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2007-2008
Indeed, mushing is an occupation that's long on misery and short on comfort - an obsessive disorder, a disease masquerading as sport. Still, an undeniable romance surrounds the world of sleds and dogs. Think Jack London, Robert Service, and the Northern Lights. Think of Balto. The reality is more like single parenting - endless work and worry, blessed with moments of pure magic. You are never really free and you never question the lack of freedom. There isn't time. Instead, you give the dogs what they need and draw strength from the crazed racket of huskies begging to run, from the whisper of paws on fresh snow. Once every two weeks you drive 30 miles into town for groceries, but you are always with the dogs. - Michael Wolcott, "Stage Stop: The terrible pull of sled-dog racing," January/February 2007
What a pristine backdrop for such a sport. The weather has made things interesting for these riders, and carnage will be par for this course. "One guy broke his wrist; another went head-first into a rock garden," says a marshal positioned at one checkpoint along the A-rider course. "One girl flew down this hill and her bike went out from under her and she grabbed out to hug a tree to stop her fall." - Erinn Morgan, "Angel Fire, New Mexico," January/February 2007
They were weeds, to be sure . . . but that's what weeds do - they find fulfillment in what's available, what's there, what's offered, in things as they are. I like that in an organism of any kind. - Ken Wright, "Let Us Now Praise Weeds," April/May 2007
. . . getting back to Dad. I have a picture of us when I was a baby. He is sitting at his desk and lifting me up over his head. We are both smiling and looking at each other, entranced. Right there, Dad. Right there. It started there, in Gainesville, Florida, where I was born but lived just over a year. I became a mountain girl, not a Gator. But I have a baby memory of being on the hot Alachua County porch and sensing humidity and green, the subtropical savannah-jungle that is Florida. So, see, Dad, I'd tapped into the Universe, the Big Love, even then. I was born with it. It got me through. It got me feeling mountains and knowing beauty in spite of you, later on. And the heartache was knowing you felt it too, otherwise you wouldn't have been chasing your soul down Utah canyons or up Mount Whitney. But you betrayed it, as most people in this Big Oil mess of an imperial, raping patriarchy do. God dammit, Dad. God damn. - Katharine Niles, "Navigating The Passes," January/February 2007
Ramon talks excitedly about returning to Mexico, even though it is early May. His Spanish gains speed with each word. I struggle to keep pace. "There will be many fiestas. Many weddings. Many children will be made . . . I miss my family. A hopeless mortgage, no career, a failing love life and a deteriorating back lose significance. His face tells of a hunger that is deeper than mine. - Jason Fisher, "The Planters," August/September 2007
Enter, since then, the new Chris. Rude-boy, Crankmeister, Rebel, Devastated Soul. If we don't threaten to withhold TV from him, he'll never get out of bed in the morning. He cries at the smallest infractions. Life is serious, deadly serious. And all this in just the past couple of weeks! - Katharine Niles, "The Power of The Presence," January/February 2007
The man behind the desk happened to be Bob Rule, the owner, and he eyed us suspiciously. He'd probably seen our kind before: a ragtag bunch of wide-eyed, snow-crazed powder hounds. We're a despicable lot, really, hell-bent on only one thing between November and April. But he humored our inquiries and pleads as we bargained for standby seats on that day's snowcat. As if by some diving intervention, there were exactly four seats left and Bob sold them to us at a standby discount, despite how our stinky, duct-taped, moth-ball-eaten layers would clash with his other clients' respectable ski duds. Like hearing your town's name on the radio's list of closed schools on snow day, it felt like winning the lottery. We flashed shit-eating grins at each other and suppressed our instant reactions to high-five each other and our own personal touchdown dances. We bounced out the door to grab our skis and packs from the truck as Bob yelled after us like a parent: "You better be back in 15 minutes, so we can catch the first lift!" - Kate Siber, "Pow Wagon!" January/February 2007
