Never have I ever said the river was dead — sleeping, maybe, resting, but never dead. Neither am I, yet — that’s why you’re getting my rebuttal to Craig Childs’ very fine story, “Unstoppable River” (HCN, 4/18/11). I think Childs must have gotten his notes scrambled and turned his pages to Floyd Dominy instead. He […]
Let’s set the record straight
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Get rid of the grass, or else
For years, I owned vacant beachfront property in California. Every February I would receive notice from the local fire department to weed my property and make certain there was no pampas grass (HCN, 4/18/11) on it, else the fire department would do it for me and charge an outrageous fee. I was impressed that the […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Diabetes isn’t destiny
“I want to tell Native kids that they’re not sentenced to get diabetes. They have a choice,” says Notah Begay III, a Native American professional golfer who was interviewed recently on National Public Radio’s Native America Calling. The statistics are alarming. Diabetes has increased in every segment of American society over the past few decades, […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Are you an Indian?
Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation LifeJim Kristofic256 pages, hardcover: $26.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2011. Despite his light-brown curls and pale face, Jim Kristofic gets asked this question all the time, even though he no longer lives on the Navajo Reservation. Now 29 and back in his native Pennsylvania, he teaches and tells stories […]
Posted inBlog
New Urbanism irks even green Westerners
In my last post, I explored what appear to be conflicting views on what we today call environmental justice in Edward Abbey’s cult classic Desert Solitaire. The book is fun to assign to my Environmental Rhetoric students because between the lyrical descriptions of Utah wilderness and the fist-pounding Luddite rants it’s guaranteed to provoke lively […]
Posted inGoat
On the move in Yosemite
During one of my all-time favorite reporting trips, in the summer of 2005, I hiked through a chilly Yosemite rainstorm to meet up with University of California-Berkeley mammalogist Jim Patton. Patton — a veteran field biologist with more shipwreck stories than any one person should have — was retracing the century-old steps of Joseph Grinnell, […]
Posted inWotr
Three Cups of Tea, the sequel
One of the speakers at last year’s Telluride Mountainfilm Festival in western Colorado was convicted this March of federal felonies. But Tim DeChristopher will be back again this year to talk about his disruption of federal gas leasing at an auction in Utah. Not so Greg Mortenson, the embattled former mountain climber who has been […]
Posted inWotr
Big Sky country, bigger abuse
We seem to have a morbid fascination with news stories and photographs of dead, dying or distressed animals — something Montana has provided plenty of in the past two years. The number of animals involved has been staggering, the evidence of abuse extreme. The first news of abuse on a grand scale came last February, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Plans foiled
CALIFORNIA Never at a loss for novel ideas, the animal rights folks at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, want the mayor of San Francisco and other city leaders to change the name of the city’s Tenderloin District to the “Tempeh District.” Tempeh, for those who prefer hamburgers and are unfamiliar with it, […]
Posted inGoat
New Mexico governor continues anti-green push
For the past few months, New Mexico’s new governor Susana Martinez has been sending a message about her priorities and how she’s going to run the state. And it’s not one enviros like. Last week, the governor pushed her influence one level deeper into the state’s Environment Department, reassigning some of the Departments’ bureau chiefs […]
Posted inWotr
Disaster traveling is my specialty
People who know me refuse to travel with me. I don’t understand this. I think I am the perfect travel companion — curious, unflappable, knowledgeable, cheerful, seasoned, undemanding, prepared. But friends claim that I don’t go on vacations; I go on disasters. People travel for a lot of reasons — to lounge around and do […]
Posted inBlog
Welcome to Shingle Mountain, Colorado
So, where does one hide a pile of old roofing shingles that can cover a football field and towers some 30 feet in height? If you are Denver-based Shingles 4 Recycling, you don’t have to hide such a mountain––not when you can place it in the north Denver, working-class neighborhood of Elyria. Now, the recycling […]
Posted inGoat
An endangered species truce
The Jemez Mountains salamander: 28 years. The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse: 26 years. The lesser prairie chicken: 13 years. That’s how long these three species have been awaiting potential listing under the Endangered Species Act; there are 248 other species in the Act’s virtual antechamber too, and half have been languishing there for more […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Bridging American Indian students’ scientific achievement gap
Michael Ceballos’ grandfather dropped out of school at 13 to help support his family. He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, first laying track, then as a foreman. When he retired, his grandchildren thought he might spend his pension and bonus on a new car. Instead, he enrolled in college. Today, his grandson, a genial […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Partisan missteps
Sierra Club lobbyist Debbie Sease laments the lack of Theodore Roosevelt-style conservationist Republicans in the current Congress (HCN, 5/2/11). As one cause for that deficiency, she need look no further than her own organization. Protection of the environment is historically a nonpartisan issue. All citizens want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Unfortunately, […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Invasive ignorance
It’s so hard to get the public to take invasive plants seriously and to avoid using and spreading them (HCN, 4/18/11). I’m disappointed with the scarcity of native plants and the availability of invasives at many nurseries. It’s just like grocery stores selling seafood that’s on the Red List of Threatened Species. However, there has […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
In praise of prose
Just wanted to send a note of appreciation for Craig Childs’ article “Unstoppable River” (HCN, 4/18/11). Childs’ writing evokes the same feelings I get when reading Thoreau or Abbey, and he is a master of the “show me, don’t tell me” style. Why have I not heard of Childs until now? Must be this rock […]
Posted inGoat
Fun with (census) numbers
I was over in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley this weekend, drinking a beer and soaking up the spring sunshine, when I noticed a headline — front page, above the fold — blaring from a newspaper box on the sidewalk: HISPANIC POPULATION GROWS. Oh c’mon, I thought, is this really news? No, it isn’t. But then […]
Posted inRange
What’s in a code name?
Although we’ve seen ample news coverage of the American raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, one question persists. Did the code name “Geronimo” refer to the overall operation or just to bin Laden? Discussing the exact meaning of a military code name might seem like an arcane pursuit, but the use of “Geronimo” […]
Posted inGoat
Clean up your Act
In a High Country News story that ran last August, Pat Parenteau, a legal expert in watersheds and wetlands at the Vermont Law School said, “Sooner or later the Obama administration has got to come in and ask, ‘What the hell are we going to do with the Clean Water Act?’ Because right now, water […]