Innholdsfortegnelse for September Vol. 56, No. 09 i High Country News

ON THE COVER The early morning sun shines through the Sonoran Desert landscape near the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Arizona. According to the International Organization for Migration, the U.S.-Mexico border is the deadliest land route for migrants in the world. Roberto (Bear) Guerra / HCN…

LINNTON, OREGON, is never quiet. Freight trains clank through the outer-Portland neighborhood, past the community center, a bar, a daycare, mobile homes and farmhouses with boarded-up windows. The Willamette River lies north; southward, the streets climb tree-covered hills. Each train is marked with a different number: 1971 is liquefied natural gas; 1202 is diesel; 1999, tar. They carry petroleum products to Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub, a series of tanks and pipelines at the edge of Linnton that stretch six miles up the Willamette toward downtown Portland. The tanks, which store 90% of Oregon’s liquid fuel and all the jet fuel used by Portland International Airport, were built in the 1950s — well before scientists knew about the magnitude 9 earthquake overdue to hit the Pacific Northwest. By the…

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will soon decide whether to add several bumblebees to the federal endangered species list. Among them is the western bumblebee — Bombus occidentalis — a species that, if listed, could become a charismatic spokesbee across its range. Once ubiquitous from New Mexico to Alaska, western bumblebees are now confined mostly to pockets of the alpine Northwest. Their rapid decline since the ’90s is attributed to habitat loss, climate change and a pathogen spread by commercial bees. Without bumbles like westerns, whole ecosystems might falter: They’re among the most important pollinators on Earth. Yet, aside from the monarch butterfly, insects rarely receive protections. Despite precipitous declines worldwide, they comprise just 7% of federally listed animal and plant species. Many states don’t even count bugs as…

THE TWO GUATEMALAN BOYS huddled under a shiny black blanket that reflected the moonlight. It was their first night alone. Their only link to family was a cellphone, so they texted their uncle, Carlos D.L., in California: “Tío conteste, nos dejaron tirados.” Uncle, they left us here. Nine nights earlier, around 3 a.m., the boys had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in Sonoyta with around 15 others and a smuggler. They trekked across the Sonoran Desert, up and down rugged hills and across dry washes, with garlic rubbed on their shoes to repel snakes. J.G., who was 18 at the time, and his 20-year-old cousin, K.G., carried 50-pound backpacks with jerky, Maruchan cup noodles, energy drinks and the Paris Saint-Germain soccer jerseys they’d purchased in Mexico. The four one-gallon bottles of…

DOC WILSON Founder of Peace Peloton Seattle, Washington We started in June of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd. Some cyclist friends and I wanted to bring people together in a way that expressed connection and community. So we organized a bike ride from Seattle’s Alki Beach to the Northwest African American Museum, and then organized a few more rides, and we kept going from there. I think the thing that helps bring people out to our bike rides is that it’s all levels. It’s not like you got to go super-fast; you can ride 10 miles an hour, you can ride a road bike, you can ride a beach cruiser. But the thing about Peace Peloton is that we’re not a cycling group. We’re an economic development organization.…

THERE WAS A time you could catch tons of salmon in a single day at Kettle Falls, a series of pools cascading into each other on the Columbia River in northern Washington. That was before the U.S. government built Grand Coulee Dam in 1942. After 82 years, in June of this year, the Department of Interior published Historic and Ongoing Impacts of Federal Dams on the Columbia River Basin Tribes, an analysis that explores how 11 hydropower dams on the mainstem Columbia, Snake and North Fork Clearwater rivers have hurt Indigenous economies, cultures, spiritual practices, environments and health. Those historic and ongoing harms include the destruction of important cultural sites like Kettle, as well as Celilo Falls, another ancient fishery that was also a magnificent international marketplace. Dams are…