You're mind is suddenly nimble, aided no doubt by the invigorating effects of frigid water on once-happy cajones, and you realize that the reason the water was clearing on the way to the pool is that you were driving downstream a lot faster than the current. By now, the snow melted by last night's warm temperatures up high has reached the valley, your pool and the aforementioned cajones. The river is in flood, murky and trending toward chocolate soup. Rafters hoot and holler as they blow past you, waving. You wave back - with one finger. It's not the rafters you hate, but your faithless lover. The river. - Steven J. Meyers, "Springtime rivers, and other faithless lovers . . .," March/April 2007
The average Realtor in my town makes less than $25,000 a year, but I needed something without limitations, where averages weren't ceilings. I couldn't tell my friends. I said I worked for a ski resort when people asked what I did. I wouldn't elaborate. I figured I'd have to subjugate my idealism, sell out, work with Republicans, pretend to like them, agree with them. I'd have to be fake and laugh loud and convincingly at bad jokes. Or so I thought. Here's what really happened. I started to like my customers more than some of my friends. - Chris Bettin, "The Realtor Strikes Back," March/April 2007
Bob Honts is president and CEO of The Village at Wolf Creek Development Corp., and he's been Red McCombs' business partner since 1973. He's confident about the future of the project. "We would like to start some on-site construction this summer," he said, "and we may do it, depending on what happens with the Colorado Wild lawsuit against the Forest Service. It would take a 2-year subdivision facility installation period, and we'd look at a grand opening in 2009 or 2010. It takes that long to build it." "I don't think the lawsuit will stop or even delay the development," he continued. "Any inholding has a right to access." Honts is also optimistic about the sales of the units. "I have hundreds of people, on reading about the Village at Wolf Creek, who've asked to be put on the ?hot list' to be contacted when land or condominiums are ready," he added. "One thing the controversy has done is made us well know. I've had inquiries from as far away as the East Coast." - Marcia Darnell, "Village or Pillage?" April/May 2007
I predict that in less than 30 years after the disappearance of Lake Powell, a pilot flying over a "restored" Glen Canyon will gaze down upon a sea of green with the very hemmed-in Colorado and San Juan rivers running down the middle of it all. The side canyons, which were the glory of old Glen Canyon, will be completely blocked, unapproachable from the river. At high water, river runners will have trouble even finding a decent camp site. As a long-time environmental activist, it gives me no pleasure to write these lines. - Hank Hassell, "Restoring Glen Canyon: Reality or Fantasy?" April/May 2007
As for me, I don't live in a glass house with a view of high peaks. Instead, I see my neighbors' homes across the street. But I love maps because of where they can take me, and with all the public land in the Four Corners there are plenty of places to visit. The early U.S. Geological Surveyors mapped Colorado and in a sense gave us the mountain West. We live in the mapped and bounded world they helped to create, but adventure isn't found on any map. For each of us, the West is terra incognita until we explore it on our own. - Andrew Gulliford, "Mapping Colorado," April/May 2007
As I've trained, my fears about riding the Iron Horse have begun to subside. I worry about crashing on the descent and the pavement grinding my legs into raw meat more than endless climbing, but even that seems less frightening than it did in December. Warm weather means indoor riding has turned to outdoor riding and I have many hills to climb before May 26. But they say anyone, even a 24-year-old journalist who never rode a road bike before, can finish the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. And I've listened. - Lisa Meerts-Brandsma, "Building An Iron Horse Rider," April/May 2007
If my nine years as a Forest Service wilderness ranger in Wyoming have taught me anything, it's the value of diplomacy. A hippie backpacker in Marlboro Country can't get by without it. - Michael Wolcott, "Learning to Listen," April/May 2007
There is news, however, in how plants of the alpine tundra and trees of the lower-elevation forests are responding to a warmer, drier climate. The scientific community is looking at what may be massive die-offs in all species of trees, including aspen, at lower elevations. We are seeing aspen moving into timberline sites where it did not exist 50 years ago. - Tom Wolf, "Plants On The March," June/July 2007
I now believe that, despite the government's repeated denials and claims of ignorance, that, yes, aliens really do live among us. For only a few months of the year, though, and for the rest of the time their space-station-sized second homes often stand empty, waiting, idling, while they're away, in outer space. - Ken Wright, "Done With Magic," June/July 2007
