Here in the western Great Basin, the high desert is rough and remote. This topography tends to keep out the common detritus of the dominant endemic species, Hillbillicus Nevadensis (var. Redneckii). So while the dusty BLM roads in the sage-filled valley bottoms are beribboned with spent shell casings, Coors Light bottles and empty cans of […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
‘Postmortemism’
Your issue covering off-the-beaten-track Western places of interest is very appealing to those of us who prefer reality travel over canned tourism (HCN, 6/25/12, “Touring the Postmodern West”). It seems more honest than the usual “family vacation” photo ops. I also found the descriptions of land art and industrial landscape art interesting. While some of us would […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
Practical pyromania: A review of The Flamer
The FlamerBen Rogers257 pages, softcover: $14.Aqueous Books, 2012. Ben Rogers’ engaging first novel, The Flamer, is the coming-of-age story of a young Nevada pyromaniac named Oby Brooks. Oby discovers his love for conflagrations when his father donates the family’s dilapidated house to the Reno Fire Department to burn “for training purposes.” The boy watches the […]
Posted inArticles
Rantcast: Puppy love
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast for free in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
South Dakota disses Montana
SOUTH DAKOTA The Custer County Chronicle, established in 1880 in the Black Hills of western South Dakota, is one of those weekly papers that asks the sheriff’s department to pitch in and publish its daily log of complaints, most of which seem relatively trivial, including concerns about “a big black cow” wandering the highway, a […]
Posted inGoat
From art as elegy to art as action
How do we grieve? How do we grieve for all that disappears into the insatiable maw of human appetite? How do we grieve for the eventual loss of something as beautiful and terrifying as the polar bear? The small, white-haired woman’s voice broke as she stood to ask her impossibly difficult question, the other audience […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Food and poetry
Bear-jackers, headed down the road to bruin. Wyoming, left courtesy Julia Corbett, Colorado, right, courtesy Dave Heivly, Snowmass Village Police Department. THE NATION When New York Times columnist Mark Bittman spent a day this spring with Wendell Berry, the man he calls “the soul of the real food movement,” he found the political activist and […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Spiritual Superfund sites
I have read many stories about villains without redeeming values, but never have I read one that made me want to wash my hands — no, endure a thorough toxic-chemical decontamination procedure — until slogging through the FLDS article. I often had to stop and shake my head to cast out the demons of the […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
A deep rot
Judges James Shumate and Dee Benson both had access to the rape tape mentioned in this article, solid evidence of a culture of sexual abuse in the FLDS. If they had been kindergarten teachers, they would be required to report the abuse to authorities, who would then be required to follow up. Instead, Judge Shumate […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
HCN: Preferred reading of cab drivers and geologists
We’ve had several summer visitors here at our headquarters in Paonia, Colo. From Reno, Nev., came subscriber Robert M. Martin, better known as Tobe, on a motorcycle trip to a medicine wheel site near Red Lodge, Wyo. Describing himself as a loyal fan of HCN, he added that he’d been a cab driver for 13 […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Hero worship: A review of Let the Birds Drink in Peace
Let the Birds Drink In PeaceRobert Garner McBrearty152 pages, softcover: $14.99.Conundrum Press, 2011. In Colorado writer Robert Garner McBrearty’s fresh and funny new story collection, Let the Birds Drink In Peace, a boy tells his mother he plans to do something great when he grows up. “Everybody feels like that when they’re young,” she replies. […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
In praise of ancient tree stumps
There used to be big trees here. Now, we have stumps. Weathered, rotting, mossy and huge, at least 20 are scattered across my family’s 14-acre farm in Snoqualmie, Wash. — hunched in the cow field and hidden in the tangles of blackberry and brushy woods. We don’t talk too much about them. Stumps are as […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Legalize polygamy
I have been struggling to write a response to the story on polygamy in the June 11 issue of HCN (“The Darkest Shade of Polygamy”). I don’t condone immoral behavior, yet I am astounded by the blatantly negative attitude. While the focus of the article was on the extreme practices by this particular sect, its […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
More diversity than meets the eye
Debra Weyermann’s excavation of the hidden connections between the FLDS and mainstream LDS culture was very interesting. I wrote about this ambivalence and its reflection in The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News and in a chapter of Saints Under Siege. Overall, that book is more sympathetic to the FLDS than Weyermann, and tends to […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Neutrality not needed
I am enormously proud of High Country News for writing about this growing menace in the U.S. I know many Mormons who would argue that their Church is not part of this fundamentalist sect, but their Church turns a blind eye, hence it is part of the problem. So many newspapers and television shows pander […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Once upon a time in a small town: A review of The Other Shoe
The Other ShoeMatt Pavelich320 pages, softcover: $16.95.Counterpoint, 2012. It’s a story as old as storytelling itself: A young man leaves his home in search of adventure before settling down to the responsibilities of adulthood. But in Matt Pavelich’s second novel, The Other Shoe, the story is less about the traveler and more about the aftermath […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Rambling horror stories
I was disappointed to see HCN join the long list of publications choosing to print rambling horror stories about polygamy in Utah and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In the future, I hope you will clearly distinguish facts about individual misconduct (i.e., Warren Jeffs’ pedophile conviction), from rumors and allegations about […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct
Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct. Adam Duncan Harris352 pages, 302 color photos, softcover: $29.95University of Oklahoma Press, 2012 Wildlife artist Bob Kuhn passed away in 2007, leaving behind some of the finest paintings of wild animals ever created. Now, Adam Duncan Harris, curator of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo., has collected […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Smokey Bear: From cute to buff, and in between
The icon’s many images changed over the years alongside the Forest Service’s changing attitudes toward wildfire.
Posted inArticles
Following Dad down the road
I thank you for the music, and your stories of the road;I thank you for my freedom when it came my time to go;I thank you for your kindness, and the times that you got tough.And Papa, I don’t think I’ve said “I love you” near enough. –Dan Fogelberg, from his song “Leader of the […]