Innholdsfortegnelse for March Vol. 55, No. 03 i High Country News

IMMERSIVE AND INFORMATIVE Thank you for “Glen Canyon Revealed” (February 2023). Craig Childs did an outstanding job educating me about Lake Powell and the current dangers to the Colorado River ecosystem. I felt like I was right there with him, experiencing the aftereffects of what humans have done to disrupt the entire river system by building Glen Canyon Dam. The article was truly a masterpiece. Dan Rosenthal Salida, Colorado Craig Childs did an excellent job balancing preserving Lake Powell versus draining it to a single reservoir in Lake Mead. I was surprised not to see any reference to Powell’s water loss from evaporation and bank seepage, estimated by the Glen Canyon Institute at 860,000 acre-feet annually. Evaporative loss should be part of the equation in determining Powell’s future. Michael Powers…

As I bent to pick up a seed-bauble, my soulstaggered down. A chickadee’s comfortblessed my head and heart. The soul will kneel awhile,thank you, the soul shall bask in chickadee balm.The sky being a cloud of blue fish says fly,an atmosphere of water, the fish of the sky says fish, blue at the depth of deep water.Hang on, staggered soul. It’s not like you’re dying.See the slender radicle emerge from the seed,silver as salmon milt. Notice the tender regard from underthe chickadee’s black and dapper cap. Releasedthus from plummet, soul rises but chest-high again. WEB EXTRA Listen to Robert Wrigley recite his poem at hcn.org/birds-and-small-fish…

If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution, please scan the QR code to the right, visit hcn.org/give2hcn, call 800-905-1155 or mail a check to: P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. CHAMPION OF THE WEST ($50,000 AND ABOVE) George B. Storer Foundation | Jackson, WY MEDIA LEADER ($10,000-$24,999) Anonymous BF Foundation | Snowmass, CO Dume Wolverine Foundation | Sherman Oaks, CA Brenda B. Sheridan | Fort Myers, FL David & Louise Stonington | Seattle, WA PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE ($5,000-$9,999) Tamia Marg & Tom Anderson | Berkeley, CA Alpenglow Foundation & John Hobby Catto Family | Aspen, CO Frick Family Fund, Oregon Community Foundation | Mendenhall, PA Linda Shoemaker & Steve Brett | Boulder, CO PHILANTHROPIST ($2,500-$4,999) Anonymous Ed Curley | Tucson, AZ Maria Fernandez-Gimenez & Devin Odell on behalf of…

SHE STANDS IN THE WIND, 8,510 feet atop the jagged Continental Divide. At a place where the Northern Rocky Mountains slice through the dry brown summer landscape like a saw blade, she is always waiting, watching over the people of Butte, Montana. Her broad, blank face is framed by a veil made of steel and her hands emerge from the folds of a long flowing dress, palms forward. In the dark night sky, she shines bright white, lit up by spotlights near her feet. Officially, she is called Our Lady of the Rockies, but most people here simply call her “the Lady.” At 5,539 feet above sea level — higher than any other major city in the state — Butte is often frigid, and temperatures hover near zero for months.…

THE STRIKING IMAGE on this month’s cover commemorates the December day in 1985 when a Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter carried the final piece of an enormous steel statue to its final destination on a ridge above Butte, Montana. Conceived and built by a local electrician whose wife had recently recovered from a serious illness, Our Lady of the Rockies was dedicated to “women everywhere, especially mothers.” Since her piecemeal flight to the Continental Divide, the Lady has stood still, but, as HCN contributor Leah Sottile writes in this issue, the people of Butte have carried on. As the city and its stories change, the meanings of the Lady multiply. Throughout this issue, you’ll find stories about people and places in motion. Rural Alaskans are seeking to maintain a much-needed road on…