To paraphrase an old saying: What if they had a construction boom and nobody came? Well, I hate to admit it, but I guess the boys are right: If we didn't do it, the Mexicans would. And who can blame them? Families throughout Latin America - and the rest of the Third World for that matter - suffer crushing poverty and dispossession as a result of U.S. free-trade and foreign-aid practices that benefit us more than them. Who is responsible for this catastrophe in the making? It sure changes where you draw the line between the rich and the poor - and I find myself on the wrong side of the line. - Christina Callicott, "High Alpine House Painter," June/July 2007
A women I used to cry over once confessed that she had come to live in the Southwest because she wanted to sleep with Edward Abbey. - Michael Wolcott, "The Geography of Desire," June/July 2007
We must ask far more painful questions: How can I live without everything I've been conned into believing I deserve? How can I do what I know to do, knowing it will never be enough to undo the damage? How can I live the rest of my life with that pain?" It will not be the pain of those who find their former home covered by highway, golf course or the 4,000 square foot of a lucky human who whines, "But, what can I do?" Still, it WILL hurt. And, in the willingness to take on real pain, (and live the tips in any of those zillion articles on ecological living written since Earth Day, 1975) we might light the burden not just on the planet, but on those of us who carry those essential questions every minute of our lives. - Mary Sojourner, "This Weight," July/August 2007
I say: How about we stop at the edge of wild country? At roadless country? At the HDs? (And Hermosa Creek Roadless Area, and Mamm Peak Roadless Area, and all the other remnants.) Look, I understand about law and management plans and the EIS process. But this isn't about due process or legality or economics or rights or even energy demand. This is about this: We are now gnawing the bones - the bones of our ancestral landscapes, and the bones of our unborn children. Now this about something else. Now this has to be about something else. - Ken Wright, "Gnawing the Bones," July/August 2007
I'm not being patronizing. As a man who wages a daily battle with alcohol, I know what is on his mind. Water and a little bit of food to ease the morning nausea. When I passed him at 65 miles an hour, he was in the middle of nowhere. I stopped and threw it in reverse for 70 yards. No town, no road and no house for miles in any direction. You never as a man where he came from. "My name's Jason. Where you headed?" I extend my hand and he grasps it firmly, like a man holding a shovel. He gives me his name, an Indian one, and my tongue feels thick in my mouth. I nod in acknowledgement. "I'm going to Tuba City." "Me too. I can drop you off wherever you want." We ride in silence. The banana is consumed slowly and the water disappears in small sips. His body hoping that maybe this time something will stay down, just enough nourishment to make it through the rest of the day. - Jason Fisher, "Tuba City," July/August 2007
I could write about fly rods, but the choice of a fly rod is about a thousand times more complicated than the choice of a spouse, and besides, since the advent of carbon-fiber rods with multi-part space-age fabric layups, and modulus of elasticity numbers approaching several jillion, I haven't got room to do the topic of fly rods justice. - Steven J. Meyers, "On equipment," August/September 2007
Some people think the expression "tourist trap" is a bad thing. They have visions of scads of stores chockablock with kitschy tchotchkes, T-shirts with clichés on them (if all you got as a souvenir present is that stupid T-shirt, you really should be grateful), Christmas ornaments ever-present in the middle of July and spectacular attractions that boggle the mind (world's largest ball of twine, anyone?). But that negative connotation doesn't serve much purpose in places where being trapped - tourist or not - would not be a terrible thing. Red River, N.M., is such a place. - Amy Maestas, "Red River, New Mexico," August/September 2007
My fellow countrymen, we were once wild. For millions of years, we were tribal hunter-gatherer nomads. It's how we evolved, because it's what worked the best for happiness and security - strong, unique selves; distinct days in powerful places; useful talents and valuable skills; and strong bonds with close companions. No wonder we still want those things - we might not be wild, but we are still those wild beings, even if we've been herded like domesticated sheep and cattle. - Ken Wright, "Third-party Candidate," October/November 2007
