A native Chicagoan who now lives in Montana discovers New Chicago, Mont.
Essays
Posted inWotr
I liked it better when being born here was enough
If the 14th Amendment is repealed, how do we know we’re citizens at all?
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Still Cranish After All These Years
Homo sapiens, evolution and becoming a crane
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The Terrain of This Ambition
Claiming a place on the literary map of Utah
Posted inWotr
Montanans close to Yellowstone better wake up
Paradise Valley, my husband often jokes, is heaven only for real estate agents. Opulent log “cabins” crowd the banks of the Yellowstone River, and working family ranches can be counted on fewer fingers every year. Yet these changes seem secondary to the common foundation of our lives: the rise and fall of the river, the […]
Posted inWotr
Notes from the underground: The secret life of mushrooms
Finding the first mushroom of the season is one of those “Eureka!” moments, so when I went out a few weeks ago for an initial survey of the national forest nearest me, I got pretty excited when I saw a crinkled white blob sitting on a nest of moss. “Wow, a new species on the […]
Posted inWotr
EPA hearings can be so, like, high school
I recently attended an EPA hearing in Denver. I’m an environmental attorney who left my job to spend a year teaching in Italy, and now that I’m back in the United States, I’m relieved that this country has a rational system of environmental regulation. (Italy has great shoes and amazing cappuccino, but environmental regulation? Fuhgeddaboudit.) […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
A brush with cowboy culture
On a gray, blustery, spring evening, my family and I drive into the Sky Ute Fairgrounds in Ignacio, Colo., eager to get to the rodeo. My 2-year-old son can’t wait to make his debut in “mutton busting,” an event in which young children cling to the backs of sheep loosed from bucking chutes. As we […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Righteous gluttony
In the produce section of the grocery store the other day, I saw apricots on sale for 99 cents a pound. They sat in a bin between grapes from Chile and cherries from the Flathead Valley of Montana. I don’t know where the apricots came from. I selected six and put them in the shopping […]
Posted inWotr
What have we learned a century after the Big Blowup?
A devastating wildfire leaves its marks on the West.
Posted inWotr
Slobs at Lake Powell foment a revolt
Each summer I do penance at Lake Powell for the environmental sins of its visitors. This summer was no exception as I volunteered to work on a houseboat called the Trash Tracker. Our job: picking up debris in 108-degree heat along 100 miles or so of the 1,900-mile shoreline. Our team found the usual amount […]
Posted inWotr
Medical marijuana trips up Montana
The state of Montana is frantically backpedaling six years after voters passed Medical Marijuana Initiative 148. (Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for it.) One of 10 states now with medical marijuana programs, Montana has fallen into what might be called pot-plant purgatory as it struggles with blurry laws and even blurrier implementation plans, stalling […]
Posted inWotr
An improbable candidate runs in Arizona
Early in May, John Dougherty, the best investigative reporter I’ve ever known, made the eyebrow-raising announcement that he would run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. To think that a writer stood any chance of knocking off John McCain was absurd, vainglorious … and … perfect, as a matter of poetic irony. Back in 1989, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
A flood of visitors
Monsoon season struck Paonia with a vengeance in the muggy final days of July. Beyond window-rattling thunder and heart-stopping lightning, the storms have brought deluges of rain, sending irrigation ditches flooding over their banks and washing out roads and driveways. Our flood of summer visitors through HQ has continued unabated, as well. High Country News […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Ready … or not
Until that Monday, I’d never caused a death. Maybe I still haven’t, but I don’t know for sure, and the vision of it keeps rearing up in my mind. I was bathing tired feet in snowmelt waters after hours of walking in the wildflower havens of the Elk Mountains. The alpine meadows teemed with columbines […]
Posted inWotr
We keep trying to stop the fires
Scorched earth and gnarled oaks lit up like flares. Blackened skies and the whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopters aloft as evacuees huddle in a local school. This quick-cut imagery can mean only one thing in California: The summer fire season has begun. Although the first major fires in the Southern California counties of Kern and Los Angeles […]
Posted inWotr
When you bike in Boise, “STOP” means maybe
Boise, Idaho, one of the most liberal cities when it comes to bicycling, issued new rules of the road this June that basically said to both drivers and bicyclists: “Don’t be jerks.” The rules said drivers should make room for bikers as they pass them and not harass them, while cyclists should never ride recklessly […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Summer blizzard
Wonderful things are everywhere — but you have to pay attention in order to see them.
Posted inWotr
Remembering Trixie at county fair time
Memories of a Wyoming barrel racer and a moment in the winner’s circle
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
In Utah, the more things change, the more they stay the same
No one can accurately predict the future, whether it’s the effects of climate change or the flow of the Colorado River. But it’s always interesting to speculate. Here in San Juan County, Utah, it appeared there might be some progress in the decades-old debate over which public lands should be protected as wilderness. Republican Sen. […]