IN EARLY FEBRUARY, meteorologists warned Southern Californians that a super-charged storm was headed their way, potentially bringing catastrophic flash flooding. The predictions came true, and then some: Up to 10 inches of rain fell on parts of Los Angeles over a 24-hour period, shattering all-time precipitation records. That meant as much as 21 million acre-feet of water — or one and a half times the entire annual volume of the Colorado River — fell on the 36,000-square-mile greater LA metro area. When trillions of gallons drench a typical concrete-dominated cityscape, the water runs off rooftops and slides onto impermeable concrete drive-ways and into streets, turning them into virtual rivers. It cascades into stormwater drains and concrete-cased arroyos — picking up dirt, garbage, oil and other substances — before rushing into…

IN THE LONG AFTERNOON of last year’s summer solstice, Ernest Edwin Higbee Jr. pulled a white Chevrolet Tahoe off the main road of Alamo, Nevada, driving past spindly creosote bush and stalky Nevada ephedra and onto the lonely highway where the Mojave Desert meets the Great Basin. “People live out here because you are pretty much on your own,” Higbee, who is 70 and goes by Ed, told his six passengers. “And where we’re going, you’ll really know we’re on our own.” The destination — still more than an hour away — was City, a mile-and-a-half long, half-mile-wide concrete-and-rock sculpture. The artist, Michael Heizer, opened his magnum opus to visitors in September 2022 after more than 50 years of construction. Heizer, who is self-taught, was one of the first 20th…

THE SPLATTERS ON MY WINDSHIELD were electric yellow. Against the blue of the desert sky, they looked like daytime fire-works that had frozen at their climax. Each collision cut deeper into my soul, causing me to drop well below the speed limit on the sidewinding road leading out of California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. At a slower pace, my butterfly body count plunged; one female even managed to hitchhike on my car like a bejeweled hood ornament. I now understand why writer Sara Dykman followed the monarch butterfly migration over 10,000 miles by bicycle: She could pedal at speeds similar to the fiery insects and thereby avoid turning them into clarified butter. At Anza-Borrego, I wasn’t traveling among monarchs, but rather their smaller cousins Vanessa cardui — the “painted ladies,”…

PATRICIA QUIÑÓNEZ understands persecution. She was a journalist in Venezuela when dictator Nicolás Maduro rose to power in the 2010s, imprisoning critics and attacking the free press. After she took to the streets to protest, the National Guard raided her apartment building. Her newspaper began to fail after a century of operation. In 2016, Quiñónez, her husband and their infant son fled for Utah and were granted political asylum. Neither spoke English; they had no car or bed. They needed practical assistance: “How to get medical insurance, what tourist sites to visit, how to get your driver’s license — so many everyday questions and there was no one to answer them,” Quiñónez said in an interview conducted in Spanish. “So we opened Utahzolanos.” Quiñónez, 47, now runs Utahzolanos, an Instagram account…

You may have noticed a few changes in High Country News recently, including in the pages where we thank the folks who donate to support our journalism. For years, we listed those who made the largest donations first, and then worked our way down. This is a fairly common approach for nonprofits, but it never felt quite right to us. The fact is that fully 75% of HCN’s revenue comes directly from our readers. A portion of it comes via your subscription dues, but the lion’s share arrives in the form of donations. A few folks are able to write large checks, and we are truly grateful. But each year, roughly 10,000 others make more humble gifts. And those add up and help keep us going. It’s this remarkable community of…

IT’S A FUNNY thing to earn more money than anyone in your family, but to still be out of money all of the time. At 39, I’m still figuring out how to make my money stretch across multiple households in different states — and sometimes even into Mexico. There are times when it makes me feel proud that my paycheck goes so far. Mostly it just stresses me out. I feel this worry most acutely during Christmastime, when my fiancé, Ben, and I fly from North Carolina to California to spend two weeks with my dad. Like many people, I’m always strapped for cash during the holidays. And as the person in my family with the most financial stability, the responsibility for making Christmas happen falls directly on my shoulders.…