Names Jeff Lee and Ann Martin Vocations Bookseller and graphic artist Home Base Denver, Colorado Claim to Fame Founders of the Rocky Mountain Land Library She says “This is just Jeff’s kind of project. I go day to day, he has the big vision.” “To really know the West, to be at home here,” says […]
A mountain of books becomes a library of the land
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Skiing, or wheeling and dealing?
New resorts smell a lot like real estate bonanzas
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
A chemical cocktail pollutes Western water
Traces of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, other compounds turn up in streams and wells
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
‘Sound science’ in doubt at Yucca Mountain
E-mails show federal employees circumvented quality assurance procedures
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Dear friends
KIDS THESE DAYS … Nature, with a capital N, is going to hell — or so we’re told. The venerable wilderness warhorse Dave Foreman recently e-mailed around an essay detailing exactly how it’s doing so, and why. Among other culprits, he blames High Country News (too preoccupied with “happy little resource-extraction communities”), The Nature Conservancy […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
On the trail of global warming
Weird weather stole the headlines in Western newspapers this winter. We read about a mudslide in the Grand Canyon, Seattle’s jet stream showing up in southern Utah, and the appearance of shorts in Bozeman, Mont., in February. The weather has been downright bizarre, and the media have been there to report every dramatic detail. But […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
What happened to winter?
A bizarre season leaves Westerners wondering what’s next
Posted inWotr
What the West needs is an honest discussion
Life was much simpler when I viewed the battle to “save” the West through a black-and-white lens. As a young environmentalist, it was easier to condemn my adversaries’ beliefs without scrutinizing my own. And it was easier to attack my adversaries when I didn’t know them. I have agonized over this for years now. At […]
Posted inWotr
Pets gone wild have no place in nature
I recently learned that an old acquaintance died — was killed, in fact. No, tortured to death, actually. It was a threatened desert tortoise I knew in Yucca Valley, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park. Its home was the scrub and rocks near a former neighbor’s rural home, and it would trek to her doorway […]
Posted inWotr
Mickey Moose and the West’s newest frontier
The Walt Disney Company is coming to Yellowstone National Park, and already the “Mickey Moose” jokes have started. What’s not funny is the way this venture by a multinational corporation marks a new frontier for the West. In a quiet announcement last month, Disney said it intended to test-launch a “Quest for the West” weeklong […]
Posted inWotr
Religion loses to recreation in Arizona
Jones Benally stands in the city park of Flagstaff, Ariz., and holds a chunk of basalt as if it is an injured bird. He looks down at his cupped hands and the words come steady and soft: “Everything has a life. You got to respect it and think about what you’re doing. Like when you […]
Posted inWotr
Bumper stickers are a serious thing
I have two bumper stickers on my truck, and one I’d like to add if I could find it. The sticker I’ve had the longest is also the best, making Gary Snyder’s poem, “Jackrabbit eyes all night, breakfast in Elko,” seem wordy. Some of you will recognize it: SILT HAPPENS. It was, for years, the […]
Posted inWotr
If Pedro needed help, I would have given it
Last September, while on an early morning walk with my dogs, I spotted an orange knapsack on a steep west bank of the Santa Cruz River here in Rio Rico, Ariz. I also saw two baseball caps lying near the water’s edge. I waded across the foul-smelling river and opened the orange knapsack. Inside, I […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Common Southwestern Native Plants: An Identification Guide
Common Southwestern Native Plants: An Identification Guide Jack L. Carter, Martha A. Carter and Donna J. Stevens, 214 pages, softcover $20. Mimbres Publishing, 2003. This user-friendly guide includes photos and descriptions of 108 woody species and 38 flowering plants found throughout the Southwest. Bonuses include a ruler for measuring leaves and flowers and an illustrated […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life
Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life Theda Skocpol, 384 pages, softcover $24.95. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Harvard University professor Theda Skocpol wants to know where all the volunteers have gone. Americans today are less likely to join volunteer groups than at any other time in the past, and the ubiquitous […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town
Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town Andrew Leo Lovato, 160 pages, hardcover $24.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. As author Andrew Leo Lovato writes, Santa Fe is not only a “city of ancient traditions” but one of “invented traditions” — in other words, it’s a true tourist town. “It is […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The best thing since dams: pouring water underground
The era of dams, it has been widely declared, is dead. So what comes next? In Common Waters, Diverging Streams, William Blomquist, Edella Schlager and Tanya Heikkila argue that the future may lie with “conjunctive management,” or coordinating the use and storage of surface water with water in underground aquifers. When surface water is plentiful, […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Showdown over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and its people
Oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seems to be the current showdown issue for the environmental movement. Now, some of the movement’s top gunslinging writers, including Rick Bass, are stepping forward in defense of the refuge and its inhabitants. In his latest book, Caribou Rising, Bass shreds the argument for oil development while […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Centigrade is fine, thanks
What’s wrong with centigrade for degrees C? (as noted by Charles Miller in “Corrections,” HCN, 3/7/05). After all, the scale covers 100 degrees, from ice to steam at sea level. I suppose it was invented by somebody called Celsius; I prefer the more explanatory centigrade, or just °C. Being corrected for using that is nonsense; […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Private environmentalism: alive and well
I’ve been patiently reading your teary editorials and now an entire issue on the death of environmentalism (HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?). Political rubbish! Talk to the private people on the ground, the people like me who are “doing it” every day, year in and year out. I’ve put […]