“An ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.” — Repo Man, 1984 At 5 foot 9 inches tall, Gary Autry doesn’t cut a towering figure, but his broad shoulders and bulk give the 42-year-old former high school linebacker a commanding presence. He wears a […]
Repo Manic
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Isn’t it time to bury the hatchet?
It’s time to take a blockhead to lunch – and listen to what he has to say.
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Hope
After 16 years in the shadows, two sisters win legal residency
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Apprehension
On an 860,000-acre refuge, wildlife officers face a human torrent
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Perseverance
An immigrant’s journey: Dust, flies, and the long walk
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Abandonment
Plenty of jobs, not enough pay: Economic forces push Mexican workers north
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
HCN says farewell to an old friend
High Country News has always been fortunate in the people it attracts, whether they are readers, writers, staff or board members. Never has it been more fortunate than the day in 1984 when Herman Warsh agreed to join our board. Herman knew he was signing on for a tough voyage. Circulation was about 3,500, the […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Dear friends
WELCOME, CARMELLA Carmella Hensyel has joined HCN’s marketing department. Carmella worked most recently as marketing and sales director for Scenic Mesa Ranch in nearby Hotchkiss, which offers guided hunting and fishing. When the ranch began raising bison, Carmella helped develop and promote products ranging from buffalo meat to leather furniture: “It was extremely important to […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
The Immigrant’s Trail
Note: this essay introduces several feature articles in a special issue about the West’s immigration landscape. Last month, as immigrants and their supporters geared up for the May 1 “Day Without Immigrants,” and the Senate considered another comprehensive immigration bill, an 18-year-old Mexican woman gave birth amid the cactus and mesquite trees of the Arizona […]
Posted inWotr
Fishing ban will make us forget salmon
When the Bush administration announced plans to close ocean fishing ofchinook salmon along 700 miles of Southern Oregon and Northern Californiacoastline, many people in my hometown sneered their approval. With the exception of a brief, limited and most probably token fishing season last summer, Idaho’s upper Salmon River basin has been closed to salmon anglers […]
Posted inWotr
Puppets on the range
A puppet show just finished a 20-year run in southwest New Mexico. I first attended in 1994, when a magazine sent me to the Gila National Forest to inspect damage grazing had done to habitat of Gila trout, our only endangered inland salmonid. Grazing allotments in the Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses had been leased […]
Posted inWotr
War protesters never die, they just keep on protesting
The third anniversary of America’s invasion of Iraq was March 19, so I joined a small group of people who met in Riverside Park in Salida, Colo., to state our disagreement with the war. It was a cold and cloudy day, appropriate for the occasion. There were the usual homemade signs. I wore my Army […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Magic Valley Uprising
How an Idaho citizens’ coalition gunned down a dirty power plant — and what it means for the West
Posted inWotr
Global warming can give you the chills
It was an odd juxtaposition: As news outlets were reporting last winter about astonishingly frigid conditions in Russia, where nearly 40 deaths had been linked to temperatures as low as 24 degrees below zero, they were also reporting an announcement by climate experts that 2005 was the hottest year worldwide in more than a century. […]
Posted inWotr
Wacky California is pragmatic leader of the West
The Interior West has long regarded California as a sort of rich eccentric uncle whose behavior is an embarrassment to the rest of the family. I have some firsthand knowledge of this attitude, because I am a fourth-generation Californian, who moved to rural western Colorado in 1992. The sidelong glances I received from a few […]
Posted inWotr
Corn ethanol isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
This was supposed to be a cakewalk, a no-brainer, a slam-dunk. Ethanol from corn lessened our dependence on foreign oil, they told us. It helped our struggling Midwestern farmers. It was much better for the environment. Who could not support this? As it turns out, quite a few of us. Ethanol plants are sprouting like […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Ingredients: History, preservatives
Preserving Western History is “the first college reader to address public history in the American West.” “Public history,” explains the introduction, means history presented outside classrooms. All of us consume public history, by visiting parks, watching TV shows and reading magazines. Behind the scenes, even the most basic presentation of history can involve slicing, dicing, […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
A season of change
At the beginning of winter a few years ago, nature writer Bruce Stutz lay in a hospital bed in New York, recovering from heart surgery. Eight months later, seeking the same renewal that nature experiences each year, Stutz set out on a trek from New York to Alaska to mark the coming of spring — […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Ode to a very hot spot
Despite its sensationalistic cover, John Soennichsen’s book, Live! From Death Valley, is a serious look at this unpredictable corner of California’s Mojave Desert. That’s not to say the author doesn’t have fun with his subject: He dives into the area’s bizarre geological history and its eccentric local characters, and tells plenty of self-deprecating stories about […]