What Are We Doing Here? Drought, Dread and Family in the American Southwest by Cally Carswell CONTENTS

‘PUNISHMENT COMEDY’ | THE ARIDIFYING SOUTHWEST | REDEFINING RESTORATION

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West August 6, 2018 | $5 | Vol. 50 No. 13 | www.hcn.org 13 50 No. | $5 Vol. August 6, 2018 What Are We Doing Here? Drought, dread and family in the American Southwest By Cally Carswell CONTENTS

Editor’s note When dreams dry up

We knew it was going to be a weird summer when it barely snowed all winter. By the end of May, the last patches of white had vanished from 11,401-foot Mount Lamborn, and the words, “Never seen anything like it,” slipped out of the mouths of even our most ardent climate skeptics. A month later, irrigation ditches stopped flowing, and skies grew murky from wildfires. An oppressive atmosphere settled over our valley, like the aftermath of a presidential tweet storm. That made it even weirder when, on July 8, a friend spotted what looked like a body floating down turgid Minnesota Creek, just outside of town. A microburst had dumped three-quarters of an inch of rain in less than an hour, swelling the dismal trickle to a full-fledged flood. The man was lucky to survive; he’d been swept into the creek a half-mile upstream while trying to jump across it. Somehow he dragged Don Bustos adjusts the headgate to the acequia that runs through his and neighboring farms and orchards in himself out, muddy and cold as a crawdad. Española, New Mexico, where his ancestors began farming more than 400 years ago. STEFAN WACHS How quickly and violently the climate tables can turn in the West, and how unprepared for this FEATURE we generally are. This is the reality contemplated in this issue by longtime HCN contributing editor, 12 What Are We Doing Here? Cally Carswell, who wonders whether she and her Drought, dread and family in the American Southwest By Cally Carswell husband, Colin, can survive in New Mexico. Does it 15 There’s no place like home make sense to stay in a place where drought and On the cover Climate change hits close to the heart for many heat are making water ever more scarce, even as Colin Dyck and northern New Mexicans By Cally Carswell | Portraits by Stefan Wachs more people pour in? author Cally Carswell We’ve never let a little desert get in the way stand with their dog, CURRENTS of our dreams of empire. Los Angeles, Phoenix and Google, in the dry Las Vegas all rely on distant and diminishing water Santa Fe riverbed near 5 Neighbors on call to help one another Community health programs sources. Yet, as Carswell notes, scarcity is forcing us their home in Santa are thriving in Haiti, Montana and the Navajo Nation Fe, New Mexico. STEFAN to live more frugally. In Santa Fe, average per capita WACHS 5 Snapshot: Are we getting the health we pay for? daily water use has dropped from 140 gallons to 90 6 Howie Echo-Hawk wants to see you squirm The Pawnee comic over two decades. draws on his experiences as an Indigenous man That’s good news. But some physical limits 6 can’t be out-plumbed or transcended with dams The Latest: Four Corners methane hotspot or low-flow toilets. I realized this on a trip down 7 In the Southwest, ‘drought’ ... or ... the Colorado River in late May, from Moab, Utah, Why ‘aridification’ is a better term for our new reality through Cataract Canyon to Lake Powell. Though 8 Restoration’s crisis of confidence To revive damaged landscapes, low flows made the rapids less treacherous, we ran ecologists can’t look to the past more of them, ultimately through piles of silt, thanks to the receding reservoir. A few of them were new 9 The Latest: Coal ash regulation rollback to our Colorado Riverkeeper guide, John Weisheit — DEPARTMENTS they weren’t there the year before. Despite the likely decades of drought ahead, 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG Weisheit said, it’s premature to predict when the Complete access reservoir will fully return to river or its silt loads to subscriber-only 4 LETTERS content render Glen Canyon Dam utterly useless. He pointed 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends to layers of sediment high up the canyon walls — HCN’s website hcn.org 20 MARKETPLACE evidence, he said, of past mega-floods, any of which would easily take out the dam. Digital edition 22 BOOKS Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. Reviewed by Jenny Shank hcne.ws/digi-5013 With the sun beating down and temperatures in 23 ESSAY Except for the frogs By Joseph Belli the 90s again today, it’s hard to imagine that. But cars were floating down the street in Santa Fe this 24 PERSPECTIVE Follow us week after a deluge dropped more than a fourth of Sightseeing at the political circus: In Montana, Trump’s spectacle the city’s annual average rainfall — 3.57 inches — in draws a crowd — for now By Elliott Woods one night. And in the distance, I hear thunder. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher

