Sitting here in the stingy shade of a pinon pine, a few hundred feet from a two-lane road on the outskirts of Santa Fe, I can almost picture the house that will soon be built here — my house. It will be smallish but comfortable, faux adobe (a given in “the City Different”), with two […]
Essays
Posted inArticles
Don’t call plugging wolves hunting
It’s been about three months since wolves in the Northern Rockies were removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act. To date, at least 20 wolves have been reported killed in Wyoming, where they may legally be shot on sight. That’s an average of one wolf killed every four and half days. Five of […]
Posted inArticles
An ancient place to wonder about our survival
I’ll never forget losing two clients somewhere in the 164,000-acre Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southern Colorado. On a glorious May morning, the two friends walked too fast ahead of the group I was leading for the Smithsonian Associates Program. The couple disappeared, and the other members of the tour were worried. Anxiously, […]
Posted inArticles
We thought we were safe
I live close to tall trees in Northern California, and on the afternoon of June 12, I held our mare, Millie, and watched wildfire advance toward the draw not 1,000 away where my wife and I had almost finished building our home. We’d been working on the house for almost four years. The wind pushed […]
Posted inJune 23, 2008: Peace on the Klamath
Credo: The People’s West
How citizens and communities can reinvent their relationship with the American landscape Lifelong locals know their home. They understand the land’s intimate cycles from decades and generations of living in place, a miracle of stability and identity. We can never hope to restore or sustain landscapes and watersheds without the cooperation of local citizens. They […]
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PRO: The Tejon agreement is a true conservation victory
Anyone reading about the Tejon Ranch — California’s largest contiguous private property — has probably heard about the three controversial development projects: Tejon Industrial Park, the Tejon Mountain Village and the Centennial Planned Community. But have you heard about the Tejon Golf and Hunting Resort, or maybe the Whitewolf Village and Shopping Center? People haven’t […]
Posted inArticles
CON: A housing development that’s a tragedy for condors
In recent weeks, several high-profile environmental organizations have been celebrating a deal they call “perhaps the greatest victory for conservation that many of us will see in our lifetime.” If only this were true. Sadly, it is not; the deal in question represents a major setback for conservation. The “deal” does result in permanent preservation […]
Posted inArticles
When choosing a house, think past a lifetime
We’ve had some minor flooding lately in the Gallatin Valley in southwestern Montana, the consequence of a good mountain snowpack and a two-day heat wave, followed by a big rain. It reminded everyone of the way things used to work. Some local landowners, however, were “shocked,” I read in the paper. “I’ve lived here 12 […]
Posted inArticles
A little regulation can be a very good thing
The gas industry won the battle of the stickers that festooned people’s ball caps, chests and arms. Some 2,000 folks had gathered in Grand Junction to tell the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission their feelings about proposed new rules for oil and gas drilling in Colorado. It was easy to see that “Please don’t […]
Posted inArticles
Who you calling terrorist?
The Cold War was hot when I was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s. It affected our domestic discourse because politicians so often sought to discredit their opponents as “Communist sympathizers” or “comsymps,” people “soft on Communism,” “just a little bit pink” or outright “pinkos.” Something as basic as the integration of public facilities […]
Posted inArticles
Don’t trash Joshua Tree National Park
Which word doesn’t belong with “national park?” Wildflowers, wildlife, hiking, night sky, garbage dump? No doubt you answered “garbage dump,” yet the biggest landfill in the United States may be developed right next to California’s Joshua Tree National Park. Fortunately, a lawsuit filed by the National Parks Conservation Association and others is trying to halt […]
Posted inJune 9, 2008: Why the West needs Mythic Cowboys
Conservation groups come and go. Why?
Over the past 20 years or so, I’ve been affiliated with at least a dozen environmental groups, and I’ve seen it happen several times. So has everyone who’s been involved in the movement. I’m talking about professionalization. It begins when a group of grassroots activists begins to feel overwhelmed. They can’t keep up with the […]
Posted inJune 9, 2008: Why the West needs Mythic Cowboys
The luckiest horse in Reno
When the men approached, the black foal might have been nursing. Or she might have been on her side, giving her wobbly legs a rest, leaning into her mother under the starry desert sky. At the sound of the vehicle, the band prepared to move and did move at once, for horses are animals of […]
Posted inWotr
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
Posted inWotr
Native Americans walk the talk across America
Native Americans began their 3,600-mile walk across America at Alcatraz Island Feb. 11, and soon they’ll conclude in Washington, D.C. I’ve accompanied them on the Northern Route, co-hosting a Web radio program as they crossed the freezing Sierra Nevada Range, plodded through a hailstorm in western Utah and walked over the cold Rocky Mountains of […]
Posted inWotr
My love affair with dandelions
It’s spring, and after a long, cold, dreary winter in New Mexico, I’m ready for it. And even though we’ve had a couple of late snowstorms and the trees are only just now beginning to get leaves, dandelions are already growing in the cracks of the rock wall next to my sidewalk. I call them […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
The amphibian heart
The road was covered with toads. Crouched on the two-lane mountain blacktop, posed like speckled sphinxes on the yellow line. I saved as many as I could, leaping from my idling car to scoop up their warm dimpled bodies and deposit them in adjacent Sonoran Desert. But too many were already belly-up or smeared across […]
Posted inWotr
Democrats could play the donkey card in Denver
It’s been said that burros, beans and brawn won the West. Now, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are weighing whether iconic images of the Old West should be used to market the event in Denver this summer. The debate is not without significance. Democrats, who have been unable to gain a foothold in Southern […]
Posted inWotr
When you’re rich, you can dream
The last great boom that lit up Wyoming’s economy happened 25 years ago. The predictable bust followed, and it was the mid-1980s when oil prices crashed, nationwide demand for energy plummeted, interest rates soared and, overall, many get-rich dreams that had been hatched during the heady days turned to nightmares. Now, we are in the […]