Salvage is a word that is much in the air these days, not just in the woods, but also in the lecture halls of universities and in the marble corridors of Washington, D.C. It is a word of power, a soothing word implying many virtues: prudence and profit, rescue and redemption, both exploitation and, somehow, […]
Of salvage logging and salvation
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
It’s getting better all the time
As a longtime subscriber, I have observed a marked uplift in the artistic level of the photography used to illustrate articles in the past year or so. The Oct. 30 issue was a new zenith, with two articles illustrated by Jared Boyd, “Just Another Giddyup” and “Peace Breaks Out in New Mexico’s Forests.” The photos, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
The very model of a modern collaboration
On behalf of the Forest Guild, a national association of professional foresters with deep roots in community forestry, I would like to comment on Peter Friederici’s article “Peace Breaks Out in New Mexico’s Forests” (HCN, 10/30/06). The Forest Guild was one of the collaborators on the Rowe Mesa Collaborative Forest Restoration Project (CFRP) referred to […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Truth, lies and falcons
In the “Bred For Success” article, author Stephanie Paige Ogburn perpetuates a common myth when she writes, “A well-trained falcon brings the catch (prey) uneaten to its master, who rewards it with food” (HCN, 11/13/06). Sheer fallacy: Falcons serve no master and they don’t retrieve. In comparing released aplomado falcons to an “annual crop of […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Time for an attitude adjustment
As a fellow Unitarian Universalist, I am puzzled and dismayed by Chris Wallace’s shortsighted and selfish attitude toward paying fees to use nearby U.S. Forest Service lands (HCN, 11/27/06). It seems to me that the no-fee movement is akin to the property-rights movement, as in “I own this land and I can do with it […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Shear Pleasure
As the eighth red-headed slut slid down my throat, I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I was merely trying to keep up with my new friends, a group of traveling sheepshearers from New Zealand. But they kept buying round after round at the Sawmill Saloon in Darby, Mont. “Shearing’s a hobby,” […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Excremental gains?
A stink over ‘sludge’ raises larger questions
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Two weeks in the West
“People will go to any length to have these things in their possession. It’s big antlers and big egos.” — Jim Kropp, chief of wildlife law enforcement in Montana, on a wave of trophy game poaching that’s alarmed officials and angered licensed hunters in Montana, Nevada and other Western states. Mobsters or federal employees — […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Slipping into the holidays
More than a foot of snow fell in our hometown of Paonia the week after Thanksgiving. It was fluffy, “powder dry” stuff to begin with, but after a week of sub-freezing temperatures, not to mention sub-par snow removal efforts, it turned into dense sheets of ice on the town’s sidewalks and streets. Geology students from […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Dear friends
HCN TAKES A HOLIDAY Thanks to all of our readers and friends who attended our annual holiday open house on Dec. 6. As we always do this time of year, HCN staffers are taking a two-week break to sing carols, swill wassail and celebrate the holiday with family and friends. The next issue of HCN […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Faustian bargains in the gas fields of New Mexico’s San Juan Basin
Posted inWotr
The best job in the world
I had the best job in the world this December. I made 50 people laugh and then start to cry. Some looked at me as if I were crazy, while others hugged me tight. I was a “Mystery Shopper” in Montrose, population 13,000, in western Colorado, who “caught” people shopping in local stores and gave […]
Posted inWotr
No surprises, and no solutions, from raids aimed at illegal immigrants
On the morning of Dec. 12, immigration and other federal officials launched a simultaneous raid — the biggest ever of its kind — at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants across six different states. At the plant in Greeley, Colo., about an hour’s drive north of Denver, agents surrounded the windowless, monolithic facility, then entered, carrying […]
Posted inWotr
Christmas fuels the ‘bough industry’ in Washington
When my parents were first married, my father wanted to name their newly created logging company “Moonscape Logging.” Thankfully, my mother nixed that idea, although it was an apt description of the clear-cutting that happened on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the ’70s and ’80s. Once logs were taken out of the forest, whatever remained got […]
Posted inWotr
A public-lands experiment needs to re-engage the public
Not long ago, a fat patch of private land lay isolated within the Jemez Mountains, surrounded mostly by Forest Service land. Though off-limits, many New Mexicans knew that this place, the Baca Ranch, supported an enormous elk herd and contained both geological and archaeological wonders. Today, that 89,000-acre private ranch is better known as a […]
Posted inWotr
Democrats are still an endangered species in the West
Since last month’s midterm elections, Democrats have fallen all over themselves trumpeting their party’s gains in the Mountain West as the harbinger of a new political landscape. Many have suggested that the GOP now amounts to little more than a regional party with scant appeal outside the South. But a reality check is in order […]
Posted inWotr
Chickens are roosting on private property in Oregon
Oregon’s Ballot infamous Measure 37 created an old-fashioned land rush as property owners, developers and opportunists raced to file claims for compensation before the recent deadline. An estimated 3,600 claims were filed with the possibility that the last-minute rush added 1,000 more. The total cost of the claims may top $7 billion, though no one […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Heard around the West
MONTANA The Washington Post couldn’t resist a colorful headline about the outcome of Montana’s tighter-than-tight race for the U.S. Senate: “A true blue libertarian: Stan Jones, the also-ran who changed the hue of politics.” Jones, 67, is certainly known for his ashen-blue face — the unfortunate result of drinking a homemade medicine that contained silver […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Dina’s Place
Dina takes me down to the river, to a place behind her house on the reservation. “I want to show you my secret spot,” she says. “C’mon.” The Big Sioux River smells like piss some days, or a wasting body. In my second summer working for the tribe, I have come to know the river’s […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
The art of an alien landscape
Westerners are always surprised to realize that critics often dismiss the region’s art and literature as an inferior, derivative part of the American canon. Luckily, we have Alan Williamson, a poet and scholar with roots on both sides of the country, to set the record straight. In Westernness: A Meditation, he examines what it means […]