UTAHIf you’re like us, you’ve occasionally fallen behind in paying your credit card or utility bills. And maybe you’ve had to face the consequences, perhaps nasty letters from a collection agency or a robo-caller with a vague accent demanding that you make an “arrangement.” But the folks at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
A new cowboy reality show, city dwellers encounter peregrine falcons and a snowboarder harasses a moose
THE WESTWatch out, ranching families, a “docu-reality” television company wants to cast you in a new series, but only if your personalities can be described as “dynamic, engaging and uninhibited.” Tim Marema, whose blog, AgricultureProud, helped spread the word, found much of the producers’ concept laughable, especially the requirement that “All members of the family […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Oilfield workers on Facebook, dynamite in a sperm whale, and more.
NORTH DAKOTA, MONTANAThere’s now a brilliant, low-cost way to start a newspaper smack in the middle of nowhere: Just open up a Facebook page or two, and share what you know and what you’d like to know more about. Ask local readers to pitch in with Smartphone photos and tips, and voilà! You’re in business, […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
A bighorn sheep comes through the window, $500K left in airport change buckets, and more.
MONTANAMaybe blind belligerence is just “a guy thing,” or so Lori Silcher concluded after a male bighorn sheep crashed through windows of her rural home in Hamilton, Mont. “All of a sudden, we all felt the house shake and there was a resounding thud,” recalls her husband, Peter, who at first thought someone in his […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
A tiny town gets a new name and a coyote joins a 5K race
THE WESTAs writer Jeremy Engdahl-Johnson puts it, “There were lots of ways to lose money during the government shutdown that choked off Grand Canyon river trips for 11 days in early October.” There were also unusual trickle-down effects, so to speak. A Flagstaff-based company called River Cans Clean disposes of most of the human waste […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
“Bear with me,” he said, and meant it
THE NATIONWhat combines the scents of musky dirt, grain and old-fashioned hay barn in a way that appeals to the discerning cow as well as to your typical wannabe cowboy, who imagines himself “with the sun and dust clouds casting a warm light across his weathered skin?” The answer is Farmer’s Cologne, reports Modern Farmer […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2013: Cosmic Prospecting
I love guns and coffee
Mishaps and mayhem from around the West.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Let’s all fire our machine guns at once!
Mishaps and mayhem from around the West.
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
Hikers face assorted hazards, bull elk get revenge on hunters, and more
What have you heard?
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Mountain goats, cats, glampers — that’s short for glamorous campers — and more
What have you heard?
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
What’s the nerdiest roadtrip you can think of?
ARIZONAComing back to Las Vegas from the Grand Canyon Skywalk on Arizona’s Hualapai Reservation, 32 Chinese tourists and their guide got more adventure than they planned for. Their driver, Joseph Razon, suddenly — and unintentionally — morphed into the captain of a floating barge when his bus was engulfed in a flash flood estimated at […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
River tubing mishaps and more
MONTANA What could be more delightful than floating down a lazy river on a summer afternoon in an inner tube? Andy Hill and his wife, Amy, were both avid boaters, but had never tried tubing the Clark Fork River until late this July. All was calm and copacetic as they drifted through East Missoula, when […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Smokey the Bear gets cuddly
THE WESTTwenty-five years ago, river guides who’d mastered the art of steering boats through the Grand Canyon decided to start a magazine. It would celebrate the history of the ancient place and its band of young Colorado River runners, reveling in the job’s excitement and occasional tedium and revealing the sometimes-deadly hazards of ferrying tourists […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Is the Rainbow Gathering a natural disaster?
THE WEST Sizzling, blistering, brutal: Whatever adjective you use to describe the West’s recent heat wave, it’s not strong enough. Normally cool places like Portland and Seattle hit the 90s. Phoenix soared above 104 every day in June, reaching 119 once, and a few nights the low was a baking 91 degrees. Rattlesnakes huddled in […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
My solar panel is bigger than yours
ARIZONA AND THE NATION It is puzzling, perhaps, that solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. The cost of solar panels continues to drop, and canny utilities have begun to welcome the new power source as a way to stave off building astronomically expensive new power […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Shooting yourself in the foot–literally
COLORADO AND THE WEST The western Colorado town of Nucla only has about 730 residents, but its council is eager to tell them how to live — only in the name of freedom, of course, and to protect the Second Amendment. Recently, that meant telling residents that they must own a gun. There were loopholes: […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Beavers battle oil and gas spills
THE WEST It takes a bold person to tinker with Smokey Bear, the U.S. Forest Service icon who proclaims, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” Messing with the paunchy blue-jeaned bear and his strong message might just earn you a cease and desist letter, plus a threat of jail time and fines. That happened to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Have a ponytail? Watch out for owls!
MONTANA AND COLORADO As the Missoulian puts it, “There’s rotten cellphone service, there’s nonexistent cellphone service, and then there’s what’s happening just a few miles east of Ovando.” Which is exactly nothing, because a 195-foot-tall cell phone tower near this tiny western Montana town has never connected a call to anybody. Clearview, a Florida-based company, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The coming Hairpocalypse
COLORADO It’s been a century or so since anyone definitely saw a North American river otter in Boulder, Colo., so the town’s wildlife staffers were excited recently when a motion-activated camera showed one of the animals — very much alive — on the banks of Boulder Creek, reports the Boulder Daily Camera. For some minutes, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A goat walks into a bar…
MONTANA A pygmy goat walks into a bar on a Sunday afternoon — and no, this isn’t the setup to one of those jokes; this really happened in Butte, Mont. The little goat seemed to enjoy the outing until a public-health-conscious patron called the police, who came and took the animal to a shelter. As […]