“Welcome to the New Old West” reads the sign outside Pahrump, Nev., as you drive from Death Valley Junction along the California border. Given the meaning of these two terms, it’s a funny juxtaposition. The Old West has always meant open spaces, riding the range, cowboys and gunfire, freedom in the early 20th century sense […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Garage-kept in Colorado
When I moved West 10 years ago, there was one thing I never dreamed of seeing: a garage in my backyard. A mountain lion, sure, John Elway and a real cowboy. But not a garage. I once had a garage, back East, in college. It was handy for storing junk, my weights set and a […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
A life of brutal grace
Montana writer Swain Wolfe’s memoir, The Boy Who Invented Skiing, might be more aptly titled The Writer on His Way to Being An Alchemical Cartographer. Wolfe’s writing maps transformations, in a style both gritty and magical. Wolfe was born in the hardscrabble West of the late 1930s. His boyhood was spent in the Colorado Springs […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Heard around the West
OREGON Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne recently visited a factory that makes luxury recreational vehicles, those behemoths that look like city buses and sport monikers like Inspire, Allure and Intrigue. In a press release, Country Coach Inc. president Jay Howard said he was pleased with the secretary’s support for his company’s high-end mobile homes, and added […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The rural West’s pragmatic booster
Name Larry Swanson Vocation Economist and demographer Age 55 Home Base Center for the Rocky Mountain West, Missoula, Mont. Known for Hair-raising presentations about dramatic shifts in Mountain West demography and economics. He says “We can’t successfully adapt to change without a fuller understanding of it. Good people with good information make good decisions.” Larry […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The Fourth Wave
Can the West’s uranium towns rise once more?
Posted inWotr
Wyoming can buy what Portland can’t
It’s too early to panic, but there’s a rumor that Wyoming, with a population that’s only a quarter of metropolitan Portland, Ore., might buy Portland’s basketball team, the Trail Blazers, using the $2 million that daily aggregates into the Cowboy State’s swelling reserves. Portland should cringe at the outrageous notion of losing the Blazers because […]
Posted inWotr
Will I ever become a local?
I’m still what people call a newcomer, but it seems to me that most people who live in the mountains fall into one of three categories: Second home owner, transplant from somewhere else — usually a city, like me — or native, though I meet very few natives who are older than 10. I’ve lived […]
Posted inWotr
We need to talk about why some minorities lag behind
It is hard for this old civil rights attorney to be called a “racist,” but some recent comments of mine on minority under-performance kicked up a firestorm of criticism. This hurt, but there are important issues involved, and America needs to talk frankly about its problems. It is unfortunate that political correctness, a liberal orthodoxy, […]
Posted inWotr
Our lungs, ourselves: Smoking in Wyoming bars
In a victory for health activists, non-smokers are increasingly able to enter workplaces, restaurants, bars and outdoor patios without breathing secondhand cigarette smoke. Smoking bans of various levels of restrictiveness are being enacted all around the country, and even my state of Wyoming, historically resistant to knee-jerk social change, has seen a few communities unplug […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
The Lure of the Lawn
Can Westerners get over their romance with turf?
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Tribes tackle taggers
Gang culture — and violence — hit rural Indian reservations
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Nine reasons why a river is good for the soul
SILT. Healthy particles of silt are suspended in the river, buffed off eons of Wingate sandstone and the debris of flash floods fire-hosing through twisted arroyos. These tiny particles of soil, mud, stone, trees and bones scour our skin as we float in the slow, warm current of the river. We drift in silence, particles […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Heard around the West
NEVADA Thanks to two wet winters in a row, it’s a booming summer for Western toads in the Washoe and Lemmon valleys of Nevada, reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. Suddenly, toads and toadlets are everywhere, and there’s the danger that you’ll step on one as you cross the street, or mow down hundreds when you cut […]
Posted inWotr
Relishing those idiosyncratic Western triumphs
When I realized a dozen years ago that my state’s license plates were issued chronologically, I felt stirrings of ambition. Here was a tiny yet visible status symbol, and all I had to do was wait. At that time my plate, after the county prefix, was 4786A, meaning that there were over 4,000 vehicles lined […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Hollywood heads east
Western states compete to get a piece of the action
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Heard around the West
UTAH Lake Powell, now at just 52 percent of capacity, might as well be called The Incredible Shrinking Reservoir: Its twice-extended boat launch at Bullfrog “resembles a tilted airport runway — a concrete slab more than a quarter-mile long,” reports The Associated Press. Multiple bathtub rings are visible everywhere along the shore, and when the […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
‘There was just some hard hittin’ going on’
LIND, Washington — In New Mexico, people tend to sort themselves by red and green, based on the kind of chile they prefer to eat. On the wheat farms of eastern Washington, folks divide into red and green camps, too. But here, they do it according to the kinds of combines — the giant machines […]
Posted inWotr
Booming anger
I find myself waving vigorously at faces I recognize these days. I wave hard at people I know like we’re close friends who’ve found ourselves in a big, unfriendly crowd. I’m happy to see them, and often they wave back just as vigorously. I live five miles out of Pinedale, Wyo., this town booming with […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Taking Liberties
The salesmen say ‘yes’ is a vote to stop government from taking your land, but this stealth campaign would do far more than that