Every year, they break into hundreds of homes on the northwest shores of Lake Tahoe in California, and once inside, they leave destruction in their wake — not to mention piles of poop. Homeowners, frantic to protect their castles, employ elaborate schemes to thwart these powerful animals. They buy mechanical dogs that bark at anything […]
Some neighbors behave like boors
Posted inWotr
I liked it better when being born here was enough
If the 14th Amendment is repealed, how do we know we’re citizens at all?
Posted inRange
How bad projects get built
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist who recently finished a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley offers an insider’s perspective into water politics and economics. We will be cross-posting occasional posts and content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. RM sent me the “Review budget for Bay Delta Conservation Plan […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Wait until darkness
The WildingBenjamin Percy272 pages, hardcover: $23.Graywolf Press, October. In his debut novel, The Wilding, award-winning writer Benjamin Percy returns to familiar ground — rural Oregon. After publishing two collections of bold, piercing short stories about the mountain towns and mossy woods of his native state, Percy finds space in The Wilding to fully develop his […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son?
I am always puzzled when HCN‘s feature article (“Young, All-American, Illegal,” 8/16/10) takes up a cause from a humanistic heartfelt perspective while completely ignoring all other perspectives. In doing so, our status as a society dedicated to the rule of law is undermined, ignored and trivialized. As a sensitive and humane person, I am of […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Taking stock
The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison and The Practice of the WildEdited by Paul Ebenkamp160 pages, hardcover/DVD: $28.Counterpoint, October 2010. Bird CloudAnnie Proulx256 pages, hardcover: $26. Scribner, January 2011. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning Western authors have books coming out in the next few months. Both Annie Proulx and Gary Snyder are taking stock these […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Still Cranish After All These Years
Homo sapiens, evolution and becoming a crane
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Skipped issue
A heads-up: HCN staffers will be taking a much needed two-week publishing break after this issue to catch up on work and R&R. Look for your next issue on Oct. 11. We’re always flattered by how many folks decide to stop by our Paonia office, but Kim and Mark Schultz of Colorado Springs positively made […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
On the wing
Eerie, whirring calls fill the air on a chilly April morning. Hundreds of sandhill cranes congregate along the edges of Fruitgrowers Reservoir, on the southern flank of western Colorado’s Grand Mesa. Tucked amid cropland and sage-dotted pastures, the reservoir is a crucial rest stop on the birds’ long spring migration from New Mexico north to […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Of history and home
The Turquoise Ledge: A MemoirLeslie Marmon Silko336 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Viking, October. The big arroyo has no attachment to the way things are. The arroyo is the space the water and the boulders and other debris pass through in floods, the space that desert animals and I move through. The space that is the arroyo changes […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Not all doom and gloom
Since I was in the midst of reading Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, I immediately turned to Ray Ring’s article on Tom Bell in your Aug. 30 issue. You included quotes from the “Doomsday Chorus,” including Eaarth. Yes, the first two parts of McKibben’s book are pretty grim, according to his own analysis. He explains very clearly […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Nature and cities in context
Cities and Nature in the American WestEdited by Char Miller288 pages, softcover: $34.95.University of Nevada Press, 2010. In Cities and Nature in the American West, leading environmental historians dissect the relationship between the region’s urban areas and the landscapes in which they are set. In the introductory essay, editor Char Miller, director of the environmental […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
How we got to this place
Driving on the RimThomas McGuane320 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Knopf, October. It’s a bit like finessing the knots out of tangled fishing line or fitting numbers into a Sudoku puzzle: Your goal is to see the whole thing in its proper order. But that’s just one reason to keep reading to the end of Driving on the […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Fall books, from steampunk to conservation science
Here on Colorado’s Western Slope, the nights have become crisper, the days shorter. As summer wanes, there’s finally less hoeing and mowing and weeding to do, and more time to read. A slew of new books await, by Western authors both famous and less well-known. We’ve listed some recent and upcoming picks below, alphabetically by […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Environmental law, Euro-style
Eric Jantz makes some important points in his opinion piece (HCN, 8/16/10). The legal/regulatory framework surrounding our environmental laws truly is “dense and arcane,” and it is difficult for individuals to participate. The deference courts give to agency expertise is sometimes unfounded, and local experience should not be ignored. But Jantz’s suggestion to reduce scientific […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Daniel Orozco is out of the office
Orozco’s darkly funny short stories flirt with the macabre
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Beyond beefalo
By the end of the 19th century, North America’s many millions of bison were reduced to just a few hundred. They’ve since recovered to around a half million, most raised as livestock and crossbred with cattle. Now conservationists manage over 60 herds, such as the one at the American Prairie Reserve in Montana, to restore […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
An immigrant is not an immigrant is not an immigrant
Your story on kids who are in the country illegally points out the need for serious reform of our immigration laws (HCN, 8/16/10). I would support a change to citizenship requirements for babies born here, agreeing that the child be granted citizenship only if one of the parents already has it, if for no other […]
Posted inRange
The Public Trust makes a comeback in California
When the Mono Lake Decision was issued by the California Supreme Court in 1983, environmental spokespersons claimed that it would revolutionize the way water is managed in California. Citing both the ancient Public Trust Doctrine (which dates to Roman Times) and a modern California Fish & Game Code, the state’s highest court stated unequivocally that […]
Posted inBlog
At what price aesthetics?
Last weekend I sat outside Los Angeles’ Union Station, the last of the great train stations,waiting as two of my closest friends prepared to marry one another in the station’s sunlit courtyard. They finally arrived, along with their chuppah, by way of the Red Line subway and the station’s main passenger hall. As they joined […]