Innholdsfortegnelse for July Vol. 55, No. 07 i High Country News

JUST AS I WAS ABOUT TO GO ON LEAVE from High Country News last summer, I received a letter from a subscriber in Oregon. He’d read my editor’s note about the great blue heron and, being a heron admirer himself, as well as a professional photographer, offered to send me a print of one of his photos. Accompanying the letter was a spiral-bound book of image proofs from which to choose. It was a heartwarming gesture, made doubly meaningful because of a diagnosis I’d received suddenly, without warning. I pored over the book and marveled at the graceful outlines of herons in all kinds of light, settings, poses and plum-age. I have encountered many acts of generosity in my life, yet this seemed exceptional. I marveled that a longtime HCN…

CHRISTEN FALCON, a Blackfeet hunter and entrepreneur, crouched on a snow- and sage-covered hillside in southwest Montana, slicing rubbery orange fat from bright red hunks of buffalo meat. Her fingers nicked from knifework, she stashed cuts from the ungulate’s neck, back and ribs in Ziploc baggies for safekeeping. The animal was one of at least 1,223 Yellowstone bison that hunters in Montana killed last winter, more than in any year since the 1800s. The vast majority were harvested by tribal members exercising long-dormant treaty rights in Beattie Gulch, a narrow strip of federal land just outside Yellowstone National Park. The bison’s massive frontand hindquarters rested on a blue tarp to protect them from dirt and other contaminants. Gut piles left by other hunters, frosted with March snow, dotted the hillsides around…

Recently, the balance of this column has swung toward prodding you with questions and challenges, but triumphs and good news are a lot of fun to share, too, so I’d like to tell you about all the exciting happenings at HCN. HCN Poetry Editor Paisley Rekdal begins her tenure this month as the new director of the University of Utah’s American West Center, which researches the history and culture of our region. In other news, her latest book, West: A Translation, a collection of poems and essays about the transcontinental railroad, was released in May by Copper Canyon Press. Senior Editor Emily Benson and contributor Madhushree Ghosh have each had a story, both from September 2022, selected for the 2023 Best American Series anthologies. Ghosh’s “On the road, a taste of…

MY MOUTH WAS BLUE from Slurpee and I was wearing my favorite pink SpongeBob shirt as I perused the supermarket’s paperback section. As a 13-year-old raised on a cattle farm, I devoured books obsessively. I stood in fluorescent lighting at the end of a checkout line, my boots caked with mud. Suddenly, the image of a feather-clad half-naked fellow caught my eye from the shelves. Nestled between some Nicholas Sparks novels and glossy magazines, the embossed book cover glistened with a white man in a headband in an unconvincing long black wig, a swooning white woman clutched in his arms, the pair almost kissing in a deluge of feathers. How embarrassing, I remember thinking, lips blue, and I moved on to try to find something with a werewolf or vampire…

WASHINGTON If you live in the forest, eventually you’re bound to run across other forest critters — deer, flying squirrels, maybe Sasquatch — so when Northwest author Jonathan Evison encountered a bear cub on a trail near his cabin on Bainbridge Island, he was prepared. The Kitsap Sun reported Evison had been tromping around in the Olympic foothills of Clallam County when he heard a curious sound: A crying baby? Or perhaps a lost kitten? He investigated and found a tiny cub alone at the base of a tree, scared and miserable. Evison, not wanting to interfere and hoping the mama bear would return, stepped quietly away. But the following day, he came back and found the cub still crying, tangled up in branches underneath a tree. “It really wasn’t…

Jacqueline Balderrama is the author of Now in Color (Perugia Press, 2020) and chapbook, Nectar and Small (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She’s a Virginia G. Piper Fellow at Arizona State University. Sharon Chischilly is a Diné photographer based in New Mexico and Arizona who focuses on underreported stories from her community. She will receive her bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications from the University of New Mexico next year. Umar Farooq is an Ancil Payne Fellow with ProPublica, where he reports on national issues. @UmarFarooq_ Russel Albert Daniels is a documentary photographer and photojournalist whose work stands in the currents of art, reportage and decolonization. His projects explore identity, sense of place and history. Ryan Dorgan is a photographer who has spent the last decade covering Wyoming stories for…

