Opinion

There are many ways backyard hens can die. If you raise them long enough, you’ll see your share. But buff Orpington chickens tend to be survivors.   My first clue to their talent for living came when a Siberian husky sneaked into my backyard. A more efficient chicken-killing machine does not exist. The wolfish canine […]

Perhaps Ken Burns had the right idea when he named his public-television series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Even though I worked for the Forest Service for 34 years, I’m inclined to agree with him about the importance of our nation’s parks. But the national forests are surely our second-best idea, a priceless asset […]

Cattle are hard on streams. There’s no getting around it. They’re large creatures, they travel in big herds unlike native ungulates such as mule deer and pronghorn, and they love to hang out in streambeds where the living is easy, with plentiful water to drink and delicate plants to munch on. The damage they do […]

Wyoming just spent $14 million and the better part of 10 years on a rigorous scientific experiment to evaluate whether it’s possible to get extra snow from winter storm clouds through cloud seeding. The conclusion? The final results were thin: There was a 3 percent increase in precipitation, but a 28 percent probability that the […]

I didn’t expect change to come from the air — not the kind of change that transforms the essence of a quiet place. I assumed the biggest risk of life-altering change would most likely come from wildfire. I watch smoke plumes erupt every year from this high ridge in central Colorado, overlooking the southwest flank […]

Last November, San Benito County became the first county in California to stand up to the most powerful industry on Earth. We banned fracking and other intensive oil extraction methods, despite a Big Oil pushback that was lavishly funded and Orwellian in its methods of attack. San Benito is a landlocked rural county, nestled between […]

Lentils are a humble and earthy food. They’re not intended for the fancy dishes that tap-dance around the table; they’re more at home in simple, nourishing foods like Indian dal or hippy mush, the kind of food that feeds villages. Even better, lentils come from a plant that improves the land where it grows as […]

Starting sometime in May my only option for flying from Moab, Utah, to a regional hub will be to get on a Brasilia 30-seat turboprop (Great Lakes Airlines) that flies over the heart of the Rockies to Denver. Until then, we have Beechcraft 1900s that fly to Salt Lake City. Both of these are venerable […]

As I write, Custer County School in southern Colorado is under the watch of armed sheriff’s deputies. This follows the suicide of a 15-year-old boy last week — the second such tragedy in about a year’s time — and a bizarre rumor that somebody was planning a shooting at the school. This rumor apparently had […]

Not so long ago, a visit from the Environmental Protection Agency to a ski area meant bad news. In 2000, Aspen was the first resort inspected in what became a raid on the ski industry that seemed to have started alphabetically — we were first, Breckenridge was second, and so on. Humorless agents in suits […]

Granville Stuart first came West with his father and brother in 1852, hoping to strike it rich in the gold fields of California. Granville was born in Virginia, but had called Illinois and Iowa home before traveling farther west. The senior Stuart returned to Iowa after a year, but Granville and his brother had yet […]

Fifteen years ago, I moved my young family from the San Francisco Bay Area to Eugene, Oregon, into a small house with a woodstove. I was excited about heating with wood, and resolved to do it safely. I built a woodshed in the backyard, close to a Doug-fir chopping block. I learned to send split […]

“Walk left,” the sign says, at the entrance to the roped-off site. It’s a place that hammers me in the chest. The world spills away, down into the Bighorn Basin, across Wyoming and north into Montana, a huge gallop of space. Brown miles stretch out veined with river courses, serrated with ridges and mountain ranges. […]

Plenty of ink has been spilled lately over Utah’s Transfer of Public Lands Act, the controversial law requiring the federal government to turn over 31.2 million acres of public land to the state of Utah – without even a token payment to the U.S. Treasury. But should the American public take this proposal seriously? The […]

January glowed brightly around us as we hiked the ridgeline of Carbonate, the mountain flanking the Big Wood River on the edge of Hailey, Idaho. It’s a popular hiking spot, generally in late spring and fall. The entire trail is open to the sky, and switchbacks quickly unfurl views of the Smoky Mountains, Camas Prairie […]

Did any Western history buffs besides me see The Homesman?  A hot box office ticket earlier this winter, it’s hard to find in theaters now, though the cast was impressive — Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep — and most reviews were positive.  Three pioneer wives have gone crazy in a small Nebraska community, […]

The first entries I made in my journal during a 23-day rafting trip on the Grand Canyon this winter were limited: “Day 1: Cold.” On the second day on the river, I mustered more creativity: “It’s freaking cold,” only I didn’t use the word freaking. The morning of Dec. 31, our 16-member crew woke in […]