Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America’s Public Lands By John Clayton (Pegasus Books, 276 pages, $27.95) After the Civil War what would become the western United States quickly became a national commodity to be exploited. “The…
In a recent issue, High Country News (or HCN, a regional fortnightly newspaper published in Paonia, Colorado) Editor in Chief Brian Calvert penned a lead editorial decrying the presence on the southern border of “xenophobic” militia groups, especially one New…
Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir (2018) landed on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list last year and remains (63 weeks), receiving the usual fulsome acclaim reserved for feminist tomes that purportedly chronicle the perceived oppressive patriarchy that we’re told exists in…
It’s interesting to contemplate the settlement of the American West that was accomplished in eighty-six years (1804-1890), the equivalent of a long lifetime. We are approaching the 150th anniversary of the event that completed that surge known as American Manifest Destiny….
February 26 marks the centenary of Grand Canyon National Park, its designation issuing from the pen of President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Coincidentally, the Grand Canyon’s great champion, ex-president Theodore Roosevelt — who had named the canyon a national monument…
In August, 1910, a huge fire burned three million acres (destroying whole towns and taking 87 lives) in Washington state, Idaho, Montana, and adjacent Canada. This has come down to us as “The Big Burn,” the title of a 2009…
I’m a volunteer at my local public library in a small town in Idaho. I sort through donations of books, move furniture, take out the trash, shovel the walks in winter, and do other minor chores that don’t require much…
On a recent journey to visit my family in upstate New York, I took a side trip to Waterbury, Vermont. From 1986 to 1990 I was on the staff of Vermont State Hospital (VSH) there (an experience I wrote about…
Montana is one of those Western states with quirky electoral preferences and a history of splitting tickets. Small but divided Congressional delegations, governors in the opposing party at odds with state legislature majorities, deep red rural counties and bright blue…