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 […]
Of history and home
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Lumbering along, barely
Linking beetle-killed trees to viable markets proves difficult
Posted inRange
A new twist in an old contention
For more than a century — the first court case was filed in 1901 — Kansas and Colorado have fought over the Arkansas River, with Kansas claiming that Colorado keeps too much of its water. Now there’s a new twist in the long dispute. (The two states can’t even agree on how to pronounce the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
If wolves could drive cars…
WYOMINGMayor Scott Mangold of Powell, population 5,000 or so, in northwest Wyoming, tries to keep it light on the town’s Web site, cityofpowell.com. If you want to vote, he advises, you’d better be 18, a U.S. citizen and a resident, all no-brainer qualifications, he admits. “Could you imagine people in California voting in Wyoming?” he […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Road warrior
Ted Conover talks about the West, wanderlust and the ethics of travel
Posted inRange
Mystery Salmon
Pull up to any fish buying station in the Salish Sea and you will likely spy many stupid grins. The reason, as Mary Ellen Walling crowed last week, is that “The Sockeye are back!” The news is as good as it gets in this long suffering fishery. In the last few decades sockeye runs have […]
Posted inBlog
Adopt-a-gelding?
I’ve been thinking about horses lately. Actually, I think about horses a lot, often when I should be thinking about something else, like work. Usually my thoughts involve my eccentric gelding, Rex, and other horses that I know. However, some recent coverage of the wild horse roundups in Nevada and California has reminded me of […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The Terrain of This Ambition
Claiming a place on the literary map of Utah
Posted inGoat
Out of breath
A dry cough rattles the throat of 63-year-old John Mionczynski, who is sun-tanned, fit and active and should be one of the healthiest people in Wyoming. He’s spent his life goat packing through the Wind River Mountains and living off wild plants in the Red Desert. An ethnobotanist and wildlife biologist, he calls high, dry […]
Posted inWotr
Montanans close to Yellowstone better wake up
Paradise Valley, my husband often jokes, is heaven only for real estate agents. Opulent log “cabins” crowd the banks of the Yellowstone River, and working family ranches can be counted on fewer fingers every year. Yet these changes seem secondary to the common foundation of our lives: the rise and fall of the river, the […]