67 posts
By Mary Moran, Writers on the Range Moab, Utah is a growing town of 5,300 that several million people visit each year to tour nearby Arches and Canyonlands national parks, ride mountain bikes or raft the Colorado River. Like any western resort town, it desperately needs affordable housing. What
By Katie Klingsporn, Writers on the Range There’s never been enough doctors in rural Wyoming, where I live, but a shortage of obstetricians is now increasing the risks for pregnant women across the state—and the nation. In the last decade in Wyoming, three hospitals have closed their maternity
By Dave Marston, Writers on the Range The experts tell us an energy gap looms. Fossil fuels are phasing out, and solar and wind power can’t produce enough electricity to meet the demand in coming decades. But that’s not the thinking of Amory Lovins, the 76-year-old co-founder of
By Stephen Trimble, Writers on the Range The long drive between Salt Lake City, Utah and Reno, Nevada on Interstate 80 feels endless, the landscape timeless. But these basins and ranges of the Great Basin Desert are changing dramatically. Wildfire, climate change and aridification are transforming plant communities, while animals,
By Laura Pritchett, Writers on the Range Exactly what causes people to leave their homeland and make a difficult trek of 3,000 miles? A young woman I’ll call Jhovid, who came here from Venezuela, has asked me to listen to her answer, so that I and others may
By Heather Hansman Nearly two decades ago, I moved to the mountains to be a ski bum, chasing snow. I was a stereotype—an East Coast kid pulled west by the promise of bigger adventures and higher mountain ranges. I was also part of a counterculture that rejected social norms
By Susan Marsh / Writers on the Range For the past few years I’ve participated in “Thistle Thursdays,” targeting a popular trail near Jackson, Wyoming. The weekly weed party was organized in 2019 by Morgan Graham, wildlife habitat specialist with the Teton County Conservation District, and it attracts more volunteers
By Richard Rubin / Writers on the Range Skunks love autumn as our backyard gardens fill up with ripe vegetables. But in my northern New Mexico corn patch, that meant a determined skunk chowing down on ears of corn every night. What followed next was a conundrum: I wanted it gone
By Rob Pudim / Writers on the Range Dozens of TVs, refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers and abandoned cars had either been gunshot, torched or both. This place of destruction was what some locals called “Carnage Canyon,” roughly 30 acres off Lefthand Canyon in Boulder County, Colorado. It was a shocking sight,
