It looked almost exactly like Phil Hyde’s photograph taken in 1964, a year after Glen Canyon Dam began backing up the Colorado River in a process that would take seven years. Hyde’s photo revealed a stunning waterfall in a giant amphitheater with a narrow, almost slot-like opening at the top, perfectly named “Cathedral in the […]
The brief but wonderful return of Cathedral in the Desert
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
I say: Good riddance to bad billboards
For four years in the 1980s, I lived in Vermont, and then left it for the West after tiring of the state’s busybody politics. But I certainly admired one aspect of life in the bucolic yet politically correct Green Mountain State: No billboards. Back in 1968, the Vermont Legislature passed a law banning billboards. Since […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
So far, Oregon land-use measure is more bark than bite
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ Thanks to a set of strict, generation-old land-use laws, Oregon has escaped much of the scattered “exurban” development common in other Western states. But sprawl fighters feared the worst last November, when voters passed a ballot measure that could […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The end of exurbia: An interview with James Howard Kunstler
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ James Howard Kunstler has made a reputation for himself as a critic of America’s auto-dependent suburbs, first with his 1993 book, The Geography of Nowhere, and then his 1996 book, Home From Nowhere. Now, he is taking aim at […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The best of both worlds
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ George Abramajtis is a man of extremes. He grew up at sea level in the New York borough of Queens, and even after he got married, the view from his bedroom window was of a brick wall six feet […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Navajos put more than 17 million acres off-limits
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Uranium miners go back underground.” From 1947 until 1970, thousands of Navajos worked underground on and off the reservation, mining uranium for use in nuclear weapons and power plants. As a result, hundreds have been diagnosed with […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Uranium miners go back underground
With prices high and support from the president, the yellowcake rush is on
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Idaho gets smart about water
Science helps state juggle water rights during dry times
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
For salmon, a crucial moment of decision
Ruling could set in motion dramatic changes on Northwest rivers
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Dear friends
HEADING WEST The High Country News board of directors joined the staff in Paonia in May for the spring business meeting. Some of the more lively — and frank — discussion came when small groups of board and staff members took turns riffing on what they think of the paper, and how it needs to […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Beyond the exurban dream
Across the West, people are buying up small (and sometimes not so small) pieces of the countryside, and transforming them with roads, cars and pets into sprawling replicas of the places they just left. It’s an all-too-familiar story, and it has become all too easy to ignore. Another alfalfa field converted into a mall? So […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
How dense can we be?
Living the good life in the ‘exurbs’ is draining our tax coffers and devouring the West’s open spaces, but large-lot development continues to explode
Posted inWotr
What it was like in prison in Riverton, Wyoming
My parents have been spending time in the slammer. They are both approaching 80, are upstanding citizens, but in any given month, they might average two weekends in the joint. A while back, I decided to join them. That particular weekend they were at the Honor Farm in Riverton, Wyo. They specialize in Wyoming institutions […]
Posted inWotr
An organic label for milk is getting watered down
The happy cow on the label of Horizon organic milk is like a stop sign for consumers: Your quest for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton assures us that Horizon milk is from certified organic farms, where clean-living cows “make milk the natural way, with access to plenty of fresh air, clean […]
Posted inWotr
Real estate lingo for the New Westerner
I’m a rancher, so almost every day some realtor explains how much money I could make if I sold the ranch. Developers are subdividing pastures nearby, and soon, it’s true, I may not be able to afford ranching. So, I’m studying up on the new real estate lingo and — in typical friendly Western fashion […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Write-off on the Range
Wielding conservation’s most powerful tool, Reid Rosenthal walks a fine line between helping the land and serving his wealthy clients.
Posted inWotr
Can billionaire philanthropy save the earth?
A few days ago, I was commiserating with a friend about the sad state of environmental affairs. We were talking about the infamous “death of environmentalism” paper and its call for the environmental movement to connect more to issues involving social justice. My opinion, I told my friend, is that it’s not environmentalism that’s dead. […]
Posted inWotr
Stars in our eyes
Recently, at mid-afternoon on a rainy day, I looked up at the cloud-burdened sky and missed the stars, truly missed them. I felt the kind of wistful pangs that you might when you remember a long-gone but beloved grandparent, or a teenage sweetheart who misunderstood you long ago. I knew they were up there — […]
Posted inWotr
Water pounds through our towns and our dreams
The water in the mountains has decided that enough is enough: It’s time to come down. And down it has come, in a swell of white, tumbling magnificence the likes of which I haven’t seen around here in my 28 years in the West. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of flood that is washing through our […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America
Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America Charles Bergman, 325 pages, softcover: $21.95. University of Illinois Press, 2003. Biologists know that human activities are causing thousands of species to go extinct. According to Bergman, our attitudes contribute to extinction just as much as our automobiles do. By imagining animals as separate […]