Plans for power lines and pipelines would make it easier to tap the West’s energy boom
Clearing a path for power
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 […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Water for farms, not urban sprawl
I find it ironic that Chad Roberts’ letter appears in the same issue of HCN that features an article about how the environmental movement’s single-minded campaign to close down ranching, mining, and timber cutting in the West helped create the economic vacuum into which Industrial Tourism has poured (HCN, 5/29/06: Clinging hopelessly to the past). According […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Enough real-estate bashing
Re: David Oates’ essay “Empty pods and pleasant graveyards”: It’s just great to read yet another screed published in HCN railing on the real estate industry (HCN, 6/12/06: Empty pods and pleasant graveyards). How original and refreshing. Why don’t you scrape the rust off of your imaginations and try focusing on good real estate projects that […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Beating extinction for Gunnison grouse
Thanks for airing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s dirty laundry. Not listing the Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species is mind-boggling (HCN, 6/12/06: On a wing and a prayer). This is an administration that wouldn’t have listed the passenger pigeon as endangered, if they’d had the chance. San Miguel County, home to the most […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Recreation is just another boom
Let me make something clear: I do not like backcountry mountain biking, white-tablecloth-and-fine-wine river adventures or any of the rest of New West’s industrial recreationism. But Jim Stiles’ idea that New West recreationism is just as destructive as Old West extractionism is just plain hogwash (HCN, 5/29/06:Clinging hopelessly to the past). Industrial logging and ranching […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Stiles fights corporate environmentalism
For my money, Jim Stiles, along with a small handful of others like Charles Bowden and Doug Peacock, is one of the leading fresh, outside-the-box voices in the American West since Ed Abbey’s death (HCN, 5/29/06: Clinging hopelessly to the past). We need more of them. Unfortunately, prophets like Stiles (here meaning not smitten-by-gawd predictors, but […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Two Weeks in the West
Autumn in the West may be more brown than gold this year. Aspen trees are dying in large numbers throughout the region, especially in Colorado, home to half the West’s quakies. Researchers are baffled; there’s no discernible pattern to the die-off, and the rate seems to be increasing. In southwestern Colorado, up to 60 percent […]