This is no stodgy dissertation on wine and how it’s made. With the very first sentence of The Grail, Brian Doyle uncorks a full-bodied work of enthusiastic storytelling. The Grail delivers on the promise of its subtitle: A Year Ambling and Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in […]
A quest for the world’s finest pinot noir
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Ode to a public lands experiment
This could have been just another coffee-table volume full of stunning vistas and images of elk grazing in misty valleys. But by refusing to be yet another pretty book, Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve better serves the preserve’s long history and complicated beauty. The preserve’s abbreviated history goes something like this: […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Easements are too easy
“Two Weeks in the West” noted problems with Colorado’s conservation easement tax credit program. This was just enough information to frighten people, but not enough to help them understand the real nature and extent of the problems with the state tax credit. It is widely estimated that 20 to 25 percent of all easements started […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Does this mean you’ll renew your subscription?
I congratulate you and author Emma Brown on the recent article “Under the Radar.” Many, perhaps most, of your articles relate controversies that involve high-stakes battles between corporations, government entities, environmental organizations, or landowners. This story is a human one that transcends our differences. This is not a news report that you have published, but […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Even Sacajawea had to wash her socks sometimes
Ed Marston’s review of Alvin Josephy’s new book Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes refers to Bernard DeVoto’s Course of Empire as a “traditional” perspective characterizing the expedition as “one long and heroic act, one close call, one brilliant decision after another.” Having just re-read all three of DeVoto’s Western histories, I must take exception […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
New Mexico’s water rebel
Name: Bill Turner Fond Childhood Memory: Listening to the Lone Ranger radio show: “Good will prevail.” Coffee or Tea: Coffee, black, in a to-go cup with a few cubes of ice Resume Excerpts: Firewall riveter for Navy S2F submarine-hunter aircraft (1958); Peace Corps volunteer and geologist in Cyprus (1963-1964); New Mexico natural resources trustee (1995-2003); […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Powered by pond scum
Algae may prove a promising source of biofuel
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Sans petrol
Grassroots efforts quietly lay the groundwork for a post-oil world
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Two weeks in the West
Forests battered by budget cuts
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Border Patrol Whack-a-Mole
If you believe that political calculation can’t trump reason indefinitely, you haven’t been paying attention to the illegal immigration debate in the United States, which hasn’t, actually, been a debate. It’s been a disingenuous shouting match, something like the banter between competing barkers at the county fair as they tout the relative virtues of the […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
One Nation, Under Fire
Illegal drugs and immigrants pour across an open frontier. The government responds with helicopters and ATVs. And the once-quiet desert homeland of the Tohono O’odham Nation becomes a nerve-wracking police state.
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Dear friends
VISITORS Richard Heede stopped by in early January to fill us in on his Snowmass company, Climate Mitigation Services, which can pinpoint a particular company’s contribution to climate change. In 2003, Heede completed an inventory of ExxonMobil’s emissions between 1882 and 2002. Now he’s expanding the study to the world’s 85 top corporate greenhouse gas […]
Posted inWotr
What does a $155 million house reveal about us?
People have been talking about a plan to build the most expensive spec house in history in the exclusive Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Mont. The ski resort-home will boast 53,000 square feet of living space, larger than the new public library in Bozeman. It will have a heated driveway, an enclosed chairlift for direct […]
Posted inWotr
Enough winter already
While reading recently about Kit Carson’s role in the settling of the West, I was struck by how mountain men more than 150 years ago dealt with the elements, particularly winter weather. Amazingly, they rode horses huge distances over unknown terrain without wearing Gore-Tex, Thinsulate or other advanced “technical clothing.” They mostly ate bacon, beans […]
Posted inWotr
Forget political labels, let’s think for ourselves
I recently filled out a survey from an environmental group but got stumped by the question about my political affiliation. The right of the scale was labeled “conservative” and the left side was ‘‘radical.’’ I bristled. Compare the two words: Conservative has a pleasant root, conserve, as in not squandering money or resources. Radical evokes […]
Posted inArticles
Help is on the way for the nation’s forest workers
Working in the woods: It’s never been easy or steady. Ethical contractors say they can’t compete because the Forest Service awards contracts to the lowest bidder. And as the low bidders race to the bottom with offers below the true cost of the work, they’re leaving behind a trail of injured workers, labor violations, and […]
Posted inWotr
Delisting wolves won’t change much in the West
When Idaho Gov. Butch Otter said last month he wanted to bid for the first wolf tag offered to hunters in his state, it prompted predictable righteous indignation. Newspapers across the nation, including the New York Times, expressed doubts that the federal government could turn control over Idaho’s remarkably productive wolf population to people like […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
Heard around the West
WASHINGTON At the edge of his Soap Lake, Wash., backyard, Rick Froebe has lined up seven toilets and some old bathtubs and water heaters — all to annoy the golfers whose proximity makes his four dogs bark, which, in turn, annoys his neighbors. Froebe has even placed “three scarecrow-like dummies” on the toilets to look […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
Winter Prayer
Snowshoeing alone at night in the forest, a woman thinks – and prays – about the friends she loves, and the families they worry about.
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
A tale of shame and glory in the Southwest
Hampton Sides’ latest book, Blood and Thunder, is an expansive treatise on an expansive subject: Manifest Destiny and the opening of the desert Southwest. Sides uses Kit Carson — with his distinctive combination of chivalry, heroism, cruelty and unflinching complicity with inhumane policies — as a sort of thread to weave together the history of […]