Innholdsfortegnelse for August Vol. 57, No. 8 i High Country News

When was the last time you called customer support — anywhere, for any reason — and got another live human being on the line? I suspect it’s been a good long while. Does anyone else immediately start punching “0” the second the automated answering system fires up, in hope of somehow snagging another sentient being? Just me? Well, here at High Country News, we stubbornly cling to the idea that when one of our readers needs help — whether it’s logging into their account on our website, renewing a subscription or making a donation — they deserve a little personal attention. Call during our regular business hours, and you’re likely to get an actual staffer in our Paonia, Colorado, office. And if no one picks up, just leave a message,…

Editor’s note: The names in this piece have been changed to protect people’s privacy. I WAS 19 WHEN I FIRST STARTED FIGHTING FIRES, in the spring of 2000. By then, I had been a tween and teenage runaway, a sex worker, and a survivor of violence inflicted by both strangers and people I knew. Anyone eyeing my life trajectory would’ve guessed that I’d end up permanently homeless and possibly addicted to several substances. That did happen. That’s the life wildland firefighting saved me from. After two years working for private contractor crews, 2002 was my first year on a Forest Service hotshot crew, called the Solar Hotshots. I was the only woman on the crew and one of the only crew members from outside of California. We’d started in May, first…

THE BATS SWEPT above us as we entered the water. In late spring, the San Juan charged like a desert bighorn ram in the rut. It was strewn with cottonwood seeds: The puffy globs drifted on the khaki surface like a monsoon over a desert escarpment. Dragonflies dipped and blue grosbeaks got in their final bzzts before nightfall. “The old age river” (Są́ Bitooh), as the Diné call it, was alive. But like so many of our rivers today, it was disabled. My partner and I were on a four-day trip through southern Utah, floating the 27 miles from Sand Island through a deep canyon dome of Martian geology to Mexican Hat, Utah. I stayed with the river that night, talking to the waterway and giving them my gratitude for…

WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE and my friends all went to study abroad, I attended a field study program run by The Sierra Institute, an outpost of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the course of an academic quarter, we learned about four California ecosystems by studying in them: the Mojave Desert, the Big Sur coast, the High Sierra and the Klamath Mountains. Along the way we hiked and camped and read and wrote and took turns with cooking, cleanup, fire tending and latrine duty. “Nature, Philosophy and Religion” was the course title and our area of inquiry. We studied the thinkers and spiritual traditions that have been concerned with the splendor of nature, the sustenance humans get from it, and our mutual symbiosis. We considered our own obligations…

AMERICAN KESTRELS ARE TINY, colorful and feisty. Attitudewise, they’re the chihuahuas of the avian world: They’re unafraid to take on much larger birds, ready to backstab turkey vultures and dive-bomb golden eagles to defend their territory. But despite being the United States’ most abundant falcon, American kestrels are struggling. In response to their decline, scientists have set up nest boxes to provide more habitat for these Lilliputian predators. Just how much these efforts are helping remains to be seen. Shi En Kim is an editorial fellow at HCN covering science, environment and society. This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation. WEB EXTRA: Read about Shi En Kim’s outing with Mount Diablo kestrel researchers at hcn.org/kestrels…

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BIRDERS ACROSS BORDERS It was great to read about the wonderful work Sky Island Alliance is doing with dedicated ranchers like Eduardo Ríos Colores (“Searching for sparrows in the Sky Islands,” July 2025). Collaborative efforts with like-minded people in Mexico are so important for the future of our wildlife and plants. Wildlife knows no borders. We can learn a lot from this concept. Katherine Brown Cochise, Arizona TAKE IT OUTSIDE! I took the July 2025 editor’s note recommendation to heart. I headed outside to the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway (!) and read your fine publication under the trees in the Roanoke Mountain Campground. Despite our geographic distance, I’m a fan. I particularly enjoyed Angie Kang’s drawings and text that I found to be unique and spellbinding. Rupert Cutler Roanoke, Virginia…

Years ago I sat on a back deck watching elm seeds flying—like the opposite of snow— The giant tree across the accidental courtyard of trees, the forest of trees in the vacant lot between the back deck and Buena Vista Street, shedding seeds into glorious six o’clock mid-Spring light— I’d gotten up to get my camera to try to film it, and filmed it, but impossible with my little phone to capture the lit magic of it— And having a thought about it now, or related to it, to seed-shedding and seed-flying and the benevolence of that scene and hour— How peaceful and quiet it was, sitting on my back deck waiting for hummingbirds, watching seeds fly, the ghost flowers and ghost cat in a faded temporal ribbon flicking in…

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