Twenty years ago, many car bumpers in Colorado sported a no-holds-barred sticker: “Dam the Denver Water Board.” It was easy enough to dislike the agency then. It was big — Colorado’s largest water utility and one of the largest in the West — and it reflexively used its political muscle and economic sway to realize […]
Communities
Posted inHeard Around the West
Of guns and mordant humor
THE WESTIt became official Feb. 22: Visitors to national parks can now tote loaded firearms, openly carrying legal handguns, rifles and shotguns. But oh, the many restrictions, as noted in a handy brochure available at parks. Here’s a major one: Although it is legal to carry loaded weapons in national parks, existing laws and regulations […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
HCN wins awards
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve received the prestigious 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for Environmental Coverage. “High Country News covers this vast (Western) landscape like an experienced backcountry guide, pointing out the threats along with the wonders,” wrote the Utne judges. “Whether its writers are watchdogging resource-intensive industries like ranching, mining, drilling, and logging […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
It’s cultural, not rational
It’s hard to see rural opposition to public-land protection as anything more than a front on the great American culture war (HCN, 4/26/10). To hear, again, the opposition of San Juan County, Utah, commissioners to new national monuments or to wilderness designations confounds economic rationality. National parks and monuments are big drivers of economic activity […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Let’s make a (national) deal
When I read the subhead of Jonathan Thompson’s article “Wilderness by Committee,” I inwardly groaned (HCN, 4/26/10). Thompson wrote: “Federal land protection is all about dealmaking.” Here in Montana, we are being confronted with this kind of “dealmaking” in the form of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, the fruit of three separate […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Saving wildlands, ignoring urban lands?
I feel that the “Flare up” article misses the real story and scapegoats environmental groups (HCN, 4/26/10). Libby has asbestos problems? Those awful environmental groups! Sinclair refinery spilling too much pollution? Where are the environmentalists!? Environmental groups aren’t superheroes, fixing refineries, organizing labor and healing the sick. Instead, you should ask the real questions: Who […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
What lies beneath?
The Farmer’s DaughterJim Harrison308 pages, hardcover: $24.Grove Press, 2010. It’s a favorite trope in Western literature and film: The soft-boiled city slicker who’s “hardened up” by the rural West, taught the value of a good day’s labor and stripped of frivolous notions of comfort and security. The land tempers you, according to popular mythology, instilling […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Birding, fast and slow
First, a confession: I am a serious birder. Maybe too serious: For 364 days a year, I lead field trips for beginners, share my spotting scope and am happy to explain the differences between, say, a song sparrow and a savannah sparrow to anyone who is interested (and, perhaps, to a few who might not […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Civics lesson
In your April 26 edition of “Heard Around the West,” author Betsy Marston clearly enjoys poking fun at the Utah parents who want to ensure that certain schools in their counties are using the proper terminology to describe our system of government. She obviously thinks that republic is simply short for Republican, and what could […]
Posted inBlog
Pack the truck…..we’re headed to Colorado
A rather unimpressive photo of former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart accompanies the headline “You gotta have Hart” in the July 8, 1983 issue of High Country News. Click for larger version Reported by then-editor Dan Whipple, the article is set in Snowmass, Colo., at the Sierra Club’s First International Assembly where presidential candidates and […]
Posted inWotr
The Arizona solution
Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from the East Coast went to better schools and boasted more impressive résumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault our […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
NBIMBY
COLORADO AND UTAHMesa State College on Colorado’s Western Slope displayed a bit of insensitivity to its Grand Junction neighbors recently, announcing that it was planning to create a “body farm” in one of the city’s fastest-growing residential areas. A body farm is a place where criminal justice students study the slow process of decay in […]
Posted inGoat
The Spirit of Mt. St. Helens
Thirty years (and one day) ago, Mount St. Helens blew its top. Or rather, its side. After months of heightened seismic activity, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake caused the flank of the mountain to suddenly fall away. The landslide — the largest ever recorded — slammed into Spirit Lake at the foot of the volcano. A […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Last rites in salmon country?
As California’s water war grinds on, salmon fishermen gear up for a risky season
Posted inHeard Around the West
Doggone it
THE WORLDEveryone loves dogs, right? Don’t be so sure. In its spring issue, Earth Island Journal reviewed the book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale. The Vales found that the carbon impact of a dog is double that of an SUV, that a […]
Posted inWotr
Springtime is whine-time
Spring is the cruelest month in the mountain West. Yes, I know that spring technically occupies three months as one-quarter of the four annual seasons. But here in northeastern Utah, it really only lasts a month. And it doesn’t even last a distinct month; what I’m saying is that you get about 31 days of […]
Posted inGoat
An Arizona Solution
Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from New York or Pennsylvania went to better schools and boasted more impressive resumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault […]
Posted inWotr
Black Sunday won’t ever happen again
Twenty-eight years ago this month, on the first Sunday in May, Exxon, the largest corporation in the world, pulled the plug on its massive western Colorado oil shale project. Overnight, 2,600 people lost their jobs. Overnight, small towns learned painful lessons about the speed of the corporate guillotine. Overnight, county commissioners and town planners learned […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Little doses of danger
Parenthood scares a fearless outdoorswoman