NAME Gary Bates AGE 61 HOMETOWN Amsterdam, Montana OCCUPATION Sculptor, former farmboy KNOWN FOR Creating huge kinetic sculptures SAYS “I don’t know if these pieces are going to work. I hope they are. But you never know for sure.” WHAT THE HECK DOES “KETCHERSCHMITT” MEAN, ANYWAY? It’s a made-up word combining “catcher’s mitt” and “Messerschmitt” […]
Sculpting a reason to love the wind
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Living precariously with wolves and cattle
Through the end of June last year, we got along fine with the wolves. I was working on a ranch in Montana’s Madison Valley, where the wolves ran elk to exhaustion in the high country while yearling cattle fattened on the lower pastures of the ranch. Peaceful coexistence with predators seemed within our grasp, and […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Keeping up with the Joneses
Isabelle Groc’s article, “When the Joneses go solar,” would have been more properly titled “When the Joneses build an 8,000-square-foot monument to excess consumption on five acres, they go solar to make the neighbors think they give a hoot about the environment” (HCN, 7/23/07). Couldn’t Ms. Groc have found a home that reflected consideration for […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Today, Bozeman; tomorrow, Billings
Some folks just don’t want to see past the stereotypes. Regarding “The Aroma Of Tacoma” by Karen Mockler, how would Ms. Mockler like it if I advertised via a syndicated column in over 40 newspapers across the West that her town of choice, Billings, Mont., suffered perpetual Missoula insecurity syndrome and was populated by nothing […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Give Arnie and diesel their due
Things are slanty all over. It’s no secret that my fellow granola leftys don’t like Hummer-driving meatheads (and John Mecklin really doesn’t) (HCN, 7/23/07). While it’s true that hydrogen is a sham, Schwarzenegger deserves a little more credit than HCN seems willing to give. Your article somehow omitted that the MTV episode that he appeared […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Old West meets Old World in Big Horn
Shane Winkler pops open a can of Bud Light and stuffs a wad of Copenhagen into his mouth before turning on the sound system at the Big Horn Equestrian Center just outside Sheridan in northern Wyoming. It’s a hot July afternoon. The only shade is in the top rows of the small set of bleachers […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Testing the waters
Waves and tides may one day provide electricity to homes – but a backlash is building
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Scientists and the city
Urban ecology studies in Phoenix teach lessons for the West’s arid metropolises
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
The Sultans of Spuds
Battered by their own success, farmers form the ‘OPEC of Potatoes’
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Two weeks in the West
“I pray that this power plant won’t be built,” Louise Benally told the crowd in the Burnham Chapter House – a sort of Navajo version of a town hall – on July 24. Benally and more than two dozen others, mostly Navajo men in big cowboy hats and older women in velveteen dresses and turquoise, […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Fire: Friend and foe
Thirteen years ago, I witnessed a new, hard-edged ecology that operates in the West. I was sitting in the stands of our small rodeo arena, watching irritated bulls throw off a succession of young men like so many rag dolls, when a bolt of lightning ripped the sky, striking the juniper-clad ridge across the valley. […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
The Weed-wackers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Bonfire of the Superweeds.” Sue Rutman had been warned: Buffelgrass, she’d been told, loved disturbance. Pulling up the weed would only overturn more desert soil, spread seeds, and encourage its expansion. But as the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument botanist watched buffelgrass cover longer […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Dear friends
AMERICAN BIKERS, IRISH DOGS, BRITISH WALKERS Jay Bagley came to town for the “Top of the Rockies” BMW motorcycle rally, held in Paonia every year. Jay says he’s fallen in love with this part of Colorado and might move here from Sacramento, Calif., where he works in Medicaid fraud reduction. Another biker, Vern Holm of […]
Posted inWotr
Wind power will blow your mind
Wind power has all the ingredients of a good brain-buster. The energy that windmills produce helps to preserve the environment, but the giant wind generators themselves have to be added to the environment. Wind power is making us redefine what we consider pollution. Windmills may not billow black smoke that require scrubbing or leak hazardous […]
Posted inWotr
Hot time in the city
Summer features its best impression of Hades as we enter August. You feel like you’re awakening from a bad, slow-moving dream, one in which the cat has settled on your face, and you can’t wake up enough to move it, but neither can you breathe. That’s the way midsummer makes me feel. Denver’s weather is […]
Posted inWotr
A happy 63rd birthday to Smokey Bear
It’s time we give an overdue nod of gratitude to that venerable bruin of fire prevention: Smokey Bear, who just turned 63 this August. At a time when bears are being tranquilized and relocated all over the West for Dumpster-diving and campsite pantry raids, Smokey remains the only honorable bear role model. You won’t find […]
Posted inArticles
From weapons to wildlife
The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was once known for making plutonium triggers for the much-feared nuclear bomb. Today, Rocky Flats is seeking a new reputation – that of a wildlife refuge, where deer, elk, mountain lions and even bald eagles can roam in peace. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency certified the completion of the […]
Posted inArticles
Super rodents build super habitat
Faster than a speeding coyote, able to leap small cacti in a single bound — two “superhero” rodents, the kangaroo rat and the prairie dog, thrive amid the heat and dry sand of the desert Southwest. Each creature influences its environment to an extent that far outweighs its size – a real-life version of Mighty […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
Guns R Us
Is it time to re-examine the West’s extraordinary fascination with firearms?
Posted inWotr
The caveguy within holds us back
I’ve been puzzled by people I know to be intelligent who nonetheless find it inconceivable that the earth’s climate could be affected by human activity. Then I saw one of those “cavedude” commercials on television, and a glimmer of insight began to flicker. In the commercial, a Neandertal in modern dress is talking to a […]