On India’s sweltering Western coast, Bharat Patel heads a group of traditional fishermen called Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti, which loosely translates as the Association for the Struggle for Fishworkers’ Rights. Meanwhile, up in the arid breaks of southeast Montana, Mark Fix wants to preserve the rural character of his 9,700-acre ranch along the Tongue River, […]
Coal-export schemes ignite unusual opposition, from Wyoming to India
Posted inGoat
Republican hypocrisy on gun control … and other musings
You didn’t ask, but if you had, I would’ve told you: … The head of ExxonMobil should step down or be fired, because he’s revealed himself to be a caveman ill-equipped to lead the biggest U.S. oil company in the 21st century. All we need to do is “spend more policy effort on adaptation … […]
Posted inWotr
Is the outdoor industry really a green giant?
Last February, the CEO of Patagonia, perhaps the world’s most conservation-minded outdoor gear and clothing company, spoke to eager business students and outdoor-industry professionals at the University of Colorado at Boulder. CEO Casey Sheahan’s message was simple: Companies can do right by the environment and society and still turn a profit. Sheahan’s talk was peppered […]
Posted inGoat
A look inside a clean water regulator’s mind
One of the biggest water polluters in our country is the factory farm. In 2008, a Government Accountability Office report panned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to know where most of these farms were located, let alone if they were releasing their manure into rivers, lakes and streams. So in early 2011, the […]
Posted inGoat
Mutualism on the Colorado River
Cross posted from the Last Word on Nothing. This story, I promise, will end with giant deep-sea tubeworms like the beauties above. Please bear with me while I get there via the Colorado River. I’m one of the nearly 40 million people who depend on the Colorado for water, and for most of my adult […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Spiritual Superfund sites
I have read many stories about villains without redeeming values, but never have I read one that made me want to wash my hands — no, endure a thorough toxic-chemical decontamination procedure — until slogging through the FLDS article. I often had to stop and shake my head to cast out the demons of the […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Smokey Bear: From cute to buff, and in between
The icon’s many images changed over the years alongside the Forest Service’s changing attitudes toward wildfire.
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Save a chimney, save a swift
Doesn’t look like it’s going to be a great night,” Larry Schwitters says, sitting in his car outside the Old Selleck Schoolhouse, about 40 miles southeast of Seattle. It’s nearly sunset, the sky is cloudless and warm. “It’s too nice for swifts,” he grouses. “If there were going to be a lot of them, they’d […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct
Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct. Adam Duncan Harris352 pages, 302 color photos, softcover: $29.95University of Oklahoma Press, 2012 Wildlife artist Bob Kuhn passed away in 2007, leaving behind some of the finest paintings of wild animals ever created. Now, Adam Duncan Harris, curator of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo., has collected […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Rambling horror stories
I was disappointed to see HCN join the long list of publications choosing to print rambling horror stories about polygamy in Utah and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In the future, I hope you will clearly distinguish facts about individual misconduct (i.e., Warren Jeffs’ pedophile conviction), from rumors and allegations about […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Once upon a time in a small town: A review of The Other Shoe
The Other ShoeMatt Pavelich320 pages, softcover: $16.95.Counterpoint, 2012. It’s a story as old as storytelling itself: A young man leaves his home in search of adventure before settling down to the responsibilities of adulthood. But in Matt Pavelich’s second novel, The Other Shoe, the story is less about the traveler and more about the aftermath […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Neutrality not needed
I am enormously proud of High Country News for writing about this growing menace in the U.S. I know many Mormons who would argue that their Church is not part of this fundamentalist sect, but their Church turns a blind eye, hence it is part of the problem. So many newspapers and television shows pander […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
More diversity than meets the eye
Debra Weyermann’s excavation of the hidden connections between the FLDS and mainstream LDS culture was very interesting. I wrote about this ambivalence and its reflection in The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News and in a chapter of Saints Under Siege. Overall, that book is more sympathetic to the FLDS than Weyermann, and tends to […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Legalize polygamy
I have been struggling to write a response to the story on polygamy in the June 11 issue of HCN (“The Darkest Shade of Polygamy”). I don’t condone immoral behavior, yet I am astounded by the blatantly negative attitude. While the focus of the article was on the extreme practices by this particular sect, its […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
In praise of ancient tree stumps
There used to be big trees here. Now, we have stumps. Weathered, rotting, mossy and huge, at least 20 are scattered across my family’s 14-acre farm in Snoqualmie, Wash. — hunched in the cow field and hidden in the tangles of blackberry and brushy woods. We don’t talk too much about them. Stumps are as […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Hero worship: A review of Let the Birds Drink in Peace
Let the Birds Drink In PeaceRobert Garner McBrearty152 pages, softcover: $14.99.Conundrum Press, 2011. In Colorado writer Robert Garner McBrearty’s fresh and funny new story collection, Let the Birds Drink In Peace, a boy tells his mother he plans to do something great when he grows up. “Everybody feels like that when they’re young,” she replies. […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
HCN: Preferred reading of cab drivers and geologists
We’ve had several summer visitors here at our headquarters in Paonia, Colo. From Reno, Nev., came subscriber Robert M. Martin, better known as Tobe, on a motorcycle trip to a medicine wheel site near Red Lodge, Wyo. Describing himself as a loyal fan of HCN, he added that he’d been a cab driver for 13 […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Congress thwarts effort to reduce Grand Canyon noise pollution
Helicopter noise is a fundamental — but annoying — part of most Grand Canyon experiences. In 1987, Congress directed the Interior Department to quiet the airborne sightseeing cacophony. After years of public debate, the National Park Service was due to release final recommendations for reducing noise this month. But a last-minute provision snuck into an […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Dueling Letters: Utah’s Governor versus Black Diamond’s CEO
In March 2012, Black Diamond CEO Peter Metcalf wrote an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune criticizing Utah Governor Gary Herbert for supporting legislation that would transfer ownership of federal public lands to the state of Utah and potentially open up protected wild lands to motorized recreation and energy developers. Soon after, the governor wrote […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Conservation Alliance Grants, 2011-2012
In 1989, four outdoor companies – REI, Patagonia, The North Face and Kelty – founded the Conservation Alliance to increase industry support for efforts to protect wildlands used by recreationists. Since then the alliance has grown to include more than 180 member companies and has disbursed more than $10 million in membership dues to conservation groups. […]