Pentagon gives guns, armored vehicles and battlefield gear to rural Western counties.
Arizona
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
The Latest: EPA cuts pollution at the Navajo Generating Station
BackstoryBad air from coal-fired power plants not only causes health problems for the locals; it also ruins the scenery. In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency began addressing the visual impacts of air pollution from power plants, developing plans to reduce haze around national parks and wilderness areas. (“Clean air regulations protect views by targeting coal […]
Posted inGoat
Recreational deaths soar this summer
Grand Canyon and Colorado rivers have record year for deaths.
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Border out of control
National security runs roughshod over the Arizona wild.
Posted inGoat
The suburbs didn’t die — just short-circuited
Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were all celebrating the death of the suburbs? Both Millennials and Boomers, and perhaps many of those in between, were headed for the walkable, vibrant urban core. We would bulldoze no more desert for McMansions; sunflowers would invade exurban golf courses; and the expressways built to […]
Posted inGoat
Google’s time machine will show changes in development and nature
I like to play the “used to be” game. While walking around my hometown with friends, I point to a storefront — one of the snazzier restaurants in town, say — and say, “That used to be this weird little store that carried everything from comic books to frogs in formaldehyde, all left over from […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Shady dealings in the desert
SunlandDon Waters200 pages, hardcover:$25.95.University of Nevada Press, 2013. Sid Dulaney leaves his cheating girlfriend behind in Massachusetts and returns home to Tucson in Sunland, Oregon writer Don Waters’ hilarious first novel. Sid had worked as an itinerant teacher, but finds himself jobless in Tucson, where he spends his time looking after his beloved grandmother, Nana. […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Touring Indian Country via footrace
How to run in a reservation race that’s both sport and cultural tradition.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
How to save your town from the interstate
Tourists flocked to Winslow, Ariz., back in the golden era of cross-country rail travel, and later along the classic two-lane highway, Route 66. But now the old Valentine Diner sits empty and rusting, having long given up on luring customers off Interstate 40, which sidestepped the town in the 1970s. It’s a symbol of all […]
Posted inGoat
Four women joyride the flood that will revive the Colorado River Delta
The guides warned us, of course. Or they sort of did. It was sometime after the river outfitter’s shuttle van had passed through the latticework of gates and fences that guards the steep, hairpinned road to the boat-launch at the base of the Hoover Dam, and possibly right before we realized that we had left […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Navajo Nation bets on coal
A tribe digs into a dying industry.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Absurdly high rents in North Dakota, feral chihuahuas, and “meth” candy in Albuquerque.
THE HOUSING MARKETIf you’re paying $4,500 per month in apartment rent, you’d expect to have a great view, wouldn’t you? Perhaps the red towers of Golden Gate Bridge rising majestically from the fog? Or joggers in beautiful Central Park, far below your penthouse suite? These days, however, a high-priced apartment is just as likely to […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
Birthday of the burning boot
Making peace with growing older, on a hike near Patagonia, Arizona.
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Inside the BLM’s abrupt decision not to ban shooting in an Arizona national monument
Why guns, politics and saguaros don’t mix.
Posted inGoat
Discovery: Good ol’ tallgrass was formed by good ol’ bacteria
It’s always tempting to reflect on how wonderful the West used to be. You know what I mean: Conservationists and Natives lament that the first invasions by white settlers wrecked everything, and ranchers and loggers long for a return to the era before 750-page environmental-impact statements. Who among us hasn’t conjured up wistful images of […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Reconstructing a volatile past
Son of a Gun: A Memoir Justin St. Germain 256 pages, hardcover: $26. Random House, 2013. Murdered in her trailer just days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sensationalized on TV news, labeled a “black widow” by a marshal — Justin St. Germain’s mother was judged for her lifestyle both in life and in death. […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A war for a dollar
An energy war is sizzling in Arizona, with utilities pitted against the solar industry, environmentalists and even some free-market Republicans. The fight basically boils down to dollars: How much can an Arizonan with a solar system save on his electricity bill, and what will those savings cost other ratepayers? The savings are currently sizable, thanks […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
The right-wing heiress who changed course in the desert
Looking back on Bazy Tankersley: publisher, rancher and conservationist.
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Book review: A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona
A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona. Richard C. Brusca and Wendy Moore, 232 pages, softcover: $24.95. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Press, 2013. The Santa Catalina Mountains in southeast Arizona “easily become a good friend,” writes philosopher Bill Broyles in the introduction to this new book by two Southwest naturalists. A Natural History explores the […]