On the southeast rim of the Grand Canyon, at the South Kaibab trailhead, wind blows hard and cool at 4:20 a.m., even in July. I walk past the yellow sign with the fretting boy sitting on a rock under the sun. The sign reads, “Heat Kills!” A bus left five of us here moments ago, […]
Essays
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Iconoclast to the end: A New West son regards his father
It was my father who gave me the Clearwater River. It was an accidental gift delivered on a hot July day in Idaho. I can remember the van ride along the river on Highway 12; I was 14 and we were on our way to put in for a river trip down the Salmon River, […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
A river comes apart
Nov. 30, 1995, was the day that the Clearwater Country in northern Idaho came apart. In today’s society, the words “come apart” are usually reserved for nations in apocalyptic collapse. Here it meant something much less hyperbolic, but no less real. Dirt slid into a creek – a lot of dirt. The Clearwater Country is […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
The bison are coming
In the December 1987 issue of Planning, we wrote what we thought was an innocuous article on land use in the Great Plains. The piece explored the state of the short-grass, semi-arid region between the 98th meridian and the Rockies, a sixth of the Lower 48. The most rural parts of the Plains faced long- […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
We have no elders, we have no leaders
Being aggressively into kick-boxing and martial arts, of course I couldn’t resist responding to letter writer C.S. Heller’s taunt about my youth and his convenient implication that I am naive when I insist that the American bison be again allowed their inherent, native and ancient right to be a free-roaming, wild species (HCN, 10/27/97). Age […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Is our love of the West destroying Chile?
I was drafting this essay, when Bill Brewster, former congressman from Oklahoma and now president of a Washington lobbying company, stuck his head into my office: “Do you know any companies that would be interested in buying gold concessions in Azerbaijan? Their Minister of Privitization is a friend of mine, and he wants to put […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Give the mining industry a second chance…
Dear HCN, As a thrice-starved-out Montanan, I have a different take on mining than writer Heather Abel in your Dec. 22, 1997, issue. There are aspects of mining and its politics that High Country News should not have glossed over. A prime example is the so-called Clean Water Initiative, I-122. It failed in the 1996 […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
…but let’s not forget about the past
Dear HCN, In your Dec. 22, 1997, issue, I was quoted as saying, “What it might take is for some people to die before people start sitting up and saying, ‘Take that pollution out of rivers.’ “ I didn’t mean by that there will have to be violent confrontations, or even that people will immediately […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
The West from a snowmobile: a 50 million-acre theme park
It was fortunate that I could ski faster than my friend Mark Tokarski, because, like a 200-pound mosquito in a red stocking cap, he was pursuing me, belting out this incredibly annoying whining sound: “YEEEEENNNNGGGHHHH.” Foolishly, as we shushed along cross-country trails on the Bitterroot Divide, I had commented what a rare pleasure it was […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
A court deems a lake worthy of water
Note: This essay accompanies this issue’s feature story. The water developers of Los Angeles and their lawyers knew from the first paragraph that they were in trouble. Court opinions about Western water invariably carried a pragmatic, detached, utilitarian tone. This case was supposed to be about the needs of a thriving but thirsty metropolis – […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
How the far right spreads its ‘wacky’ ideas
I’m standing at a podium in the back room of the Elks Lodge in Libby, Mont., in front of about 40 Democrats. The event is their annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fund-raising dinner. I’ve been invited to speak at several of these things over the last several months, and it occurs to me that somewhere along the […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Saying goodbye to the bear
Last winter, under pressure from the elements, bison left Yellowstone National Park in search of a bite to eat, and were killed. As a professional grizzly bear watcher, I had heard the story many times before. The problem is quite simple. U.S. Army General Phil Sheridan recognized it at the beginning of the park’s creation, […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
How an eco-logger views his work
Not many loggers have a degree in creative writing. Fewer serve on the board of a state wilderness association or argue philosophy with timber giants like Plum Creek in northwest Montana. Bob Love does. He’s been called the “eco-logger” by some, the “Una-Logger” by others, and these days he runs a one-man selective logging business. […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Grizzlies and the male animal
The crowd of several hundred area residents who gathered in a school auditorium in Salmon, Idaho, recently was almost totally united in its opposition to the proposal. No one wanted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to introduce some 25 subadult grizzly bears into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness on the Idaho-Montana border over a several year […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Luftwaffe, go home
The noise began as an explosion, then quickly matured into the scream of engines. Racing across the sky, provenance obscured by speed, the jet rocketed away, leaving the blast echoing in my skull like a loose tire iron. Count me among the 13 percent of residents in areas of rural New Mexico, Texas and Arizona […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
It’s time for the public to pay up
Throughout the West, the forests are alive with the sound of bellyaching. This time it’s not loggers or ranchers who are at war with federal land-management policies, but rather backpackers, birdwatchers and anglers. They want federal lands managed more for recreation and wildlife, but they aren’t willing to pay for it. Take, for example, the […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Greens, as usual, are easy to bait
Environmentalists, the criticism goes, are naive about economics. I think that’s generous. Most of us in the movement work for substandard wages because we believe in the cause. Even worse, we expect others to make similar sacrifices, preserving rivers, forests and wildlife regardless of the consequences to struggling families or communities. That’s one reason why […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
The Mountain West: A Republican Fabrication
How Republican is the Mountain West? That’s sort of like asking, “How wet is the ocean?” Many readers of High Country News weren’t even born in 1948, the last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried every one of the eight states in the Mountain West – Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Excerpts from a New West dictionary
cal*i*for*ni*an (kal’ u forn’ yun) n. 1. resident of the state of California. 2. imprudent spender single-handedly responsible for inflated values of real property. [earlier form: Texan] en*dan*gered spe*cies (en dan’ grd spe’ sez) n. 1. every group that has had a representative address a public hearing in the West: “Ranchers, miners, etc.: We’re the […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
The buffalo underground: Now it can be told
WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. – Shortly after last New Year’s Day, Vickie Dyar’s cat started acting strangely. When the gift-store owner stepped into the frigid air to investigate, she saw deep tracks leading through the deep snow toward a small barn near the house. As Dyar walked toward the barn, a bison, its magnificent black head […]