High Country News back issues from March 2008:
Don't write off this story yet
Mar 03, 2008; ... You know you have been working somewhere for a long time when your colleagues start coming to you for "institutional knowledge." On the one hand, it's kind of flattering to be the person who knows why the toilet sometimes clogs up (our connection to the sewer line has always been susceptible to ...
CORRECTIONS
Mar 03, 2008; ... Our Feb. 4 story, "Unnatural Preservation," called the pika a rodent; it's actually a lagomorph, related to rabbits and hares. The story also referred to "millions of acres of forests in Glacier National Park," but the park has only 1.4 million acres, many of which ...
two weeks in the West
Mar 03, 2008; ... Las Vegas' overall ambience, not to mention those jug-sized cocktails, tends to breed a certain lasciviousness among its human inhabitants and visitors. Turns out that the same lust is infecting the mollusks of southern Nevada. Quagga mussels invaded the East and Midwest before hitching their ...
Bridge over troubled highway
Mar 03, 2008; ... SNAPSHOT Wild animals in Colorado's White River National Forest might soon have a vegetated overpass to help them cross Interstate 70, a busy highway one expert calls The Berlin Wall for Wildlife." The 4 feet of soil on the "green bridge" over Vail Pass would be planted with ...
CSI: Critter Crime
Mar 03, 2008; ... An Oregon laboratory thwarts wildlife crime around the world Ed Espinoza hacked into the bloated walrus with a machete. Whiffing and gagging, he waded into the rotten guts looking for clues. His boss, Ken Goddard, smote a few, too, but preferred to crouch upwind in his blaze-orange hat ...
Havana goes West
Mar 03, 2008; ... Conservative Western Republicans embrace the Cuban cause Among the countless mementos Fidel Castro collected during his many years as president of Cuba is a signed sketch of a little salmon swimming upstream. Idaho Gov. C. L. "Butch" Otter scribbled the diagram during one of his four ...
I was a closet environmentalist
Mar 03, 2008; ... NAME Roger Muggli AGE 59 VOCATION Farmer/Feed Plant Operator ELECTED POSITION Secretary of the Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District (third generation) HANDLE Water Dog (H20K9) HOME BASE Family farm east ...
The People of the Sea
Mar 03, 2008; ... California's Salton Sea could dry up and die, or be fixed and developed. Either way, its renegades, recluses, ruffians and retirees will lose. The village of Bombay Beach, Calif., is quiet, save for the occasional screams of gulls on the nearby Salton Sea. It's 10:30 a.m. on a winter ...
We're in a land of Lincoln
Mar 03, 2008; ... WRITERS ON THE RANGE Those laws, supported by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party he led, have shaped the West. The idea was to give the little guy a chance if he got there early and was willing to work hard. The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth isn't until Feb. 12, ...
Men, machines, memories
Mar 03, 2008; ... Men, machines, memories Five Skies Ron Carlson 256 pages, hardcover: $23.95. Viking, 2007. The major characters in Five Skies are men at work and men on the run. It's not surprising that they are men of few words as well. Art Key, a 40-something Hollywood stunt engineer fleeing a guilty ...
Remembering Rrrrrip City!
Mar 03, 2008; ... Remembering Rrrrrip City! Red hot and Rollin': A Retrospection of the Portland Trail Blazers' 1976-77 Championship Season Matt Love, editor. 136 pages, softcover (includes DVD of the 1978 documentary Fast Break). $20. Nestucca Spit Press, 2007. When I first picked up the anthology Red ...
Staying put
Mar 03, 2008; ... Lately my cat, Daisy, has me thinking about Al Gore. Daisy's not as young as she used to be. She lazes most hours on the rug in front of the woodstove, snuggled inside the cardboard lid to a ream of paper from Office Depot. The lid is now festooned with a homemade quilt draped over - get this! - ...
heard around the West
Mar 03, 2008; ... MONTANA Karen Craver might have one of the toughest jobs in the West. For three years, she's been a rural mail carrier in sparsely populated northern Montana, close to Canada. "Some places up here," she says, "it's 10 miles between mailboxes." Every Tuesday and Thursday, Craver hits the ...
