Wind-whipped rainclouds formed a low ceiling over the oceanic buttes and basins of south-central Oregon. The usually sundrenched sage darkened in the weather as I walked, my hood pulled up against the grass-bending tug of the northwest breeze. The air smelled richer than it usually does on the dry side of the Cascades, the sagebrush […]
Essays
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Three days in the Four Corners
The Four Corners country — the point where sage plains, mesas and desert canyons radiate out from the intersection of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah — is a land of friction. The cultures of the Ute, Apache and Navajo tribes rub up against the Hispanic and Anglo cultures. The ancient rudely bumps into the […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Three days in eastern Montana
The bull erupted from its pen, plunged toward the dirt, kicked its hooves into the air and sprayed grainy shit across my face. None of the bull-riders and cowboys winced like I did. Cow crap is as common in their lives as sunlight and coffee. “It’s just something you’ll have to experience for yourself,” the […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
The Quileute Reservation copes with tourists brought by “Twilight”
Five Quileute boys emerge from a phalanx of drummers. Barefoot and bare-chested, they wear black cloaks and wolf headdresses, and dance, crouch and crawl within the center of a large circle. On the outskirts, women and girls move rhythmically to a chant and steady drumbeat, several of them sporting red and black capes emblazoned with […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Three days in western Nevada
Think Reno is merely a smaller, tamer stepchild of Las Vegas? Think again. Spend three days here, and you’ll get a taste of a modern Western city that’s still both quirky and affordable. It’s a great base for side trips, too: within easy reach of a classic Western tourist trap, a historic state capital, two […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Three days in southwest New Mexico
Downtown Santa Fe’s uniform aesthetic is no coincidence. It’s protected and propagated by city codes: Windows must be modestly sized, edges rounded, exteriors colored an earthy adobe blush. The resulting faraway mystique charms hordes of tourists. But the electric farolitos and “fauxdobe” make others groan: “Enough already!” with the “Disneyfication,” one architect told a local magazine […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Western travel tips
If you decide to go running on a BLM backroad near Bisbee, Ariz., consider taking a couple of large friends or some dogs as insurance against getting chased (twice) by emaciated-yet-speedy longhorn Mexican bulls. —Sarah Gilman, associate editor Park the car and take public/mass transit. I know this sounds crazy, as we’re talking about the land […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Exploring the West’s land sculptures — made by artists and industry
“Art erodes whatever seeks to contain it and inevitably seeps into the most contrary recesses, touches the most repressed nerve, finds and sustains the contradictory without effort.” — Robert Morris in a 1979 essay in which he suggested hiring land artists to reclaim spent industrial sites and open-pit mines. When I first see them, fuzzy […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Faraway, favorite and less-than-famous places
We asked our readers and staff to send in some of their favorite places in the West. Here’s a sampling of their responses. Add your own in the comments! California’s Alabama Hills — Not only was this rolling desert stippled with boulder outcrops the setting for Tremors, my family’s favorite cult film, in which giant […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Shooting at The Gun Store in Las Vegas
On the last day of my first trip to Vegas three years ago, my older brother and I faced a conundrum: What do you do in Sin City when the sin’s been had and only the city is left? Go to Caesar’s, maybe, and lose another $50 bucks at craps, or, schmuck-like, watch the Bellagio’s […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Learning a landscape by tracking its rivers
I follow a blue thread on my atlas. The line labeled “Clark Fork” appears to end at Lake Pend Oreille. To confirm it, I turn from my atlas to my computer and consult Google, Wikipedia, the Clark Fork Coalition’s website. I feel guilty; it seems like cheating to use a computer screen to learn about […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Dancing with wolverines
When a wolverine splayed his huge clawed paw onto my shoulder, the tip of each powerful nail pressing firmly, I was filled with a reckless elation. But I remained still, because I recalled that wolverines have a special molar angled sharply inward that allows them to tear muscle and hide from carrion, pulverize bone. A […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Kayaking memories on the White Salmon River
I almost missed my chance to kayak the White Salmon River before it changed forever. After dropping off the kids at school, packing, making last-minute phone calls and sending last-minute emails, I left the house an hour later than planned. With a five-hour drive and only the afternoon of a late October day ahead of […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Imaginary journeys on a rowing machine
I don’t mind exercise. Really, I don’t. But I’ve always preferred to do it while accomplishing something else: going to work, talking to a friend, running an errand. At the very least, I like to huff and puff outdoors, away from the computer and incipient carpal-tunnel syndrome. Going to a gym? It’s always seemed a […]
Posted inArticles
Could doing chores save the world?
A version of this essay originally ran in Sage Magazine, a publication run by students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. On the day I arrive at Lama, N.M., it takes me a few minutes to find the people. When I find them, they are all holding hands around a large octagonal […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Traveling Arizona Highways, in your dreams and on the ground
Even as a kid, I recognized an obsession when I saw one. My father’s began late in the Eisenhower years when he got his first subscription to Arizona Highways. A rural route mailman in northern Illinois, he used to rise at 4 a.m. and be home by 1 p.m. As soon as each month’s issue […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Watching the weather in California
At 15, I waited for storms. I wanted drama in my placid life. But when I finally got one — the 1991 Oakland firestorm — it destroyed a few thousand houses, including ours. Afterwards, my dad sank into a depression, my younger brother started climbing out of windows and into trouble, and for years, I […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
I don’t love my dog
There’s a dead fawn outside my front door. The sweet young body is completely covered in tall grass, which means this is a mountain lion kill, which means that the mountain lion responsible is going to come back for the next few mornings and nights to finish eating. I must admit that, although I’m reflexively […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time 23,000 elk got off the dole
In western Wyoming, feeding elk seems as normal as long winters, Grand Teton views and oil and gas wells. But of the 1 million elk that now roam North America, only 3 percent are fed by government employees, and three-fourths of those animals are fed in Wyoming at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, […]
Posted inWotr
West to East, and a world away
A few months ago, after 20 years, I moved from the West to the East, reluctantly, carting a truckload of artifacts and memories, literal stones and actual stories, each one a product of the forests, mountains or deserts of Bend, Ore., Missoula, Mont., Argenta, British Columbia, Canada, and beyond. My little 4-cylinder truck labored under […]