Letter to the editor

I just read “The Mountain Islands in the Desert Sea” (May 2021). It’s well-written and has nice photos, but the theme is grossly exaggerated. Sycamore Canyon is one of the best-documented local areas in Arizona: Botanists have visited and collected there for a century or so. In the SEINet database, there are 3,665 records of […]

In the publisher’s note in the May issue, you state that you “cover the West’s thorniest issues and gravitate without hesitation toward difficult conversations.” I’d like to suggest that this was true in the past, but it’s not always true today. You’ve made it clear that some of the major changes you’ve made over the past […]

Thank you for the excellent article about James Plymell (“Did James Plymell need to die?” March 2021). I am so deeply moved that you wrote this story. I found it very upsetting myself and wrote a little piece for the local newspaper. To see that someone else took up the story makes me feel not […]

Kudos to the citizens of McCall, Idaho, for pushing back on the development swap (“Growing pains,” April 2021). We have already lost more than half our wildlife in the past few decades, and one of the many ways we’re killing them is by developing more and more of their habitat to accommodate our continuous population […]

Miles W. Griffis makes good points about the unintended consequences of the changes in river management in Los Angeles that will further displace the displaced (“The invisible anglers of the Los Angeles River,” May 2021). The push-pull of water management in LA that seeks to control, or eliminate, residential/urban runoff should also be explored. Other […]

The possibility of restoring rail passenger service to the former Northern Pacific line in Montana has remained a dream for over 40 years (“Montana counties band together to reinvigorate passenger rail,” May 2021). I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but the logistical challenges to making it a reality have multiplied in the four decades […]

I found the article about the Chinook Indian Nation interesting and enlightening (“Unrecognized,” April 2021). I totally sympathize. We were thrown off our land 200 years ago, and we’re still trying to get it back. Of course, the usurpers claim it’s their land, but not only did they not even exist when we inhabited the […]

I don’t think the headline “Americans go on a gun-buying frenzy” (May 2021) is accurate. About 15% of Americans (best estimate is 25-35 million) own all the guns, with each owner holding an average of five. Most Americans neither buy nor use guns. Rusty Austin Rancho Mirage, California This article appeared in the print edition […]

I have read Alex Trimble Young’s review of  Let Me Tell You What I Mean twice now  (“Finding meaning on Joan Didion’s frontier,” February 2021) and cannot find any relevance to the usual subject matter of High Country News, which in itself has diverged so much from the original news information of the West. Thanks […]

I write in appreciation of Jessica Kutz’s piece about the end of the Navajo Generating Station and the Navajo Nation’s struggle for control of its energy (“Life After Coal,” February 2021). I really enjoyed the calm, in-depth exploration of the whole story. It has strong resonances here in Australia, where Indigenous peoples have nothing like […]

Jane Hu’s article about the cowardly attack on her enraged me (“The long Western legacy of violence against Asian Americans,” hcn.org, 3/5/21). I was a teenager growing up in Southern California during World War II, but was unaware of the anti-Japanese American feelings, probably because my parents were able to separate our fellow citizens from […]

Thirteen years ago, I was fortunate enough to live and work with my spouse in a remote region of Nevada near the Ruby Mountains. I’m not sure I saw a single person besides my partner during the entire field season. I have yet to return to this spot and now, after reading your recent article […]

Just want to say how much it means to me that HCN covered Plymell’s death (“Did James Plymell Need to Die?” March 2021). The story was barely covered at the time, and that never felt right. Your coverage got the real story, which is about the intersection of an imperfect human life with the efforts […]

In response to “High and Dry” (March 2021), I agree, our water crisis in the West is terrifying.  However, to me, what’s truly terrifying, is that we’ve known this for decades. HCN does a wonderful job of reporting on the crisis, yet we never change. We continue to use far too much water, mainly because we are […]

Stories can make you feel sadness, frustration, exhilaration. Leah Sottile’s “Did James Plymell Need to Die?” made me angrier than I can remember feeling after reading any story. The graphic showing Plymell’s officer contacts reveals 47 incidents from 2012 to 2019. And the officers involved in the Taser attack claimed they did not know Plymell? […]

Just wanted to commend Leah Sottile and HCN for an excellent article, “Did James Plymell Need to Die?” (March 2021). I worked at the County Alcohol and Drug program in Albany, Oregon, years ago, and it seems the same difficulties in service delivery are still at play. Issues of homelessness and chemical dependency are complicated […]

I wanted to thank you for the February issue “End of the Line.” I grew up in Billings, Montana; saw Colstrip more times than a teenager should; read the Global 200 Report to the President shortly after it came out; and hiked Canyonlands in the smog from the Four Corners plants. I’ve been a rabid […]

As someone who lives in a city that depends on Colorado River water for its residential water supply, I worry about the trends of increasing demand and decreasing supply. I was disappointed, though, to see the article “High and dry” (March 2021) close with a warning that “people need to ditch way more lawns.” To […]

The analysis in the article about Western roots of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was excellent (“A siege with Western roots and consequences,” February 2021). Resistance to public-land takeovers is now going on in Washington County, Idaho, where three county ordinances that place restrictions on federal lands may be repealed because a new […]