During the winter, I live in the southeastern corner of Wyoming, in the capital city of Cheyenne. In summer, and in any weather when the roads are passable, I spend as much time as I can on my ranch in the southwestern corner of South Dakota. My two homes are about 280 miles apart, but […]
When you’re alone on the open road
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Hoping for river magic on a trip with Dad
What do you feel when you stick your parents in the river? I have in my office an 11-by-14-inch photo of my dad and me in Lava Falls on the Colorado River. It’s a fine river photo: just heads and oar tips visible in the V-wave. It’s printed off a Polaroid. My father clutched it […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Why I’m a poor writer
For almost a month now I’ve been trying to collect $55 that a national environmental magazine owes me for a 400-word book review. That’s two 20s, a 10, and a five. Three polite e-mails have yielded the following one response: “Thanks for reminding me. I’ll look into it.” This proves my first rule about free-lance […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Enough nature writing already!
In a column by Anne Lamott in the online magazine “Salon,” she made the following proposal: “Rather than make perfectly good writers crank out new books every few years because they need income and are otherwise unemployable, what if we gave them subsidies not to write any more books, like they give to tobacco growers?” […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
In Montana: The view from the ranchette
Montana has its own special pathologies. But the one it shares most visibly with the Mountain West in general features a peculiar symptom – furtive glances at the horizon with the expectation of seeing silhouetted hordes there, as in a Western movie, except that these hordes are driving Land Rovers and eating sushi. There’s a […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Lynx reintroduction links unexpected allies
SOUTH FORK, Colo. – “They’re back!” yelled wildlife biologist Gene Byrne in February, as a lanky-legged lynx, trapped in Canada, bounded from a cage in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. “They never left,” another Colorado Division of Wildlife officer, Bill Andree, said quietly. That exchange was symbolic of the lynx’s return to the Southern Rockies this […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Greens fight lonely battle near Yellowstone
The car wash in Dubois, Wyo., offers more than high-pressure soap and water – it’s got a larger-than-life fiberglass moose perched on the roof. Next door at the veterinary clinic, visitors escort sick pets through an enormous buffalo skull, and the heads of elk and bighorn sheep stare at customers from the walls of the […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Don’t trust everything you see
MISSOULA, Mont. – A few years ago, Chuck Bartlebaugh photographed a young girl in Yellowstone National Park, standing about 10 feet in front of a bull elk whose head was submerged in the tall grass. The girl stood with her back to the elk, facing away from the camera. The girl’s mother noticed Bartlebaugh, and […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Dear Friends
Welcome, Chris Wehner High Country News welcomes Chris Wehner, who will manage the newspaper’s home on the World Wide Web. Originally from Rockford, Ill., outside of Chicago, Chris lives an hour’s drive from Paonia in Grand Junction, Colo., with his wife, Paula, and their blended family of five children. He’ll split his time between working […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Nostalgic for the Pleistocene
“We are space-needing, wild-country Pleistocene beings, trapped in overdense numbers in devastated, simplified ecosystems.” – Paul Shepard (1925-1996) How’s this for a statement of opinion: In this century and a whole lot of others, no other thinker has been anywhere near so visionary, prophetic, revolutionary and important as Paul Shepard. Yet, if you know about […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
How are grazing and smoking similar? Both kill
Dear HCN, Tom Knudson’s story on the Trout Creek working group in Oregon lacked some important factual information that would have cast the “success’ of this BLM propaganda project in a less favorable light (HCN, 3/1/99). The article implies that the Trout Creeks can serve as a model solution for public-lands grazing disputes across the […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Expensive cows
Dear HCN, The articles about the Trout Creek Mountains in the March 1 edition of High Country News overlooked a key player, the American taxpayer (HCN, 3/1/99). The Bureau of Land Management addressed this effort as a “must not be allowed to fail” demonstration grazing project. Funding was redirected to the tune of about $500 […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
The link between lynx and stupidity
Dear HCN, Talk about stupidity! The trapping and relocation of lynx from their natural habitat in northern Canada to Colorado has to top the list (HCN, 2/15/99). Most people in the Colorado Division of Wildlife have never seen a lynx, let alone have much knowledge of how they live, but because they were pressured by […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Don’t trust the military
Dear HCN, While the Air Force is busy in Nevada, giving lip service and meeting time to ecosystem management and touchy-feely sound bites, it is forging right ahead with the destruction of the Owyhee Canyonlands of Idaho (HCN, 3/15/99). No matter that a broad coalition of public-interest groups and a majority of Idaho citizens oppose […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
The Wayward West
Three Idaho Supreme Court decisions the first week in April reaffirmed the right of an anti-grazing group to bid on state grazing leases (HCN, 12/21/98). A week later, the Idaho Watersheds Project won a federal court decision that pulled grazing permits from 1 million acres of BLM grazing lands in Idaho. The group’s Jon Marvel […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Nuclear waste goes camping
Rocky Flats, the closed atomic bomb factory on the outskirts of Denver, is running out of room to store the waste from its cleanup efforts. By this summer, low-level transuranic waste will be stored in stainless steel containers placed in 9,600 steel drums, which will then be stored outside under temporary tents. Although the tents […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Tribe buys a ranch
Thanks to casino earnings, the fast-growing Pascua Yaqui Tribe has spent $3 million to buy a 5,300-acre cattle ranch. The purchase expands the tribe’s land base to 6,300 acres. Tribal Chairman Benito Valencia said he would not rule out building a second casino on the ranch. Under gaming compacts with Arizona, however, tribes cannot put […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Counties put a bounty on coyotes
The price of a movie ticket or six gallons of premium gasoline is now the going rate for a pair of coyote ears in two southeastern Colorado counties. Baca County now pays $7.50 per coyote, the first bounty in Colorado in almost 30 years. Since January, the bounty has brought in 412 pairs of ears. […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Heard around the West
A house in Taylorsville, Utah, was suddenly drenched by a foul-smelling liquid, according to The Denver Post. When the sewage fell from the sky, the homeowner beseeched Salt Lake City International Airport for help, logging in more than 60 phone calls. The official response? It’s not our problem. The city’s fire department finally accepted responsibility, […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Congress searches for a ‘green conspiracy’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress does not just sit around and pass laws. Nosiree, Bob. It makes sure the executive branch does its job right. This is known as congressional oversight, and it helps to keep the big boys honest. When a government project goes awry, a congressional committee will track down the facts, expose the […]