A hunter is rich in relation to the amount of stuff he or she can afford to hunt without. - David Petersen, "Control," October/November 2007
When I moved here 30-plus years ago, I thought I was pulling off the Great Escape; jumping the Great Divide, traveling so far that history and reality couldn't catch me. Alas, it's turned out that there are no Shangri-las in the 21st century, no place where man-made trouble doesn't reach, and curse the wildest forest in the most distant mountain ranges. - Rob Schultheis, "No Hiding Place," October/November 2007
Skiing run after run without a ticket, I felt like a little boy in a Rockwell print, out-running a spanking with a stack of books jammed down my trousers. The storm intensified. Burrs of snow stuck to everything. Chair pads, lift towers, skis, ski poles, skiers. The folds of my parks, gloves, and bibs froze stiff as tin foil. The snow didn't so much fall as unscrew itself from the air. It seemed impossible that any of it reached the ground. I skied, into a winding, white gullet. The taste of it turned labial, sweet. It was rooty - peat with a snip of fresh celery - and dusty, with the garden-sharp bite of radish and washed greens. There was a subtle neutralizing garnish, too . . . parsley. - Wayne Sheldrake, "Confessions of a Ski Bum," November/December 2007
I doubt many streets are on the verge of crumbling or sidewalks caving in, but I am seriously worried as the earth approaches critical mass, with 6.6 billion people pressed to its surface, that nobody is paying attention. - David Feela, "Going Up," November/December 2007
I kneeled down near its matted hide, and contemplated its life - and death. This animal did not choose to be here, struggling to find water in an increasingly dry landscape. We brought him here, and sentenced him to wandering the woods, trying to survive. These buffalo are more than just juggernauts of the north rim, wantonly wrecking riparian areas - they are a reminder of what happens when humans meddle in the affairs of nature. - L. Bell, "Stalking The Grand Canyon Buffalo," November/December 2007
In recent months, three of the elders at the sanctuary had died, leaving their mates alone for the first time in over a decade. It was a dirge we were listening to, and the wolves' capacity for sorrow was startling. If the grieving for three pack-mates was this palpable, how might we measure the grief of an entire slaughtered species over the decades and centuries? Even the voids the wolves have left on the landscape, vast as they are, cannot begin to contain that kind of ache. How do we atone for authoring such a tragedy? - Jen Jackson, "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?" November/December 2007
You simply can't spend time in the Four Corners region without sensing the presence of the ancient ones - even if you are somehow able to overlook thousands of prehistoric ruins, fields of bones and shattered pottery or the haunting message of petroglyphs and pictographs etched on the sandstone face of much of the landscape. - Gordon Sullivan, "Markings," January/February 2008
We live in a rich tapestry of interconnected life, and sacrificing any of it means shooting holes in the whole. Once we subtract something from our desert home - whether it be millennia-old cultural remnants, an endangered species, or the once stable soils now blowing away - it is irretrievable. In that sense, the decisions made today in Moab's Resource Management Plan have implications that stretch well beyond the two-decade lifespan of the document. We are talking about forever. And forever is a very long time. - Jen Jackson, "Moab at a Crossroads," January/February 2008
It's better to ask yourself if you really have the chops to balance skiing and college. If not, save everyone else the headaches - skip college and go ski. - Wayne Sheldrake, "How To Be A College Ski Bum," February/March 2008
You can ask many people how to characterize [Silverton, Colo.] and get a mixture of descriptions. But if you break them down to their rawest meanings, it seems that they mean mostly the same thing. The best characterization, though, is one that Jonathan Thompson, a former Silverton resident for 10 years and former newspaper publisher, shared. "It's a combination of ?Northern Exposure' meets ?The Shining,'" he says. - Amy Maestas, "Silverton, Colorado," February/March 2008
When we get to the ridge, I wimpily find the steep, icy slopes unnerving and subject Andrew to my bad jokes to distract myself. "Ever heard the one about the pirate who walked into the bar?" I ask. "Nope," Andrew says, obligingly, perhaps with a slight roll of his eyes. Andrew may potentially be the most patient person I've met. He has all the good aspects of someone perpetually stoned (patience, laid-back attitude, propensity to laugh a lot) without the bad (a slow wit and an outsized appetite for Chex Mix). Today I discover that this makes him an ideal backcountry companion. - Kate Siber, "Hard Powder: Last Day Skiing," April/May 2008
