Every year, I think hunting for antelope just can’t get any better, and every year it does. The days are warm, the nights are cool, the aspens are golden and so are the memories. Let me explain. In my grandfather’s day in southwestern Wyoming, antelope were few and far between. In his journals for the […]
Antelope hunting keeps getting better
Posted inGoat
Chris Cannon gets curiouser and curiouser
Loyal GOAT readers have already read the tale of Chris Cannon, the ultra-conservative, oil-shale-promoting U.S. House member from Utah who got beat in this year’s Republican primary after he made the mistake of being open to compromise on immigration. Well, it turns out that Utah hath nothing weirder — or sadder — than an uber-conservative […]
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The West from 30,000 feet
Recently I had the opportunity to fly from Salt Lake City to Arcata on the coast of Northern California during the daytime. I’ve noticed that most airline passengers don’t look out the windows very often. But when I have a clear day I delight in the views. One of my favorite games is to try […]
Posted inWotr
Who will be the West’s new boss?
One of the great parlor games of the West is to guess who the next president will choose to be secretary of the Interior Department. The man or woman succeeding Idaho’s Dirk Kempthorne will be the nation’s top wildlife manager and federal landlord of more than 507 million acres of national parks, rangeland and wildlife […]
Posted inGoat
Orrin Hatch to the rescue
Frustrated by a lack of action from other Republicans, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has personally raised more than $6.5 million for the National Republican Senatorial Committee through an elite donor group dubbed “Orrin’s Army.” He also presided over the President’s Dinner, a feast that raised $13.5 million for Senate Republicans. The money will be used […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time to cowboy up
They’re a lot of fun, those culture wars. City folk get a chuckle over the cretins out in Kansas passing laws against evolution. The Fox News crowd enjoys fulminating about feminazis. Good ratings, good rantings, good times. Dividing the electorate into rural heartland/ignorant rubes vs. civilization/East Coast eggheads is as old as the Republic, starting […]
Posted inGoat
No dam(n) difference?
Dams are bad for salmon. That’s been the conclusion of thousands of biologists, environmentalists and fishermen after years of watching rapidly declining salmon runs on the Northwest’s dammed rivers. We’ve written many stories about the topic (here are a few: Salmon Justice, Another chance emerges for salmon, Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles, Dams will stand […]
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Goodbye, Tony Hillerman
Tony Hillerman died at age 83 in an Albuquerque hospital this week, succumbing to pulmonary failure after surviving two heart attacks, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis – none of which stopped him from writing (his last novel was published in 2006). His mysteries portrayed the beauty and desolation of the Four Corners area and featured two […]
Posted inWotr
Think again before going nuclear
Both major candidates for president are effusive in their praise of alternative ways of producing energy, and their lists of how to go green usually include nuclear power. John McCain’s energy plan calls for 45 new nuclear power plants. Barack Obama is less enthused; he says he’d go forward only if the problems of nuclear […]
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Obama gun ban redux
Barack Obama may not be the most pro-gun candidate ever to run for president, but he’s not a raging gun-control fanatic, either. His official website states that “Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms.” Even if he were anti-gun, his sway […]
Posted inGoat
Repub rift deepens
Back when he was a Colorado congressman, we thought Republican Scott McInnis was pretty darned conservative. And he was. But it turns out he’s still more moderate than the folks that are taking over his party. He recently said that, had he stayed in the race for Colorado’s open U.S. Senate seat, he could have […]
Posted inWotr
Pushed to the wall, we can power down
We seem to learn hard lessons about energy scarcity only when something big and unexpected happens. That was definitely the case this summer in Juneau, Alaska, when avalanches suddenly destroyed our power supply and threw our community headlong into an experiment in conservation. The avalanches, released 40 miles south of Juneau on April 16, were […]
Posted inGoat
Vote early, if not often
For quite a while, I resisted the temptations of “early voting” or “voting by mail,” and remained steadfast in my preference for voting the old-fashioned way: at my precinct on Election Day. It made me feel something like the way I felt when I attended church as a kid, that I was joining others in […]
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Homecoming
On the wall of our cow camp bunkhouse in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming hangs a little board on which somebody scratched the words: “If you’re lucky enough to be in the mountains, you’re lucky enough.” This week, I’m lucky enough to be among the West’s ranchers whose fall calendar includes gathering cattle from high […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Living with trees
Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to TreesNalini M. Nadkarni336 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California, 2008. Between Earth and Sky sets out to describe the many ways in which trees sustain us. When author Nalini Nadkarni was a girl in suburban Maryland, after school she would climb one of the eight maples in her […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Liquid assets
‘Water banks’ help cities weather drought
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Tales from the heartwood
Working the Woods, Working the Sea: An Anthology of Northwest WritingEdited by Finn Wilcox and Jerry Gorsline400 pages, softcover, $22.Empty Bowl, 2008. The second edition of Working the Woods, Working the Sea — the first was published in 1986 — contains a lot of new material, but its core is still fiction, nonfiction and poetry […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Midnight in Montana
On a cold night that should have been warm, I pulled off the highway and headed for an historic gentleman’s club to hear the Doug Turman Sextet, a band of no particular renown. This was mining country in northwestern Montana, where unpredictable, bitter weather is a fact of life, outdoors and in. Next to me […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Why we all need the Democrats to abandon gun control
At this year’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference in September, National Rifle Association President Sandy Froman endorsed Arizona Sen. John McCain in the upcoming presidential election. This came as no surprise; the Democrats have long been denounced by the NRA as the anti-Second Amendment party — Nanny-State know-it-alls, Big-Government gun-controllers out of touch with the […]