It may sound odd to some ears, but it’s accurate to say American Indians are diverse. One small example: Although high-desert reservations are an enduring image in the popular mind, only about one-eighth of Native Americans live on reservations, with roughly two-thirds inhabiting urban areas. Still, some social trends spread widely enough across Native American […]
A common problem
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Problems in Paradise
A murder near the famed waterfalls of Havasu Canyon reveals the social ills of a tribe that needs help
Posted inArticles
The magnificent obsession of sheep herding
(Click on any photo below to see a larger version.) Border collies by nature are intelligent and moody -– one woman fondly describes hers as a habitual sulker — and as many an owner will attest, they’re notoriously high-maintenance. A collie’s obsessive-compulsive herding instinct means that it will round up not just sheep or cattle, […]
Posted inWotr
Ducks on the walls
“My baby’s got the most deplorable taste/but her biggest mistake is hanging over the fireplace/She’s got ducks, ducks on the wall!” That song by the Kinks rankles: What’s the matter with ducks on the wall? During my 15 years as a Wyomingite, I’ve learned that ducks make especially nice ornaments, winging toward windows or flapping […]
Posted inWotr
Knee-jerking in western Colorado
In 1917, during the height of anti-German propaganda in this country, the essayist H.L. Mencken wrote a history of the bathtub. He said President Millard Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House — a brave act given that medical professionals believed bathtubs to be “certain inviters of phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of […]
Posted inWotr
Fees have become a public-lands shakedown
Scarcely anyone objected in 1996, when Congress authorized the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to charge the public new or increased fees for accessing its own land to fish, hunt, boat, drive, park, camp or walk. After all, it was going to be an experiment […]
Posted inArticles
Can Congress drag the 1872 Mining Law into the 21st century?
Today’s hardrock mines are nothing like the pick-and-shovel operations of the mid-19th century, but they are still governed by 19th century laws. Under the General Mining Act of 1872, anyone who stakes a claim on public land for metals such as gold, silver and uranium can extract the ore royalty-free and, until a moratorium 13 […]
Posted inWotr
I’ll take a double dare any time
I was that moronic kid who would do anything my brother dared me to, even if that involved, say, taking an ice ball to the face (“You flinched! You lose!”). I’m over the need for my big brother’s approval, but I still love a challenge. I took up one recently, after reading an interview in […]
Posted inWotr
So what if park fees go up?
A day at Disneyland costs a family of four at least $232, not counting Mickey Mouse ears. At Six Flags Magic Mountain, the admission price would be at least $180. A seven-day pass to enter Yellowstone National Park costs $25 per car, which means that the same family spending a week among bison, elk, geysers […]
Posted inWotr
Asarco would take us back to a polluted past
I remember the first time I tasted the air near the Asarco copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. It was 1990, and my wife and I had just moved there from Tucson, Ariz., to start teaching jobs in the English Department at the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso. I soon met two professors […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Heard Around the West
OREGON Eugene’s annual used-book sale, organized by Friends of the Library, turned vicious last year, reports the Register-Guard. “Aggressive and boorish” Internet booksellers hired local people to wait in line, and when the doors opened, they swarmed in and threw sheets over tables, claiming every book. “It was over the top — it was savage,” […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Wilderness Lost
My husband, Jay, and I planned our child’s outdoor life before he was conceived. We knew any child of ours would love to hike. How could he not? Spending time in the wilderness was fundamental to who we were. Jay and I have always connected with one another on the trail. Whenever we had troubles, […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
British writer tackles border politics
Make room on your bookshelf: Midnight Cactus will fit nicely between T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain and Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway. While Boyle provides a satiric fictional account of Southern California haves versus immigrant have-nots, and Urrea documents a deadly real-life journey across the border, British author Bella Pollen offers a lighter, though […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Tipping the scales towards native species
When biologist Phil Pister used buckets to rescue the last Owens pupfish from an evaporating pool, he knew that if he “tripped over a piece of barbed wire,” the species was history. Thirty-eight years later, the pupfish survives only because scientists move the fish pool-to-pool and constantly trap predators. In Unnatural Landscapes, Ceiridwen Terrill, a […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The need to remember Black Sunday
Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying to forget it — May 2, […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The challenge of climate-change denial
Reading the newspapers lately, you might get the impression that the once-strident climate-change deniers, doubters and skeptics are slowly becoming extinct. The New York Times recently called Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the most strident of Al Gore’s critics, “a dinosaur,” and few in the House or Senate even tried to counter Gore’s recent testimony on […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Dropping the ball on the Snowbowl
Many loyal readers in Flagstaff were deeply disappointed by HCN’s minimal (125 words) blurb about the recent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision regarding the Arizona Snowbowl (HCN, 4/2/07). This was an amazing and significant decision with major consequences for land management throughout the West — and elsewhere. Snowbowl principal owner Eric Borowsky is already […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
“The Jungle” of the West
I thought “Death in the Energy Fields” was fair, thorough and careful (HCN, 4/2/07). Through it, the many complex sides of what is going on were made clear to the reader. All the same, I came away thinking that we have to do better than this. In most industrial settings, the kind of safety shortfalls […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The truth of Ring
Ray Ring’s HCN special report was one of the absolute best pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time (HCN, 4/2/07). I would pick up and read anything this man writes. Wonderful. Extraordinary. An awful beauty of truth. Eileen Baca Reno, Nevada This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Riveting and harrowing
I thought Ray Ring’s “Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields” was the finest piece of investigative journalism I’ve ever read in HCN (HCN, 4/2/07). And I certainly don’t recall reading anything remotely this good about the magnitude of the dangers workers in the oil and gas fields face, and the apparent indifference of […]