The West has always had a libertarian streak, and the 2008 election year has proved no exception. Ron Paul, the Republican U.S. house member from Texas who was the favored presidential candidate of his party’s libertarian wing, did an amazing job fundraising in the West. (This may be a better indicator of support than the […]
Ron Paul rallies in the Twin Cities
Posted inGoat
Read our tweets
The High Country News team is jumping headlong into the Web 2.0 world. Our most recent social networking adventure is happening on Twitter — an online application that allows our reporters and editors to provide short, quick updates, via cell phone or computer, about our work as it unfolds. In addition to writing blog posts, […]
Posted inGoat
New GOP tax policy?
Like most Americans, I can’t say I know much about the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. But I have read that during her relatively brief tenure, she’s been a reformer who fought to raise taxes on oil companies, and then used the money to distribute $1,200 checks to Alaska residents. This could be a winning […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Two weeks in the West
Twenty years ago, wildfire blackened 1 million acres in and near Yellowstone National Park, caused more than $3 million in property damage, and killed two firefighters. Such humongous wildfires will become more and more common in Western states as the climate warms, according to dozens of researchers. The latest such report, from the National Wildlife […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Fifty summers and 360 degrees
One woman’s lifetime spotting fires
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
All along the watchtower
A weekend shift with Washington’s Fire Gatekeeper
Posted inRnc 08
Lions and tigers and anarchists, oh my!
“Make sure you put these credentials in your pocket as soon as you step out of the convention center. The protesters are going through the streets looking for people who are here for the convention. Wearing your credentials around your neck will make you a target.” These were the stern words that the man handing […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Fire, fire everywhere
Type “wildfire” into your Google news search box on any given summer day, and you’ll get more than 15,000 news stories to sift through. As I write this, on Aug. 19, a brush fire has just burned 250 acres in Southern California, buildings in Reno have been devoured by wildfire, and a huge fire in […]
Posted inRnc 08
Environmental swing voters? Nah.
New Mexico is shaping up to be one of the most interesting battleground states in the West this year. The presidential polls are starting to look good for Obama, and Representative Tom Udall, a member of the West’s most famous environmentalist family, has a good chance of taking the Senate seat currently held by the legendarily […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
The Mog Squad
The venerable — and very German — quest for the ultimate weapon against wildfire
Posted inRnc 08
Guerilla blogging the RNC
If you ask me, HCN did a damn fine job covering the unreported, uniquely Western stories coming out of the Democratic convention in Denver. So what could we do for an encore? Well, one of your fearless correspondents jumped on a Greyhound bus to get the inside scoop on the other convention — the convention of the party […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
The old man and the stream
With my students and another teacher, I climb up from the suspension bridge across the Black Canyon, along switchbacks that wind through phlox-matted slopes. Crisp arnica leaves curl in the roasting sun. Several times we teachers stop for breathers, while the students wait impatiently, scarcely showing any discomfort. The trail descends briefly into a ravine, […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
An unforgettable journey
So Brave, Young, and HandsomeLeif Enger285 pages, hardcover: $24.Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008. So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Leif Enger’s second novel, takes the reader on an action-packed journey across the West. In 1915, outlaw Glendon Hale, now a boat-builder who has been hiding out in a small Minnesota town for two decades, befriends Monte Becket, […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Portrait of a threatened land
Travels in the Greater Yellowstone Jack Turner 288 pages, hardcover, $25.95. Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. Jack Turner’s Travels in the Greater Yellowstone chronicles both the subtle and radical changes that he’s seen in the place he’s called home for over three decades. Turner, author of several books on ecology and mountaineering, has watched this extraordinary […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Dear friends
FROM FRANCE, NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIASummer visiting season is in full swing. Ned Ames and Jane Sokolow, both of New York City, stopped by after visiting some friends in Hotchkiss, just down the road. They were on their way back to New York from their Fort Union Ranch in Watrous, N.M., which has been in […]
Posted inDnc 08
Environmental swing voters? Nah.
New Mexico is shaping up to be one of the most interesting battleground states in the West this year. The presidential polls are starting to look good for Obama, and Representative Tom Udall, a member of the West’s most famous environmentalist family, has a good chance of taking the Senate seat currently held by the legendarily […]
Posted inDnc 08
Video: Coalition rallies for peace
On Wednesday evening, a coalition of peace groups organized a march in an effort to elevate the voices of anti-war veterans.
Posted inDnc 08
Obama takes second best
Obama’s speech last night at Invesco stadium was, hands down, one of the best I have ever heard. It was a night for the history books, even if the Republicans did their best to distract us from that fact with their left-field nomination of Sarah Palin. But Obama’s speech was only the second best of […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Dust on the rocks
Last summer, Constance Silver spent a week examining the world-renowned rock art in Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon, a two-hour drive south of Salt Lake City. Tucked into the rugged Tavaputs Plateau, the place contains upwards of 10,000 images, painted and pecked onto sandstone walls. Many of them are visible from the curving, roughly graded road. […]
Posted inDnc 08
A view of Obama from the West
“It was magical.” That’s how Tillie Herrera Brummell, a diminutive woman with salt and pepper hair and round spectacles, described the closing extravaganza of the Democratic National Convention. Brummell, a native New Mexican who currently lives in Mountainair, sat with her son, Daniel, on a bus taking Convention-goers from the event back into town. She […]