The mud-spattered school bus hits snow at about 7,000-feet elevation. I’m following in a front-wheel-drive mini-van, and my tires are starting to spin in the gathering slush. Any moment, I expect the bus driver to find a wide spot in the road and retreat back to the high school, elevation 5,300 feet, where it is […]
The terror and beauty of away games
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Justice for all
Salt Lake City attorney serves the homeless
Posted inHeard Around the West
Boozing with big brother
Not infrequently, state legislators who think of themselves as conservative come up with extraordinarily intrusive laws. In Utah, Senate President Michael Waddoups, R, has a proposal that would treat social drinkers as potential criminals. Distressed because he thinks restaurants are becoming too much like bars, Waddoups has urged managers to keep all offending booze out […]
Posted inGoat
The Cone of Uncertainty
The effect of climate change on water supply in the Colorado Basin is so hard to predict that Marc Waage of Denver Water is working with his colleagues to revolutionize the way they plan for the future, using a model called the “Cone of Uncertainty.” The cone demonstrates the depth and width of our uncertainty, […]
Posted inGoat
Meth in the West
The West continues to be the hot spot for meth in the U.S., leading the rest of the country with 65 percent of meth treatment admissions, according to a new 171-page study by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health puts Nevada first in meth use, with 2.02 […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Carrying your own load
Lessons from off the grid
Posted inGoat
“Top-to-bottom” ethical review at Interior
The appointment of Ken Salazar as Secretary of Interior revealed – once again – the conflict in the Environmental Movement between the “establishment” (aka the “nationals”) and a set of newer and mostly western environmental organizations (aka the “grassroots”). The establishment generally praised the appointment while the grassroots expressed disappointment. But as GOAT Blogger Sarah […]
Posted inGoat
An even more unlikely Shangri-la
Chalk up one for public input — the Utah Supreme Court has ordered that before a ritzy new ski resort can proceed, Beaver County must put the project to a vote. Locals have been angered by the Jenson brothers’ attempts to turn a popular fishing and backcountry recreation spot into an exclusive enclave with golf […]
Posted inGoat
Hard left turn
Every day, it seems, I turn around and some big Bush-era decision governing public land has been tweaked, reversed, or otherwise flambeed. Today (Feb. 4), President Obama’s new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 controversial oil and gas leases near national parks and on wilderness quality lands in Utah. “In its last weeks in office, […]
Posted inWotr
Out of the nest and into a tent
I don’t have a house. It wasn’t lost to foreclosure or auctioned by the bank; I have simply never owned one. As a recent college graduate, I am just now learning to pay rent, utilities and my gym membership every month, while trying to find a job that will cover my medical expenses if I […]
Posted inGoat
A dog day report card
For the rest of the country, Monday was Groundhog Day. But for Westerners, it was Prairie Dog Day. And the rodent’s in trouble all over the region, as bulldozers roll over its habitat, ranchers drop poison, and shooters go for target practice. Prairie dogs are now found in less than 10 percent of their original […]
Posted inGoat
Bust! Bust!
Last summer, it seemed Colorado might take decades to descend from the staggering height of its natural gas boom. High-paying jobs out on the drill rigs were drawing everyone from heavy equipment operators to senior center chefs to unskilled laborers who might otherwise work in a grocery checkout line or the local 7-11. As a […]
Posted inGoat
A different outdoor game
Too little, too late. Shoot first, ask questions later… If you can shake your head in disgust while you say it, you’ve probably found the right cliche for the environmental fiasco that surrounds the wall on our southern border. The Department of Homeland Security recently agreed to fork over $50 million to the Interior Department […]
Posted inArticles
Woman on the water
To listen to the audio interview you need to have the Adobe Flash Player installed and Javascript enabled. Heather Wylie was a biologist working for the Army Corps of Engineers when she joined a group of people kayaking down the Los Angeles River – a “giant concrete trough” that runs more than 50 miles through […]
Posted inGoat
Legalize It
It sure didn’t seem like the kind of place where bloodied drug smugglers stumble out of the scrub after shootouts. But it was. On a holiday road trip to Mexico, my family and I stopped for the night at some friends’ house near Tubac, Arizona, a small community south of Tucson, about 15 minutes north […]
Posted inGoat
Water buffaloes in the mist
You can get a decent sampling of the folks attending the 51st Annual Convention of the Colorado Water Congress at a Hyatt in Denver just by looking at the coat rack. Navy sport coats and professorial tweeds predominate, but there is also a camouflage fishing vest, fringed duster, and a smudgy Carhardt jacket. The Grand Mesa Ballroom is […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
The darkest element
Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the WorldTom Zoellner317 pages, softcover: $26.95.Viking, 2009. Writer Tom Zoellner has a great sense of timing. His latest work, Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World, hits the shelves as media attention zeros in on Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs, the explosion […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Catch him if you can
The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James HogueDavid Samuels192 pages,hardcover: $23.New Press, 2008. Palo Alto High School believed James Hogue was a recently orphaned 16-year-old from a Nevada commune. Princeton University thought he was a self-educated ranch hand who lived alone in the […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Putting our house back in order
While Barack Obama was making his inaugural speech, I was vacuuming. I hadn’t planned to be engaged in that particular activity at that particular moment, but the deliverymen turned up early, bringing us a new bed at precisely the moment the new president began to speak. The floor was covered with dropcloths when the bed […]