Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge Howie Garber 211 pages, softcover: $39.95. Peter E. Randall, 2012. Most people in Utah live within 20 miles of the Wasatch Range, whose peaks and canyons provide water for the valley while offering a welcome retreat for those seeking solitude. In Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge, nature photographer […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inWotr
When road hogs get really, really big
I love living in rural Montana, where every census confirms out-migration. But much as I enjoy it, there are a few disadvantages, such as spotty cell phone service, access to only two free television stations, wilted produce at the grocery store, and lately, incredibly huge loads of equipment that clog our narrow, two-lane highways. Recently, […]
Posted inGoat
West is best?
A post-Thanksgiving hike should not be too strenuous. It needs to be vigorous enough to help awaken from a food coma but not so tough as to ruin the long weekend. This year, a light stroll through nearby Dominguez Canyon, with a close group of friends, fit the bill. After just a short drive and […]
Posted inGoat
Gas guzzlers
If you’ve been feeling the pinch at the gas pumps, and wondering how drivers in other states are faring, you might be interested in a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. It looks at what portion of their wallets drivers across the nation empty at the pumps, as well as how states are […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Extra! Extra! Beer in Utah!
Congratulations on the excellent article, “Red State Rising” (HCN, 10/29/12). It was great to see a positive story about Utah. The Air Force moved me here 36 years ago, and for many of those years the state received more than its share of negative stories, usually focused on the failure of business and government leadership to […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Keep the political stories coming
I was disappointed in the Nov. 12 letter, “Enough (political stories) already,” which berated HCN for covering “electoral politics.” All politics are “electoral politics.” This year, it has been unusually disgusting, and, yes, divisive, thanks to ideologues and Big Money. The answer is to fix the system, not to encourage ignorance. If HCN is to […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Political paradox
Jonathan Thompson’s brilliant article, “Red State Rising,” shines some much-needed light on the paradox of politics in Utah, where government officials routinely manage economic growth and funnel subsidies to businesses — even while professing to hate big government and love free markets (HCN, 10/29/12). In putting a human face on this story, though, Thompson went […]
Posted inWotr
Point Reyes National Seashore, embattled at 50
We’re supposed to be celebrating here at Point Reyes, a foggy enclave along the Northern California coast about an hour’s drive and a world away from San Francisco. Fifty years ago, President Kennedy signed the Point Reyes National Seashore into existence. For years, a national seashore had been little more than a pipe dream until […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Enough (political stories) already
I was disappointed with what appears to be a new political stance on the part of HCN (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). First came an article devoted to electoral politics in Montana and Denny Rehberg. Now comes the most recent edition on the politics of Utah. While I recognize the essential nature of politics as […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Utah’s utopia, unfulfilled
I found Jonathan Thompson’s article on Utah’s split personality between its politics and economic policies interesting and informative (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). Especially insightful is his observation about the economic disparity between the Wasatch Front and the rest of the state’s communities. If one checks the most recent annual data published by the U.S. Commerce Department, you […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
How the Mormon GOP runs Utah with a collectivist touch
“Our object is to labor for the benefit of the whole …” –Brigham Young, 1873 A throng of cars floats down Interstate 15 on an end-of-summer morning, the rising sun wreathed in the orange gauze of distant wildfire smoke. In Lehi, a suburb sandwiched between Salt Lake City and Provo, a massive steel-and-glass shape juts […]
Posted inGoat
Is the Western growth machine coming out of its coma?
I like to keep an eye on what the housing market’s doing in the West. That’s not because I’m invested in it — my family and I have been happy renters since we sold our house a year ago. I’m interested in the housing market because this one data set can tell so much about […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Collaborative conservation
In a July 18 High Country News article, Luther Propst explained the Sonoran Institute’s approach to collaborative conservation and referred to the proposed Resolution copper mine near Superior, Arizona as an example of that philosophy (“Beyond the politics of no“). After all, the location of that mine is in a well-established mining district. Luther qualified […]
Posted inWotr
As the housing market improves, have we learned to live more modestly?
The trouble with dream houses — the dream homes on the dream streets of big-city real estate tours, or tucked among canyons near resort areas like Sun Valley, Idaho — is that dreams tend to change over time. Despite the notion that a dream is a private world that only the dreamer can know, dreams […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Book note: Valley of Shadows and Dreams
Valley of Shadows and Dreams Ken Light and Melanie Light, Foreword by Thomas Steinbeck 176 pages, hardcover: $40. Heyday Books, 2012. ‘Except for the perimeter, every single living thing had been placed where someone had planned it to be and placed it just so,’ writes Melanie Light, describing her first experience flying over California’s Central […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Western states’ transportation spending reveals their priorities
With President Obama authorizing $105 billion for transportation spending this July, you might wonder: Just how does that federal dough get spent? Turns out about 80 percent is funneled into highways. Given the West’s size and far-apart cities, you might also expect this road-centricity to be more pronounced here, with spending on public transit and […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
What the High Park wildfire can teach us about protecting homes
RIST CANYON, Colorado Dave Cantor’s house in the hills outside Fort Collins usually draws friends for barbecue, horseshoes and recreational shooting on July 4. This July 3, though, Cantor sifts through its ashy remains, tripping over a downed power line and catching rotten whiffs from a freezer pried open by black bears. Cantor, who co-owns […]
Posted inGoat
Talking mean with Hugh B. McKeen
While on assignment for a story on wildfire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, I called up Catron County commissioner Hugh B. McKeen to see if he’d meet up and discuss the recent 297,000-acre Whitewater Baldy Fire that burned through the wilderness and forestland nearby. I had heard a bit about Catron County’s anti-government charm, […]
Posted inArticles
Beyond the politics of no: Luther Propst and collaborative conservation
More than two decades ago, Luther Propst jumped away from a law career back East to found the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, Ariz. Since then, the nonprofit has helped dozens of Western communities — from Driggs, Idaho, to Rifle, Colo., to Tucson itself — grapple with growth while incorporating conservation goals into their plans for […]