‘Mom, would you really have shipped me off to Denver?’ I asked my mother recently. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘But imagine,’ I said, ‘what it would have been like for a 5-year-old living in an institution, surrounded by doctors and a bunch of asthmatic kids?’ ‘You were very, very sick,’ she explained.’Nothing helped.’ She told how […]
Asthma and allergies take root in the new West
Posted inArticles
Love for the clay-loving buckwheat
By 8 a.m., the July day felt like a scorcher. Waves of heat rippled along the western Colorado adobe hills, shriveling plants and baking the soil to a fractured crust that crunched with every step. Two white tents peeking from between golden hills could have been a mirage, if it weren’t for the sizzle of […]
Posted inArticles
A dustup over weed control
They race across the West covering 2,300 acres each day, devouring an area the size of twenty Wal-Mart superstores every minute. They reduce habitat for wildlife, dry up water tables and intensify the threat of wildfires on 35 million acres of public land. As the area covered by invasive plants grows, so does the amount […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Heard Around the West
NEW MEXICO Would you stop your car at a clearly marked crosswalk if Santa Claus were strolling across the street? Would you even slow down or get off your cell phone to gawk at a walking gorilla? The University of New Mexico wanted to investigate pedestrian safety at crosswalks in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Gallup and […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
The aroma of Tacoma
My husband grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Whenever we’d go back to visit the cloudy skies of Seattle or Portland, he’d ask, “Can you picture us living here?” and I would try. But I always felt anxious. He seemed so happy, just posing the question, that I put my trepidation down to that arthritis […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
A taste of ecological medicine
In Nature’s Restoration, writer and naturalist Peter Friederici transports the reader to six ecologically damaged landscapes, from Bermuda to Arizona, that people are struggling to restore. Some of the challenges derive from the painstaking work inherent in restoration: plant by plant, species by species, two steps forward, one step back. Friederici also examines the conundrums […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Home is where the compost is
Robert Michael Pyle has synthesized three decades of life in a small community in southwest Washington into this exquisite portrait of place. Each chapter of Sky Time in Gray’s River represents a month of the year in Gray’s River Valley; each brims with vivid moments and vignettes. Pyle, a renowned butterfly expert, has 14 books […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
A new take on ‘shoot, shovel and shut up’
Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife is right — we need to kill the predators so we can have more wildlife. No one can dispute the fact that man is the most ruthless predator to ever stride the earth. I therefore have the perfect solution: The members of SFW should all take their probably-illegally-modified AR-15 assault […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Sportsmen unite
What’s with the animosity towards “good ol’ boys” and “rednecks”? They are citizens, taxpayers, and put their pants on just like everyone else. I found Hal Herring’s article long, but he was trying to thoroughly cover a big subject. I believe it is a fair representation of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. SFW/SFH in Idaho […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
‘Psychotic mutant retards’ on the loose
How appalling to see so many lunatic hairless apes with guns in “Predator hunters for the environment.” The ugly and ignorant gene link is proven by these stupid-looking white-trash rednecks. There is no reverence for life or self-control, much less “conservation” in the pages of this issue. When future generations research conservation and come across […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
‘Prop up that bear’s head, Karl’
Although they were painful to look at, I am glad you put the photographs of glory-hungry hunters posing with the animals they killed in the June 25 issue. New conservationists indeed! Their motives are those of Layne Bangerter, who, as natural resources advisor to Idaho’s governor, claims it is normal to “want animals to hunt, […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Maybe Murdoch will bid for HCN next
While I find many of your recent articles highly relevant, even vital, to those of us who love (or loathe) the West, the quality of writing and editing is sometimes disappointing. Hal Herring stepped well past the line of good judgment with his comment that it would be fun to hunt coyotes with a machine […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
We shall overcome
Hal Herring exalts Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife (SFW) and contends that sportsmen alone should be given the credit for wildlife protection because they paid for wildlife management “through the decades into a variety of revenue streams.” That logic is flawed for two reasons. Herring glides over the fact that during the last century many […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Real hunters support predators
In regards to your article about the organization Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, I would just like to let people know that most “hunter conservation” groups out there, unlike SFW, do not support unlimited predator killing and the elimination of large carnivores like wolves and grizzlies. For instance, the group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (www.backcountryhunters.org) […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
It’s the habitat, stupid
Habitat, habitat, habitat; repeat over and over, and if the hunting and fishing gods are with us, it will become the mantra of every hunting and angling group in America. Every group, from Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife to the Vegetarians for Huntable Wildlife (OK, I made that one up), knows in its heart of […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
The ultimate predator
So Hal Herring agrees with the dimwit teen who thinks it would be fun to machine-gun coyotes… also a great description of a snot-nosed kid jumping back and forth over a line of frozen, bloody coyote carcasses. And you wonder why some people think hunters are bloodthirsty freaks? I certainly am not opposed to responsible […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
The destruction of perfection
This is in response to Hal Herring’s well-written and informative article. Your cover was devastating. That something so beautiful can no longer roam free but ends up in the arms of one small human with blood on his hands and a smirk on his face – I simply fail to understand what would give one […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Eat what you kill
How can you devote nine grisly pages to a rant on killing animals, by a guy who discredits himself – and all reportorial objectivity – by telling us he’d love to machine-gun coyotes? Shame on you. Your cover is sickening: a fool who kills a big beautiful lion so he can mount its head in […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
We’ll send a photographer right out
On the cover of your next issue, would you try very hard to get a picture of a mountain lion eating Kevin Smith. It would be more uplifting and less depressing than this one. Jim Sage Alpine, Texas This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline We’ll send a photographer […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Every picture tells a story
Thank you for the cover of the June 25 issue. The picture is worth far more than a thousand words. Here are four that sum it up: blood on his hands. The expression (what there is of an expression) on Kevin Smith’s face is the reason I don’t trust myself to own a gun. Mary […]