2 High Country News August 6, 2018 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG

The Colorado valley at stake Trending in Trump’s oil boom Hammond Once a coal town, Paonia, Colorado, (home pardon of High Country News) has transformed itself over the past few decades to diversify its continues economy. Today, organic farms and wineries Bundy dot the landscape. But under the Trump standoff administration, up to 95 percent of the valley surrounding the town could be available In an opinion piece, to drillers: In July, the Bureau of Land Rocky Barker argues Management announced it would offer 7,903 that President Donald acres in the valley to drillers in December. Trump’s pardon of President Donald Trump wants to the Oregon ranchers open millions of acres across the West, whose legal case all owned by taxpayers, to private oil helped spark the and gas companies. Last year alone, his armed takeover of administration put 11.9 million acres on the Malheur National the auction block. These are symptoms of a Wildlife Refuge growing bond between federal officials and perpetuates the the oil and gas industry, as shown by emails polarization triggered and correspondence obtained by E&E News, by the entire Bundy which reveal directives and orders by Trump family saga. Dwight officials to shelve environmental policies in Hammond and his son, Steven, were order to speed energy development. convicted of arson Colorado’s North Fork Valley, where nearly 8,000 acres of BLM lands will be offered to drillers ZACK COLMAN/E&E NEWS in 2012, and the in a December lease sale. MORGAN LEVY FOR REVEAL Read more online: hcne.ws/oil-threat Bundys took up their cause in 2016. For the Hammonds to go free means provocateurs What Trump did was take the name of a real Indian person like the Bundys can (whose history has already been distorted beyond recognition in popular culture) feel empowered to “ push their alternative brand of American and transformed it into a racially bigoted epithet. history and the —Lawmakers of the Montana American Indian Caucus, writing in an opinion piece about President Donald Trump’s July 5 speech in Great Falls, Montana, in law. The standoff which he repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as Pocahontas: “We are not Pocahontas.” continues. Read more online as part of The Montana Gap series:” hcne.ws/bigoted-epithet You say ANDY GROZ: “The Teens learn mental health skills in Montana Inches of precipitation recorded last year problem, as others by farmer Byron Carter in Retired Browning, Montana, educator Larry and is a way to “help empower kids to become have noted, is that 2Divide County, North Dakota Woolf spent 11 years as a teacher and 15 as more involved in their own lives and to take the Bureau of Land a guidance counselor in public schools on the more control in their lives to reduce the stigma Management are Blackfeet Reservation. He has seen, again and of mental health and mental-health issues,” being entirely too Average precipitation, again, the devastating pain of teenage suicide. Woolf said. tolerant of abusers. in inches, there in a year. Woolf is now a trainer and classroom presenter MELODY MARTINSEN/CHOTEAU ACANTHA The vast majority 12 for the Youth Aware of Mental Health program, Read more online: hcne.ws/teen-health of ranchers do not In 2017, North Dakota ranchers were which focuses on prevention, not treatment, support what the optimistic when they put their cattle out to Bundys did, and they do support the system graze in late spring. But by July, two-thirds of Montana high school student suicide risk assessment the pastureland in the Dakotas was in poor as is.” condition, and across the High Plains, from Kansas up to Canada, temperatures were 21 in 100 say they’ve seriously 10 in 100 say they’ve FRED MARSICO: above normal while precipitation was low — considered suicide in the last attempted suicide in the last “Federal agencies perfect conditions for what’s known as a ”flash year, up by 6 from 2007 year, up by 2 from 2007 have forced hundreds drought,” sudden and severe. North Dakota of ranchers out of is experiencing climate change, and is “at the business by changing epicenter of temperature increases.” the rules. The issue But while ranchers worry about their of federal lands cattle and crops, the state’s cattle industry has won’t be solved in Growing been fighting government action on climate a few comments or change at every level. “Belief” in climate numbers of opinions.” change falls mostly along party lines in Divide Montana County. The county is clearly a red one, with 28 in 100 Native American high 18 in 100 Native American high high school WILL MOORE: “And 71 percent voting for Donald Trump in 2016. school students report having school students report having students report (this) makes life more “I’ve seen the data that indicates, yes, we are seriously considered suicide attempted suicide considering or dangerous for those warming, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot attempting of us who work for the of agreement,” said Keith Brown, a retired suicide — government on federal agricultural extension agent in Divide County. and Native lands.” “Some say that it’s the result of man’s activity American Read more online: and others say it’s just a natural occurrence,” students are hcne.ws/trump-pardon he said. “Things change.” particularly and Facebook.com/ MEERA SUBRAMANIAN/INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS at risk. highcountrynews Read more online: hcne.ws/pervasive-drought 2017 MONTANA YOUTH RISK BEHAVIOR SURVEY

Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. www.hcn.org High Country News 3 LETTERS Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News GORILLA IN THE ROOM A NEVER-ENDING FIGHT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Paul Larmer “Pay for Prey” (HCN, 7/23/18), Congratulations to Anna V. Smith

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF written by Gloria Dickie, nicely on her great article (“Reclaiming RTOONS.COM Brian Calvert detailed Oregon’s efforts to the Klamath,” HCN, 6/11/18). It’s ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling manage both ranchers and really well done. I was a biologist DIGITAL EDITOR wolves. Economic compensation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Gretchen King programs exist in other Western Service managing the Klamath ASSOCIATE EDITORS Tristan Ahtone states grappling with ongoing River Restoration Program from Maya L. Kapoor wolf colonization. Concerns 1975 to 1980, and I worked closely

Kate Schimel raised in both camps with with the Yurok Tribe, gathering BOLIGAN/CAGLEANGEL CA Tay Wiles ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR regard to data accuracy and salmon harvest and population Luna Anna Archey program graft also persist. Still, data on the river. I then went ASSISTANT EDITORS cultural divides have always best on to manage the Indian Fish Emily Benson Paige Blankenbuehler clarified this issue, as well as and Wildlife Program at the Anna V. Smith the remaining questions. Often Department of Interior before retir- WRITERS ON THE RANGE the loss of traditions and family ing in 2005, working closely with EDITOR Betsy Marston COPY EDITOR values are cited, along with tribes all across the country. Diane Sylvain dire economic consequences, as So sad to see what has hap- CONTRIBUTING EDITORS concerns regarding limiting range pened on the Klamath and Trinity Graham Brewer, Cally Carswell, Sarah Gilman, grazing allotments or charging rivers, and glad to see folks like Ruxandra Guidi, actual market rates. The cultural you are around to document the Michelle Nijhuis, losses are quite real, but it is never-ending fight for the resource Jodi Peterson, Jonathan Thompson misleading to suggest that all and tribal rights. CORRESPONDENTS economic consequences are shared Gary Rankel Krista Langlois, Sarah equitably. Similar losses were also Tory, Joshua Zaffos Citrus Hills, Florida EDITORIAL FELLOWS experienced by other homesteaders, Carl Segerstrom primarily sheepherders, whose Jessica Kutz lifestyles and incomes were THE POPULATION PROBLEM EDITORIAL INTERN effectively eliminated in Oregon Elena Saavedra Buckley I was touched and saddened by DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR during earlier settlement. Ben Long’s eloquent lament on the Laurie Milford The Stock Raising Homestead economic realities and shared costs of extinction of the Selkirk caribou PHILANTHROPY ADVISOR Act and the Taylor Grazing Act all Alyssa Pinkerton ranching also be accepted. Without that (“A quiet goodbye to the Selkirk cari- resulted in substantial land ownership DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT understanding we’ll never find a balance. bou,” HCN, 5/28/18). He rightly points Christine List shifts from Indigenous people and ear- out the necessity of ecosystem services DIGITAL MARKETER lier immigrants to U.S. citizens. A total Erick Miller Chris King provided by healthy forests to avoid the of 10.5 million acres were homesteaded Salida, Colorado EVENTS & BUSINESS PARTNER “emergency room” of the Endangered COORDINATOR in Oregon, on what in many instances Laura Dixon Species Act. He closes by wishing that WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPER had been Mexican land grants. Families THE LONG VIEW America can do better for the sake of his Eric Strebel whose fortunes were lost still voice IT MANAGER Thank you, Anna V. Smith, for your grandchildren. What he misses is that bitter remembrances, but today it’s Alan Wells article “Reclaiming the Klamath” (HCN, grandchildren, in general, are the root IT SUPPORT TECHNICIAN drought and fire anxieties that fuel 6/11/18). And thank you, Amy Cordalis, cause of the plight of the caribou — that Josh McIntire most frustrations. ACCOUNTANT