IMAGINE WALKING OUT the front door in, say, El Vado, New Mexico, Thermopolis, Wyoming, or even Lakeview, Oregon, strolling down to the depot, boarding a train and settling in for a trip to San Francisco, Denver, Chicago — even New York City. Once you arrive, you hop on a streetcar that ferries you to your final destination. Such car-free travel might sound like the futuristic fantasy of a public transit geek, and, at the moment, that’s what it is. But just over a century ago, it was reality: Back in the 1920s, the nation — even much of the rural West — was crisscrossed with rail lines that carried ore, timber, cattle and people to central rail hubs, where they could then continue onward to almost anywhere in the U.S.…

The High Country News Board of Directors met in January with a couple of serious topics up for discussion: our finances and a draft strategic plan. Finances have been a nail-biter. Fall is our best time for fundraising, but we lagged behind into December, although, in the end, our readers came through once again. Between October and the end of the year, you contributed more than $300,000 — almost closing the budgetary gap. We still have work to do, but thanks to you, we ended the year in good shape. The draft strategic plan is basically a blueprint for sustaining HCN over the long haul. We have big ambitions — we want to see more high-impact investigative reporting, as well as more timely news and analysis on our website, and…

CALIFORNIA Here’s a whale of a tale — with a happy ending — from Dana Point Harbor, California. A gray whale gave birth astonishingly close to Capt. Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari’s catamaran sailboat. The whale had been “acting strangely” and “swimming in circles” when Capt. Dave’s staff noticed the blood. “Normally, when you see blood in the water, it’s not a good sign,” said Stacie Fox, who has worked for the marine tour company for three years. When Fox realized the cow was giving birth, she quickly alerted the captain. It was a momentous occurrence, one for the sightseers’ bucket list. “It is kinda hard to put into words how amazing it was,” Fox told the Los Angeles Times. The staff said the birth was the “first live…

Ben Goldfarb is a correspondent for High Country News who writes from Colorado. He is the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. His next book, which is on the science of road ecology, comes out this year. @ben_a_goldfarb Adam Mahoney is an environmental justice reporter at Capital B News, a local-national nonprofit publication focused on the Black experience. He is based in Wilmington, California. @AdamLMahoney Kylie Mohr is an editorial fellow for High Country News who writes from Montana. Her work has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Newspaper Association and Wyoming Press Association. @thatsMohrlikeit B. “Toastie” Oaster is a staff writer for High Country News who covers Indigenous affairs from the Pacific Northwest. They’ve been honored with awards from…

WHITEBARK PINES are unmistakable, with stout, twisted trunks that are shaped but not dominated by the wind and topped with bundles of needles on upswept branches. But by 2016, over half of the trees still standing were husks of their former selves, their fate signaled by flaming red needles, and then, ghostly gray trunks with no branches at all. Tribal nations, conservation groups and federal agencies have worked for years to protect and restore the tree, which has been on the waitlist for federal protections for more than a decade. In December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally listed the tree as threatened. Whitebark pinecone seeds contain more calories per gram than chocolate. The seeds can be cooked in hot ashes, roasted, mixed with serviceberries or ground into a mush…

THE LINES ETCHED on my wedding band resemble mountain peaks or ocean waves, depending on what you imagine them to be. I’ve always preferred the beach to the mountains. Some studies suggest that the beach is for extroverts, who favor frolicking and socializing over a solitary mountain journey. I am more extroverted than my mountain-loving husband, but I think my love of the beach has more to do with its sweeps of sand, colored sea glass and the sound of the ocean, emanating ease and serenity. The mountains have always left me with a tinge of fear. The threatening forests featured in horror movies, combined with my ancestral memory of Blacks being murdered in rural places, meant that the mountains, until recently, rarely called my name. Our annual trip to…

Live Virtual Event How to Use Open Records Laws Wednesday, March 15 11:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. MT Register at hcn.org/sunshine-week Access to public records is key to the investigative reporting High Country News and other news outlets produce. Yet individuals are more prolific users of tools like the federal Freedom of Information Act than news organizations. At HCN, we know firsthand how dogged our readers can be in accessing public information: You often send us records you’ve obtained or tip us off to what we should be asking for and where to find it. In honor of Sunshine Week, an annual initiative to promote open government, we’re hosting a live virtual event about the power of open records laws and how you can join other HCN readers and engaged citizens…