Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, I am a professional engineer and general techno-fan who aspires eventually to get a pilot’s license for recreational flying. I am also a hiker and boater who can’t understand why Americans feel they must have access via gasoline-powered aircraft to some of the few remaining remote places in this country. I believe all […]

Dear HCN: Last November, I was in the White House, having secured an appointment with the Clinton administration to talk about the salvage-logging rider. I wore the same suit as when I was arrested for civil disobedience two days before – now somewhat scuffed up. We started into discussions about the terrible impact of the […]

Dear HCN, I am a former staff member of Pathfinders, a wilderness, emotional-growth program which ceased operation in July due to an investigation into alleged negligence and abuse after two students contracted strep A virus in Colorado. I thought that your article on a Utah wilderness therapy program (-Tough love proves too much’, HCN, 6/10/96) […]

Dear HCN, Hey, Hal Walter, take a geography class (HCN, 8/19/96). Juan Valdez lives in Colombia, llamas don’t. Coffee grows in the tropical highlands, llamas haul loads over high and arid Andean passes in the altiplano of Peru, Bolivia and Chile – just a few thousand feet higher than your 12,000-foot Colorado mountain pass. And […]

Dear HCN, I really loved Hal Walter’s piece on llamas (HCN, 8/19/96). I hope it will dispel the myth about the world’s most over-rated beast. As for Chris Ransick on Rock Springs, he’s full of shit. There is an excellent diner (cum Chinese) on Elk Street. I’ve no idea who Poiesis is, but I hope […]

Dear HCN, Ed Quillen’s article on the Disappearing railroad blues shows the West is changing (HCN, 8/5/96), but I must disagree with his inference that tourism brings only minimum wage jobs. Tourists bringing in their $1,800 bikes on $30,000 vehicles are also going to spend millions on motels, quality restaurants, bike and vehicle mechanics, outfitters, […]

Dear HCN, Although poetic license and the First Amendment no doubt allow Chris Ransick the right to perpetuate a myth if s/he wants to, still I have to comment on the mean-spirited “Advice for Visitors to Rock Springs’ (HCN, 8/19/96). If people who so freely criticize Rock Springs ever left I-80’s truck stops they might […]

Dear HCN, Thanks for the story of the U.S. House of Representatives voting 221-200 to cut funding for the Animas-La Plata Project (HCN, 8/5/95). Since the Senate then voted to include funding, it will now go to a conference committee for some sort of compromise. But it is clear that the dam’s days are numbered. […]

Dear HCN, In response to your article about benefits from releasing water from Glen Canyon Dam (HCN, 7/22/96), I called the Bureau of Reclamation in late April, and their best projection was that 104,000,000 kwh of hydro generation would be lost due to the release. It takes more than 60,000 tons of coal to generate […]

Dear HCN, Those of us who regularly pack with llamas were dismayed by the condescending nature of Hal Walter’s essay (HCN, 8/19/96). This burro packer’s diatribe against llamas is fraught with misinformation. For example, Walter states that he has never seen a llama perform well when carrying over 40 pounds. I regularly put 80 pounds […]

Dear HCN, Catron County Attorney James Catron may be correct when he asserts that “he and Catron County residents personify the frontier ethic portrayed by James Fenimore Cooper” (HCN, 6/24/96), but is he aware that Cooper despised frontiersmen and their “ethic’? In The Pioneers, the 18th century settlers’ only “ethic” is the myth of superabundance; […]

Dear HCN, The issue on outdoor education (HCN, 6/10/96) was excellent. I was delighted to see our photo and the quality of the entire issue. Then I read the blurb about Deer Hill. Deer Hill does not “yank bored teenagers out of suburban high schools and drop them on the Colorado plateau.” What a message […]

Dear HCN, Karl Hess tells us, in “Imagine a West Without Heroes,” that the West would best be managed by New Westerners and not by federalists, justifying his conclusion by portraying John Wesley Powell as a worn-out hero (HCN, 5/27/96). It seems that many Western writers prefer to wrestle with the ghost of Powell. Perhaps […]

Dear HCN, This spring I had the pleasure of leading a group of fifth-graders from Portland, Ore., on a hike through the Opal Creek Ancient Forest. These are the future hellions which our politicians have been scrambling to build prisons for. Kids from not-so-normal families. Their neighborhood is known as “felony flats.” My kind of […]

Dear HCN, Regarding the Quincy Library Group efforts described in HCN May 13, there are consequences to the Clinton administration’s well-meaning decision to provide the promised $4.7 million to fund the library group’s agreement. The funding was taken off the top of an already impoverished Region 5 resources budget. Range management programs which have never […]

Dear HCN, I read with interest your issue featuring community-based approaches to conservation (HCN, 5/13/96). Mike McCloskey’s essay illustrates the concerns of many since, in his view, locally based conservation would disempower the heavily urban constituencies of the Sierra Club, and by extension, other national environmental organizations. That concern is perhaps the most compelling reason […]

Dear HCN, Sierra Club leader Michael McCloskey was correct when he told his board that community collaboration processes “have the effect of transferring influence to the very communities where we are least organized and potent.” He went on to note that local environmentalists often lack experience, training, skills and money. So what is the correct […]

Dear HCN, As a professional in the field of outdoor-adventure education, I appreciated your well-balanced, thorough discussion of outdoor education (HCN, 6/10/96). As wilderness becomes the place for personal growth, team-building and therapeutic purposes, industry regulation becomes increasingly critical. This is evidenced by the toll of teenage fatalities in “tough love” programs such as North […]

Dear HCN, Your May 13 article on dams and Northwest salmon quoted a Boise teacher to the effect that removing dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers would only affect “15,000 jobs connected to the BPA, the Army Corps, the navigation industry, three lower Snake ports, eight aluminum companies, and 500 farms served by the […]

Dear HCN, I am alarmed by the collaborative approach described in the May 13 issue and praised by Karl Hess Jr. in the May 27 issue. Though born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West, I moved East to work and live here happily, though I return West as often as possible. As a supporter […]