ANIMAL PLANET Here in Paonia, we’ve been having various critter adventures. JoAnn Kalenak, our production assistant, recently adopted a beagle named Darcy. In mid-March, though, the dog disappeared while chasing rabbits. Three weeks later, a neighbor called to say that Darcy had been vacationing at her farm a few miles away the entire time. Meanwhile, […]
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Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
The revolution will not be televised
In a speech before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in April, President George W. Bush told a story about talking to troops in Texas who were concerned about the rising cost of gasoline. Bush explained that he had no “magic wand” to reduce gas prices, but he hinted that his energy plan, which he […]
Posted inWotr
Home on a very small range
In the years that I zealously rode a horse as a teen, the pasture below our house was a pen for my plump little buckskin mare. Conveniently flat, it doubled as an arena, hard-packed and strewn with makeshift jumps. Other than being a nuisance and forcing me to feed hay more often, the thistle and […]
Posted inWotr
Grazing buyouts help land and ranchers
It’s springtime in the Rockies, which means roiling rivers, blooming fruit orchards and lots of baby bovines in the valley-bottom pastures. A month ago, the calves were small, dark lumps deposited on dun-colored fields; today, they are energetic youngsters, chasing each other across green grass in free-for-all games of tag. In a matter of weeks, […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Troubled — and shallow — waters on the West’s largest river
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “What happened to winter?“ Mountains, it is often said, are the West’s water towers. If snowfall fails to fill the towers, or warm temperatures empty them too early in the year, fish, farmers and other water users face a dry summer. That’s especially true […]
Posted inWotr
Spring comes grudgingly to Wyoming’s high desert
Although I expect more heartless wind and freezing nights, I think winter’s tight grip has been loosened. Summer lies ahead.
Posted inWotr
Hullabaloo in the hook-and-bullet press
As a hunter, fisher and full-time outdoor writer, it pains me to admit that most hunting-and-fishing magazines are right down there with supermarket tabloids. You can tell the really important articles by the number of exclamation points after the title, as in: “Sportsmen’s group in all-out battle for shooting and hunting rights!!!” Fact-checking departments are […]
Posted inWotr
Montana’s Marlboro men get ready to bite the dust
I’m a sucker for the cowboy. My bookshelves sag under the weight of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry novels. I have spent summer wages on Ian Tyson CDs and Willie Nelson concert tickets. My favorite Clint Eastwood film is Unforgiven, not Million Dollar Baby. But even I was surprised when the 2005 Montana Legislature drew […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources
The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources Matthew McKinney and William Harmon 297 pages, softcover $30, hardcover $60. Island Press, 2004 Authors McKinney and Harmon look at the West’s endless tug-of-wars over water, land use, fire management and wildlife — issues, they say, best resolved through collaboration, negotiation, or consensus. That’s not easy, […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America’s Superstate
Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America’s Superstate Robert Bryce 327 pages, hardcover $26.00. PublicAffairs, 2004 “I’m all for business. I’m all for government. I just don’t want them to be the same thing,” says Robert Bryce, taking on the state of Texas and its enormous political influence over American life, from […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
The World’s Water 2004-2005: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources
The World’s Water 2004-2005: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources Edited by Peter Gleick 320 pages, softcover $35. Island Press, 2004. The fourth installment of this annual report covers water issues that span the globe. Gleick — president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security — and other water brainiacs contemplate […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
No room for democracy on California farms
Remember high school history class, and all that jive about Thomas Jefferson and his dream of a democracy based around small family farms? When it comes to California, you can toss that dream right out the window. So writes Richard Walker in The Conquest of Bread, a sweeping new take on agriculture in California. “The […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
The artist, her caretaker, and eight years of letters
The initial draw of Maria Chabot — Georgia O’Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941-1949 is its promise of a peek into the artist’s personal life. But the surprise of these collected letters between two women in the 1940s — one of them in northern New Mexico, cleaning out acequias, planting fruit trees and commenting on the “bloodsucker” artists […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Moving beyond stereotypes
Kudos to Jim Stiles for his essay on Old and New Westerners (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). Right on target. For 12 years, I have been fortunate to be a member of a group of Old and New Westerners that has, not easily, gotten mostly beyond the typical attitudes […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
The old urban West speaks out
Perhaps most HCN staff and readers will recognize themselves in Stiles’ essay (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). I did not recognize myself or my neighbors. We are the Old Urban West. I am a fourth-generation Northwesterner living in the urban neighborhood where I was born, a neighborhood as strained […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Dudes and locals need to work together
I smiled at Jim Stiles’ essay (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). In the late 1950s, my mother ripped my sister and me out of New York City and moved us to Wyoming. My mother was tenacious and proud of her “Western” life, but despite over 30 years of living […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Stereotyping sets us back
Jim Stiles’ stereotyping is nothing less than ignorance in its purest form (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror). Mr. Stiles, as a journalist, you should know better. It takes but one person to make a change in the world. One woman chose to ride at the front of the bus, […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Westerns don’t protect their own
The essay on the Eastern wind farm clearly belongs to the Real Westerners vs. Effete Easterners genre (HCN, 3/7/05: Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe). The fact that wind power has many positive features does not mean that wind turbines should be sited wherever winds are particularly favorable. Easterners like […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Wind farm raises real concerns
The wind farm issue is far less simplistic than Joshua Zaffos would have us believe (HCN, 3/7/05: Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe). Yes, there are wealthy people on Nantucket just as there are wealthy people in the West, but they are not the majority. The greater number of people […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Farmers and ranchers say city is stealing water
Steel pumps and filter towers may soon rise from the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico — and that has a small agricultural community seriously concerned. The growing city of Alamogordo wants to draw water from deep within the Tularosa Basin aquifer. But that water is salty. To make it drinkable, the city plans to […]