Over the phone my older sister prepares for a hurricane, my younger sisters for wildfire, and I for wind—stretched like the Vitruvian Man between them, myself a weathervane and soft center. When they move, I spin. She carries perishables upstairs. She tracks the news. She (as in me) plugs the drafty door with napkins and masking tape when the power’s gone out. When? How Close? I’ll call tomorrow. We’ve each visited the other across country at some point, so by now we share an eye to picture each of ourselves in her rooms or at her desk or standing by the window watching the clouds roll in. We exchange small fates like tokens of pressed-flowers and what may come. She tells me, The house wasn’t flooded. She tells me, The…

LEARNING ABOUT LIFE FROM LETITIA Once again, High Country News published an illuminating, complex story (“The many legacies of Letitia Carson,” June 2023). It’s critical reading to understand the intersecting and ongoing issues of gender, race, colonialism and land in Oregon. @tkdeibele Via Twitter WARM INTEREST What a great issue! I read every article and pre-ordered John Vaillant’s new book, Fire Weath-er (“When fire goes feral,” June 2023). Sounds like a gripping read. Thanks! Karen L. Willoughby Helper, Utah THE JOY OF POETRY Thank you, Garrett Hongo, for “Scarlet Paintbrush” in the May issue. Your poem brought great joy to my heart, and with our heavier-than-normal spring moisture, you can find scarlet paintbrush doting the landscape. We must teach our young people about the past in order to save their…

WHEN JOHN N. GOODWIN, the first governor of Arizona Territory, gave his inaugural 1864 speech to the Territorial Legislature, he made his priorities clear: “The first duty of the legislators of a free state is to make, as far as lies in their power, education as free to all its citizens as the air they breathe. A system of common schools is the grand foundation upon which the whole superstructure should rest.” Goodwin’s veneration of public education echoed across the West’s new states and territories. In January 1868, for instance, the residents of Cheyenne, Wyoming, held public schooling in such high regard that nearly everyone was present the day the first “free” school building was dedicated — even though the temperature was 23 degrees below zero. The concept of free…

CHAMPION OF THE WEST ($50,000 AND ABOVE) ProPublica Society for Environmental Journalists | Washington, DC John I. & Elizabeth Taylor | Boulder, CO MEDIA LEADER ($10,000-$24,999) Audrey Benedict | Ward, CO Dennis & Trudy O’Toole | Santa Fe, NM PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE ($5,000-$9,999) Jean Johnson | Seattle, WA Nancy Stephens & Rick Rosenthal and the Rosenthal Family Foundation | Los Angeles, CA PHILANTHROPIST ($2,500-$4,999) Anonymous (2) Carl Haefling & Pam Johnson | Bainbridge Island, WA Peter Kirsch & Pat Reynolds | Denver, CO Alan Marks & Josephine Lopez | Albuquerque, NM Emilene Ostlind & Andy Parsekian | Laramie, WY Marla Painter & Mark Rudd | Albuquerque, NM STEWARD ($1,000-$2,499) Catherine W. Allen | Mercer Island, WA Dick Benoit | Reno, NV Bill Black & Nancy DuTeau | Pocatello, ID Richard W.…

Executive Director — The Fund for People in Parks seeks leader to identify, develop, fund and facilitate high-impact projects in Western national parks. Remote position with some travel. 30 hour/week. $75,000-$90,000 with benefits, flexible schedule. Start October-December. Apply by July 15. peopleinparks.org. Legal Director — Trustees for Alaska is the only nonprofit environmental law firm founded and based in Alaska. We are seeking a Legal Director, full-time, based in Anchorage. For more position details and information to apply, please go to our website. https://trustees.org/trustees-employment/. Chief Executive Officer — Remote Exempt position for Buffalo Nations Grasslands Alliance is responsible for the planning and organization of Buffalo Nations Grasslands Alliance’s day-to-day operations. www.bngalliance.org/chief-executive-officerinfo@BNGAlliance.org. Executive Director — The Executive Director of the Badlands Conservation Alliance (BCA) builds and leads a premier North Dakota advocacy…