[P]atching boats - an innocent activity at first, where a group of friends stood about a damaged kayak, passing a resin container around, inhaling large whiffs and giggling hysterically. But it was a dangerous endeavor and quickly led to more sinister habits, like boat building. These were the original meth labs. - Whit Deschner, "Let Me Tell You How It Used To Be," April/May 2008
"I wish we could have found one of them alive because there's always going to be some question as to why Dale had to lose his life." We will never know the answer. Why? The word gets swept up in wind, carried downstream in spring runoff, buried in dust like pottery or bone, lost in the land, like our questions about the Pueblo clans who once lived here. Maybe it doesn't matter. Knowing why would not give us comfort or bring back the dead. Knowing why would not change a thing. - Ron Dungan, "Riddles of a Dead Manhunt: 10 Years Later," June/July 2008
Yet even here, even among these mythic and powerful landmarks, I just ain't feeling that redrock love. And it's not because of where I am, but because of how I got here. It's because of what getting here that way says: That no matter how much leftover prettiness there is here above Lake Powell, this is what Glen Canyon and hundreds of miles of its side canyons have become: paved. I don't mean that as mere metaphor or analogy. Yes, the pavement in this case is water, but that doesn't change the essential fact: What Glen Canyon has become is a major highway system piercing what had not very long ago been some of the most remote, yet accessible, wild country in the continental U.S. - Ken Wright, "A Skeptic's Pilgrimage to Powell," April/May 2008
We tried to be unbiased, and just like people trying to be PC, it's going to be damned obvious that we're posers, who'd frankly rather drink ourselves silly making pyramids out of Tecate cans, con limon thank you very much. - Chris Bettin, "Four Corners Beer: New Mexico," June/July 2008
It was Father's Day 2006 the day my dad died. I felt pretty pissed to be left fatherless on that day in particular, and awash with guilt for not leading him up a different route, for not turning back sooner, for not catching him as he fell, for not getting to his body sooner. For Not. But I know too - as healthy biological creatures each know about self-preservation - that For Not is not a tenable place to reside. Rather it is Not Knowing that I must dwell on and dwell within. I am celebrating my father on this Father's Day because he left me with a legacy of knowing I am loved, knowing the importance of bearing witness, and knowing the unity of opposites. And I am celebrating all fathers on this Father's Day because they represent one half of the creation story of all of us. - Anna Lauer, "For My FATHER, For The MOUNTAIN," June/July 2008
The hunger goes deep. The beast must feed. We can disappear for a few days or weeks into canyons, but we emerge to live in the modern world. We go home, flip on the lights and dump those nasty hiking socks into the washer. Our appetites for fresh meat or produce, cold beer, a well-lit room, cool air in the summer and warm air in the winter have helped create this mess. The mines are coming. Machines will dig, trucks will roll. It is too soon to know exactly what lies ahead. We have learned much since the last boom, and many laws have changed. So why are people nervous? - Ron Dungan, "Uranium Mining: Second Coming," August/September 2008
Without warning, a blinding white flash and simultaneous deafening explosion enveloped me. Every muscle in my body contracted violently, dropping me into a fetal ball. In the flash, I knew that I had been struck by lightning. Having lost total control over my body, I fell, feeling as if I were floating down in slow motion. I never felt myself hit the ground. When I opened my eyes, I noticed my rain- and mud-splattered left leg angled above me. Lying in boulders, groggy, I heard myself say, "That's my leg, I must still be alive." - Dean Cox, "Electrified," August/September 2008
"Do you want a ride?" Having spent the previous 90 minutes in failed attempts to convince the traveling public that I was anything other than a Hungry Cannibal with a Big Knife, I nodded, and flashed what I hoped was my least-threatening smile: "That would be great. Thanks." "It's OK," said one of the women. "Oh . . . do you have a gun?" - Michael Wolcott, "Hitchhiking: Revisited," August/September 2008
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Tuesday, April 14, 2009
at 4:16:24 PM
Suggest removal
Danial says:
The picture with the buttocks is rather suggestive.