SILT. Healthy particles of silt are suspended in the river, buffed off eons of Wingate sandstone and the debris of flash floods fire-hosing through twisted arroyos. These tiny particles of soil, mud, stone, trees and bones scour our skin as we float in the slow, warm current of the river. We drift in silence, particles […]
Nine reasons why a river is good for the soul
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
How we lost our ranch to gas drilling
Our cattle, our dreams and our ranching lives are now a thing of the past. My husband and I felt obligated to sell everything we had worked for over nine years in Silt, in western Colorado, to escape the impacts of gas drilling. As one who has lived through the experience, I can say that […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Xeric Families of the West
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Lure of the Lawn.” Harold and Joan Leinbach First, it was floods, which left 10 inches of water standing in Harold and Joan Leinbach’s Boulder yard — and seeping under their foundation — in the spring of 1995. Then it was drought, which […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
What is Xeriscaping?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Lure of the Lawn.” Twenty-five years ago, Ken Ball and his Denver Water colleagues developed the seven basic principles of Xeriscaping. Those commandments are still in use today. Plan and design the landscape for water conservation and beauty from the start. Create practical […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Have golf’s glory days gone by?
The game that brought grass to the desert appears to be drying up
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Safety first
NAME Steve Ficklin VOCATION Petroleum Engineering Technician AGE 54 HOME BASE Silt, Colorado KNOWN FOR Keeping drill rigs from blowing up HOBBIES Working brainteaser math problems, fishing, hunting, camping. HE SAYS “Each hole is different. No two wells are identical.” Steve Ficklin doesn’t talk a lot. As he drives along a dirt road outside the […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Clearing a path for power
Plans for power lines and pipelines would make it easier to tap the West’s energy boom
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Tribes tackle taggers
Gang culture — and violence — hit rural Indian reservations
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Wilderness cliffhanger
Three compromise bills pass the House, await Senate approval
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Two weeks in the West
“No one will look upon her tenure as the golden age of the Park Service.” — Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, on the recent resignation of Park Service Chief Fran Mainella. Mainella’s tenure was contentious — the agency was widely criticized for a 2005 management policy that emphasized recreation over conservation, and […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Dear friends
CONGRATS, MATT AND PAOLO HCN staffers recently took home two more writing awards. West Coast correspondent Matt Jenkins received the 2006 James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism for his story “Squeezing Water from a Stone” (HCN, 9/19/05: Squeezing Water from a Stone). Judges had high praise for Matt’s story about the implications of Las […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
A green obsession
One of my favorite refrigerator pictures is a shot of my father-in-law, Bob Cook. He’s seated atop a brand-new John Deere mowing machine, wearing a grin that could outshine any kid’s on Christmas morning. Why is this man so happy? It’s partly the machine, which is one of those fancy, hand-controlled models that can spin […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
The Lure of the Lawn
Can Westerners get over their romance with turf?
Posted inWotr
Relishing those idiosyncratic Western triumphs
When I realized a dozen years ago that my state’s license plates were issued chronologically, I felt stirrings of ambition. Here was a tiny yet visible status symbol, and all I had to do was wait. At that time my plate, after the county prefix, was 4786A, meaning that there were over 4,000 vehicles lined […]
Posted inWotr
Is the great federal land debate over?
Every decade or so, people start pushing the idea of selling off big chunks of public land or transferring that land to state ownership and management. Outside of small parcels, it has never happened, probably because most of us support leaving public lands in federal hands. With the recent pronouncements of Idaho’s own Dirk Kempthorne, […]
Posted inWotr
My Wonderful Heart Attack
My Wonderful Heart Attack happened last March while I was hiking with my wife in the mountains west of Boulder, Colo. The dogs were ranging out ahead as usual and, except for some heartburn, I felt good as we walked through the trees. I said to Pat, “I have some heartburn and I can;t think […]
Posted inWotr
How we lost our ranch to gas drilling
Our cattle, our dreams and our ranching lives are now a thing of the past. My husband and I felt obligated to sell everything we had worked for over nine years in Silt, in western Colorado, to escape the impacts of gas drilling. As one who has lived through the experience, I can say that […]
Posted inWotr
Just why did Gale Norton leave the interior department?
It seemed so sudden, the way Interior Secretary Gale Norton resigned back in early March. It wasn’t like the other resignations from President George Bush’s cabinet. Everyone in town knew that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was an odd-man-out before Powell announced he would leave at the end of the first term. As to former […]
Posted inWotr
Nature-deficit disorder is ruining our kids
No matter how old I live to be, there will never be a place so full of mystery and adventure as a place of my childhood called The Woods. The stories that grew out of those trees still kindle powerful feelings, even after all these years. My friends and I knew the place was haunted. […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Stiles is a sideline ranter
It is clear from his critique of SUWA that although he rants from the sidelines, Jim Stiles has never actually been in the game (HCN, 5/29/06:Clinging hopelessly to the past). The absence of actual political experience may explain Jim’s emphasis on an elusive wilderness bill to the exclusion of SUWA’s other achievements. Without SUWA, Utah’s […]