Recently, an acclaimed young writer and a world-renowned opera singer charmed a packed house in Driggs, Idaho. What were they doing there instead of a place a hundred times larger? The answer tells us something about the future of rural Idaho. The writer was Ann Patchett, whose most recent novel, Bel Canto, draws its intensity […]
Communities
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Heard around the West
COLORADO With just a few words, Beverly Hoover won third place in the High Country Shopper’s annual contest, “My Favorite Hunting Story.” She and her husband had moved from Pennsylvania to western Colorado in 1992, and soon after their arrival in Montrose, they were invited to a barbecue by new friends. The conversation turned to […]
Posted inWotr
Does Wal-Mart really need our tax dollars?
Typical of shopping centers built decades ago, Alameda Square in Denver is a cheap, single-story strip of stores. It’s ugly and rundown. But that does not deter shoppers. Mostly Asian Americans, shoppers come from miles around to patronize more than a dozen Asian-owned businesses, including two grocery stores, two restaurants, a hair salon, a clothing […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Butte ponders the power of Evel
BUTTE, MONTANA — This is a town that has stopped at nothing in its pursuit of a buck. It has fouled its water with mining runoff and demolished half its downtown for a gigantic open pit, all for a relentless red harvest of copper. It seems strange, then, that many longtime residents feel Butte has […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them
In recent years, we’ve watched droughts parch the West, heat waves claim lives, and tempests encroach on the nation’s capital. With the advent of plagues like West Nile and SARS, soothsayers have enough fodder to last until the apocalypse. But in Six Modern Plagues and How We are Causing Them, author Mark Jerome Walters takes […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Being a local doesn’t make you any better
“Where is this guy from?” I said to myself, flipping to the inside cover of the new book, “True Grizz,” by Douglas Chadwick. It said the author lived in Whitefish, Mont., a trendy town north of Flathead Lake. He may live there, I thought, but where’s he from? It’s embarrassing to recount my thought process. […]
Posted inWotr
Thanksgiving as a holiday of the imagination
There is a saying among the Lakota that when the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth Rock, they fell on their knees and prayed, and then they fell on the Indians and preyed. Perhaps it is not surprising that the stories of this country’s founding are awash in error. As Napoleon reportedly said, “What is history […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Voters swipe at sprawl
Plan to build commuter expressway through national monument hits roadblock
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
A mountain town considers going ‘micropolitan’
An airport expansion could forever change an out-of-the-way ski town
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Heard Around the West
MONTANA Here’s a story to make you wince: Three mountain lion kittens, all about eight weeks old, tried to cross railroad tracks 12 miles west of Butte. The kittens were wet from crossing a nearby creek, and the air temperature was only 10 degrees. So the kittens stuck fast, one frozen to the track on […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Mucking around San Francisco Bay
Judging by its scenic photos of bridges, ships and seals, San Francisco Bay: Portrait of an Estuary is the kind of book a Bayside resident might keep on her coffee table as a reminder of why her ludicrous rent is worth it. But the book is more than a Bayside lovefest: It’s also a reckoning […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Amid smoke and sprawl, some success
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “San Diego’s Habitat Triage.” It has taken six years for public officials in and around San Diego to acquire 30,000 acres of private land for a regional endangered species preserve. It took one week for almost 80 percent of that preserve to go up […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Heard Around the West
UTAH It must be nerve-racking to teach school in Salt Lake City, where, at any time, a person can legally walk into a classroom with a gun concealed in clothing or tucked into a backpack. But that’s state law, so what’s a school district to do? One state legislator pooh-poohs potential problems, advising teachers and […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
San Diego’s Habitat Triage
To save room for a raft of imperiled species, one city is making sacrifices to the gods of sprawl. Not everyone thinks it’s going to be a happy ending
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Vernal pools fall to a shopping mall
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “San Diego’s Habitat Triage.” The first test of San Diego’s Multiple Species Conservation Program came little more than a year after it was passed. Cousins MarketCenters Inc. wanted to build a 453,000 square-foot shopping center and an apartment complex just north of downtown, on […]
Posted inWotr
California’s growth machine fueled these disastrous wildfires
The wildfires that gnawed their way through drought-crisped Southern California are on a pace to establish a record for acreage charred and for the dollar value of structures and belongings destroyed. Perhaps this is no great feat in a state where homes worth $250,000 five years ago are worth twice that today. The monetary disaster […]
Posted inWotr
To have and have not in Flagstaff, Arizona
I’m still appalled by the subject line of the e-mail I received a month ago. “Great news: we are homeless!” I didn’t know the address on the e-mail. Based on the subject line, I figured it was probably from a Democratic candidate informing me about a Bushite atrocity. I clicked open the e-mail to find […]
Posted inWotr
Trying out for the new sport of Extreme Canning
It’s getting harder and harder to be an “extreme” athlete. The ultra-fit among us aren’t just climbing all Western peaks over 14,000 feet; they’re climbing them in less than 10 days and doing it on snowboards, skis, bikes and in-line skates. All this requires thousands of dollars’ worth of gear and years of training. And […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
The Gear Biz
The West has become the nation’s playground, but is there a future here for the folks who make our outdoor toys?
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
My Sensitive Man meets culture shock on the range
When the movie Open Range came to my western Colorado town, my sweetie and I made a beeline for the theater. We waited in line for popcorn with a good number of other folks: old-timers and Forest Service employees and their spouses. They apparently hadn’t had enough open range by the end of the long […]