EDITOR'S NOTE: Breaking the silence of suicide
Mar 31, 2008; ... Why is High Country News writing about mental illness and suicide? Many of you are probably asking yourselves that question right about now. After all, suicide has nothing to do with public lands, natural resources, endangered wildlife or environmentalism. And of course it has nothing to ...
two weeks in the West
Mar 31, 2008; ... Remember when that little shack down the road (every Western town has them - real rustic "fixer-uppers" oozing "charm," "character" and mouse feces) sold for a few hundred grand? Well, today even spanking-new McMansions in some Western burgs won't fetch that kind of money, thanks to an ...
SNAPSHOT
Mar 31, 2008; ... Congresspeople under a cloud A number of Western lawmakers have topped the scandal sheets in the past year. Among those not pictured are Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. (stepping down in 2009), Rep. Heather Wilson, R.-N.M., and Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., all of whom reportedly made calls ...
Conservation easement conundrums
Mar 31, 2008; ... Colorado and other Western states crack down on abusers Perched at the podium during a Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts gathering, Erin Toll wears a poker face, a smart black pencil skirt and sassy Jimmy Choos. Among the jeans-and-hiking-boot-clad crowd attending, this wry New York ...
3:10 to Baghdad
Mar 31, 2008; ... To prepare for combat halfway around the world, the military looks to Yuma's desert laboratory On an isolated sliver of desert, the ghostly outlines of anonymous buildings press against the sky: homes, a mosque, an openair restaurant, a cemetery. There's a bridge, an old bus, a well, a ...
Native intelligence
Mar 31, 2008; ... Lili Singer turns Californians on to backyard bounty Smell this, it's called 'Cowboy Cologne.' " Lili Singer stands in the nursery rubbing the leaves of a small gray-green plant between her fingers and takes a deep whiff. I follow her lead. The scent is pungent and heady - pure ...
Wyoming's day in the spin
Mar 31, 2008; ... west watch News analysis by ED QUILLEN Talk about surprising: The Democratic presidential candidates actually paid some attention to Wyoming. With only 522,830 residents, according to last summer's Census Bureau estimate, Wyoming has the smallest population of all 50 states ....
My Crazy Brother
Mar 31, 2008; ... A personal look at the West's suicidal tendencies I used to get mad at my brother for being crazy. Because some of the time, he wasn't crazy. Or he didn't act crazy. In those good spells, he could be the together older brother, a guy who was good with tools, had a precise pool ...
A message to our grandchildren
Mar 31, 2008; ... "We are all riders on the earth together." -Archibald MacLeish, 1969 Among other accomplishments in a life of public service, Arizona native Stewart Udall was perhaps the most influential secretary of Interior ever. He served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations from 1961 ...
The loneliness of the redneck environmentalist
Mar 31, 2008; ... WRITERS ON THE RANGE I don't have that many friends. I'm not a bad guy; I call my mother, eat my broccoli, and pay my taxes. But I'm a country-music-listening, PBR-drinking, rusty-Jeep-driving good ol' boy - and I love the environment. I grew up rural in the Rocky Mountain West ...
Reasons to stay
Mar 31, 2008; ... Reasons to stay Split Estate: A Novel Charlotte Bacon 304 pages, hardcover: $24. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. "Wyoming," Charlotte Bacon writes, "made you feel that an articulated reason to stay was a good thing to develop." In Bacon's new novel, Split Estate, that nebulous feeling ...
Thinking like a fish
Mar 31, 2008; ... Thinking like a fish Swimming with Trout Chad Hanson 128 pages, hardcover: $19.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Chad Hanson used to wonder what music trout would listen to if they could: Brookies might like bluegrass, browns might prefer classical, while rainbows, he thought, ...
The legacy of the 10th Mountain men
Mar 31, 2008; ... ESSAY BY PETER SHELTON South of Vail, Colo., in a mountain meadow framed by 14,000-foot peaks, deep snow hides the ruined foundations of Camp Hale. In the winters of 1943 and 1944, 15,000 men equipped with rifles and skis swarmed the surrounding terrain, training for alpine combat in the ...
heard around the West
Mar 31, 2008; ... WYOMING Spring really is around the corner, says longtime "Far Afield" columnist Bert Raynes in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. With keen eyes, he's observed some of the season's earliest manifestations: "Coyotes in pairs and in groups ... Ravens in mock pursuits. Bald eagles carrying ...