There’s an ongoing, half-bitter joke at High Country News that nothing we cover ever reaches true resolution. Flip through newsprint HCN papers from the 1990s and you’re bound to see headlines you could very well read on our blog or in our now-glossy pages today: “Las Vegas seeks watery jackpot,” “Conservatism still reigns in Idaho,” […]
That old Bakken forth
Posted inGoat
The mystery of Death Valley’s missing pupfish
Updated 3/12/12 3:01 p.m. The Devil’s Hole pupfish is arguably one of the cooler species around. These tiny iridescent blue fish, just a bit over an inch long, live in one place only, a deep pool in the Amargosa Valley of west Nevada, in a place called Ash Meadows, an outpost of California’s Death Valley […]
Posted inGoat
U.S. is net energy exporter! (Psych!)
By now you’ve surely read the headlines that proclaim, “US Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter” or “US Becomes Net Oil-Product Exporter” or, the most ambitious and egregious, “U.S. Becomes Net Energy Exporter.” The stories affixed to the headlines certainly have a triumphant air to them, and why shouldn’t they? After four decades of our leaders […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Unfinished zombie housing developments haunt the rural West
Matt Hail grew up in sweltering metropolitan Phoenix and spent 11 years selling women’s clothing, mostly wholesaling to department stores on the West Coast and across the Southwest. The job was boring, but he enjoyed vacationing at ski resorts, including Colorado’s Vail and Breckenridge. Like many other people, he imagined changing his life by moving […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: solar flares and hoot owls
Temperatures rose here in our home base of Paonia. Perhaps it was the solar flare. The dawning spring added a tinge of anxiousness to our office seats as thoughts of Frisbee and barbeque and mountain tipi trips distracted our work. Like many small rural towns, Paonia fosters diverse friendships. New social ecology research from Wellesley […]
Posted inWotr
On the road, again and again
Last weekend my husband and I drove 300 miles, round-trip, to watch two of our young granddaughters compete in a giant slalom event at the nearest ski area. It was a typical trip. We arose at 5:30 a.m. in order to arrive in time to watch the girls carve down the intimidating run in 49 […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Watching the weather in California
At 15, I waited for storms. I wanted drama in my placid life. But when I finally got one — the 1991 Oakland firestorm — it destroyed a few thousand houses, including ours. Afterwards, my dad sank into a depression, my younger brother started climbing out of windows and into trouble, and for years, I […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Exploding hog farms and mysterious missing birds
ARIZONAPerhaps it was the “intense public scrutiny,” as Jeff Ruch, head of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, put it, or it may have been a sudden attack of common sense, but the director of the National Park Service, Jon Jarvis, recently reversed himself and announced that Grand Canyon National Park can soon ban disposable water […]
Posted inGoat
Slippery science: avalanche prediction still tricky
We’ve got one month left of prime avalanche season, and in the U.S. there have been 25 fatalities. Here is a vote for no more. Around the West this winter we’ve had relatively light, late snowfall and fluctuating temperatures; and recent fatalities have led to talk of of this year being especially bad for avalanches. […]
Posted inGoat
Money flows through it
Gird yourselves Western folk: Those of you who live in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico — all coveted 2012 presidential swing states — are in for it. You’ll endure the brunt of the negativity that is sure to flood the airwaves during this year’s advertising campaign … er, election season. And, as you’ve probably heard, […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Of cowboys and Indians: Ravi Malhotra helps rural businesses
Delta, ColoradoRavi Malhotra steps from an air-conditioned SUV and inhales the stench from mounds of human waste chips and rows of evaporation ponds cooking in the rising summer sun. This is the CB Industries-Delta Inc. Composting Facility, tucked along a back road among adobe buttes and gullies just outside of Delta, Colo., a conservative agricultural […]
Posted inGoat
Pipeline pushback
How do you move a fluid natural resource from where it’s extracted to where it’s needed? The obvious answer is a pipeline. Here in the West, pipelines move oil, gas and water – but perhaps we should take a cue from Germany, where in Munich, a 300-meter pipeline carries beer. A few years ago in […]
Posted inGoat
All dogs great and small
There’s a western myth out there that needs to be set right: the myth of the western mountain dog, the notion that to be a great canine companion in the rough and tumble American West, a dog must be robust, daring, unpampered, as comfortable in the rugged backcountry as it is on the couch. A […]
Posted inRange
Expedition Denali, exploring why diversity matters
For the first time a team of African-American climbers is assembling to make a bid for the summit of the tallest peak in North America, Denali. Led by the National Outdoor Leadership School in 2013, this expedition aims to encourage minority youth to enjoy outdoor recreation as part of an active lifestyle as well as […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Wilderness bills languish in legislative limbo
Like a sausage maker inured to the sights and smells of his job, anyone who dabbles in lawmaking expects un-pleasantries: Negotiations will seem endless, and compromise will be painful. But lately in the nation’s Capitol, legislators have had to grapple with a new stink: Even the most hard-fought deals are indefinitely lodged in legislative limbo. […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Weekend reading
I just spent my Saturday morning reading the Feb. 6 issue cover to cover. I appreciated every aspect of it, from the Agenda 21 buzzwords, to the “uncommon Westerner” in search of Sasquatch, to the fantastic conveyance of climate change research for a broad audience, to the classic struggle between local residents and the federal […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Teton County subdivisions
Distressed subdivisions (shown in red, above) have little or no infrastructure. Many more subdivisions, though empty or nearly so, aren’t called “distressed,” because they have completed infrastructure.
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Two degrees warmer and rising: A review of A Great Aridness
A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American SouthwestWilliam deBuys384 pages, hardcover: $27.95.Oxford University Press, 2011. Cracking open yet another book about climate change requires a certain amount of resolve. Most readers already know the facts: In the past 50 years, average temperatures in the United States have risen 2 degrees […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
The paradox of the housing boom and bust
For the past several years, I have marveled at a basketball court planted in the middle of an empty field on the outskirts of Delta, Colo., a town of 9,000 people in rural western Colorado. It’s a good-looking court with a smooth cement surface and nets on the rims. But I never see anyone playing […]