I was playing poker the other day with a bunch of guys, mostly middle-aged and older, mostly native Montanans like myself. Every so often somebody would put on an extra coat, go outside and start the car, come back to play a few hands, then bundle up and turn the engine off. Nobody found this […]
Essays
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Green hate in the land of enchantment
A hate movement has grown up in northern New Mexico, fueled by decades of Forest Service mismanagement and sensational media coverage (HCN, 12/25/95). It has fostered an unusual alliance across racial barriers to oppose conservation on federal lands. The political alignment became visible more than a year ago during a Christmas candlelight demonstration organized by […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
The shotgun wedding of tourism and public lands
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Nev. – They came from across the country and around the West to celebrate the shotgun wedding of tourism and the public lands. The potential Lords of the New West, the bosses of tourism agencies and industry lobbying groups, and the managers of federal lands and parks, arrived in limousines and chartered […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
Denying the warts on the West’s service economy
Once upon a time, in 18th-century France, the king and his court had pet economists known as “physiocrats.” The nobility liked their physiocrats very much. Not only did they bow and scrape in a very respectful way, but they told the king and counts and dukes that all wealth comes from the ground. The aristocracy […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Trying to think the good thoughts about ATVs
An elk hunter dislikes ORVs despite their convenience because they make the country too small.
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Stripmining history and culture for dollars
Who owns Crazy Horse? Were the great Oglala warrior still alive, there would be no question: Crazy Horse, who helped Sitting Bull orchestrate Custer’s last stand, was not the owning kind. But 120 years after his death, the Minnesota Court of Appeals has affirmed a New York brewery’s right to market “Original Crazy Horse Malt […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
If politics is a baseball game, I don’t even own a bat
After each election I become the fearful character in a Gary Larson cartoon, peering through window slats to discover that neighboring houses are occupied by large canines, drooling spittle and looking hungrily in my direction. After 12 elections, I ought to have more stomach for the results, but each biennium comes as fresh horror. The […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Shake-up: Greens inside the Beltway
WASHINGTON, D.C. – When the news leaked that Bill Meadows had been chosen to head The Wilderness Society, everyone called friends to commiserate. All anyone knew about Meadows was that “III” followed his name and he had raised $92 million for the Sierra Club. “He’s a fund raiser,” was the usual comment, followed by laments […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
The Last Ranch: The truth is stranger than the book
In 1992, I followed a year in the life of a third-generation ranch family named Whitten in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. I was exploring an idea. I supposed that a fresh understanding of nature might save the world from becoming desert. The impetus came from a long association with the ideas of […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Should city slickers dictate to trappers?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this essay appears as a sidebar to a feature article, “Western hunters debate ethics tooth and claw.” Editor’s note: Under the banner of People Allied With Wildlife, more than 1,000 volunteers fanned out across Colorado earlier this year to drum up support for a constitutional amendment that […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
A mystery the size of your fist
I am wondering about beargrass. This summer brought such an explosion of blooms to the Northern Rockies it was front-page news – more beargrass than anyone can remember, more beargrass than anyone can explain. So much beargrass that you don’t have to be a naturalist to stop the car and marvel at the hillsides blazing […]
Posted inOctober 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Custom and culture’s worst enemy speaks
The West is certainly changing, but cultural beliefs rather than economic facts tend to dominate our dialogue. Because those beliefs are tied to a vision of a good society rooted in stereotypes of a simpler, less-corrupted-by-evil America, I see them as a type of economic fundamentalism. Consider these characteristics: Worshipping at the rearview mirror. Economic […]
Posted inOctober 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Montana Native: Who Cares?
In bold, black letters the bumperstickers declare: Montana Native. I spot them as I drive and, like the chiggers of my native Virginia, they make me itch. For the naive observer, the message must seem benign, a mere statement of birthplace pride. But for an increasingly wary transplant like me, it conveys something more sinister […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Forget widgets, we sell wilderness
Italian ski racer Alberto Tomba signed a megabucks deal last winter with Vail Associates, the company that operates the Vail ski area. Tomba has a reputation best understood in the United States when compared to Michael Jordan and Madonna. Both admired and scorned, he’s never ignored – exactly the person that Vail Associates wanted to […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
The bigger the mine, the better the deal
BOZEMAN, Mont. – The way things are going around here lately, we should change Montana’s nickname from the Big Sky Country to the Big Swap Country: Let’s make a deal! No doubt it’s a form of progress. So were the 1872 Mining Law and the railroad land grants in their day. But qualifiers need to […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Clinton learns the art of audacity
Editor’s note: On Sept. 18, just before President Clinton announced the creation of the nation’s newest monument, writer and University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson talked about the historical precedents for protecting land through presidential action. GRAND CANYON, Ariz. – The grandest, most electrifying moments in American conservation history have always been reserved for […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
A harsh and priceless gift to the world
“There was a hardness of stone,” Theodore Roethke starts a poem, “an uncertain glory … Between cliffs of light / We strayed like children.” The Harsh Country, the poem is called. I’m miles away from what I think of as the harsh country, the cliffs of light, the country of bright stone. It has a […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
How the New West will vote is anyone’s guess
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. They moved to Boise to kayak the Payette River’s world-class rapids. They came to Salt Lake City for Wasatch powder snow, the lightest on earth. They came to Seattle for Starbucks Coffee, Mount Rainier and the cutting-edge music scene. Since the early 1990s, thousands of […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Whatever happened to letting fires burn?
The summer wildfire season is drawing to an end, but the West is still burning. And despite a plethora of ecological research that demonstrates the value of fire as an ecological and evolutionary force, land-management agencies continue to suppress fires, except in a few wilderness areas or other reserves. Not only is such a policy […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Speak up for a quiet Grand Canyon
On my first visit to the Grand Canyon 45 years ago, I was overwhelmed by its magnificent silence, tranquility and timelessness. That serenity is hard to find today. It’s destroyed by the relentless drone of planes and helicopters. A thousand flights a day, 100 flights an hour rain noise down on the canyon. At best, […]