-mile long pipeline that would pump groundwater from rural valleys in eastern Nevada to the city of Las Vegas has floated, mirage-like, over the arid state. For the Southern Nevada Water Authority and its powerful general manager, Pat Mulroy, the project is a way to moisturize […]
Posted inWotr
Public lands agencies are charging for nothing
If a fee falls in the forest, yet rangers refuse to listen, can the government still keep charging you that fee? Well, yes, if you’re in Sedona, Ariz., within the Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Ranger District, and in other forests as well. Apparently, even federal judges can’t stop the agency from taking your money. […]
Posted inWotr
A subdivision on the edge of the wild
The subdivision in Utah where I live is bang up against the mountains, with open land between us and the Snowbasin ski resort, and more national forest beyond. Our house lies at the end of a cul-de-sac on a tributary of the Weber River. A steep hill flanks us to the south, thick with Gambel […]
Posted inGoat
The cloud seeding believers
They might not know it, but golfers in Los Angeles, farmers in the Imperial Valley and retirees in Phoenix are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cloud seeding in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Until I attended the Colorado Water Workshop in Gunnison, Colo. this past July, I had no idea either. Making rain may […]
Posted inWotr
No longer the safest place
My little corner of the West — southern Oregon, between the Pacific Ocean and the high Cascades — achieved a brief notoriety during the height of the world’s Cold War anxieties: It was listed as one of the safest places in the United States in the event of nuclear attack. Distant from population centers and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Goat man in the forest
Utah: is it too late to back up? Photo by Lillian Houghton. THE WEST It was such a sweet story at first: A man in a hairy white goat suit with fake horns who appeared to be trying to join a mountain goat herd in the Wasatch Mountains some 40 miles north of Salt Lake […]
Posted inGoat
Global warming, local politics
“I was a victim of the snow,” former Chicago mayor Michael Bilandic told Chicago Magazine in 2000, referring to his failed 1979 reelection bid. Bilandic replaced the first Mayor Daley, who died in 1976, in the midst of his sixth term, and he was expected to glide back into office. He was the Democratic “machine’s” chosen one post-Daley, […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
What the High Park wildfire can teach us about protecting homes
RIST CANYON, Colorado Dave Cantor’s house in the hills outside Fort Collins usually draws friends for barbecue, horseshoes and recreational shooting on July 4. This July 3, though, Cantor sifts through its ashy remains, tripping over a downed power line and catching rotten whiffs from a freezer pried open by black bears. Cantor, who co-owns […]
Posted inGoat
Talking mean with Hugh B. McKeen
While on assignment for a story on wildfire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, I called up Catron County commissioner Hugh B. McKeen to see if he’d meet up and discuss the recent 297,000-acre Whitewater Baldy Fire that burned through the wilderness and forestland nearby. I had heard a bit about Catron County’s anti-government charm, […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Beauregard puppy
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]