for your hard work toward this end. A is, population growth. Smaller popula- In the Pacific Northwest, the “snow- Erica Howard recreation outreach meeting was held tions can support sustainable harvest- pack drought,” combined with high ACCOUNTS ASSISTANT in Copco, California, on June 12 by the ing of forests; ever-growing populations Mary Zachman temperatures, has led to extremely low Klamath River Renewal Corporation. cannot. CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER flows in streams and rivers. Related Christie Cantrell Four community liaisons gave a presen- More generally, climate change and drought and fire risks — and any CUSTOMER SERVICE tation to an unfriendly, disruptive audi- most other environmental issues are Kathy Martinez (Circ. economic mechanisms that might serve ence. Dam removal is controversial! fundamentally driven by world popula- Systems Administrator), to mitigate these concerns — are not Rebecca Hemer, Debra PacifiCorp, owner of the dams slated tion growth. This fact is not known or operating freely. Public-land manage- Muzikar, Pam Peters, for removal, has decided to decommis- is ignored by most people. The National Doris Teel, Tammy York ment decisions in response to drought GRANTWRITER sion them, citing the high cost of the Academy of Sciences’ Koshland Science Janet Reasoner remain affected by the cultural percep- [email protected] upgrades required by the California Museum (before it closed) had a fantas- tions of early homesteaders. During [email protected] State Water Resources Control Board. tic exhibit on the science behind climate [email protected] droughts prior to settlement, free- Actions short of dam removal will change, but had not a word about its [email protected] ranging grazers would have migrated [email protected] not eliminate the toxic algae that kill main driver: population growth. I am out of the impacted area, but since that FOUNDER Tom Bell salmon and can sicken small children not criticizing Long’s focus on local is no longer an option, the U.S. Forest BOARD OF DIRECTORS and pets. Property values next to the issues and causes. I just want to point John Belkin, Colo. Service has recently identified the need reservoirs may drop when the dams go, out the larger context, and cause, of the Beth Conover, Colo. to reduce cattle numbers on drought- Jay Dean, Calif. only to rise with river views. Restoring plight of the caribou. impacted public lands. Predictably, Bob Fulkerson, Nev. the health of the Klamath River by dam Anastasia Greene, Wash. this alternative has not been widely Doug Duncan removal and restorative work will, in Wayne Hare, Colo. embraced. North Potomac, Maryland Laura Helmuth, Md. the long run, benefit all. John Heyneman, Wyo. Losses experienced through wolf Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico predation are quite real, and I accept John Bermel Samaria Jafe, Calif. that reality, but I would also ask that the Hornbrook, California Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. High Country News is a nonproft 501(c)(3) independent 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post Estee Rivera Murdock, Colo. media organization that covers the issues that defne the ofﬁces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Rick Tallman, Colo. High American West. Its mission is to inform and inspire people Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles Luis Torres, N.M. to act on behalf of the region’s diverse natural and human in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country communities. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: Florence Williams, D.C. News times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 800-905-1155 | hcn.org Printed on recycled paper. 4 High Country News August 6, 2018 ANGEL BOLIGAN/CAGLECARTOONS.COM helping to fill the gaps in mental health mental in gaps the fill to helping one.thiscommunitieslatedlike are They small,in care health basic administer iso- and check-ups patient provide who ists non-special- workers, health many community of one and is nonprofit He employer. Benissois’ health global a Health, In Partners by developed inventory tom symp- depression a from come The questions questions. of series a man young a asksborder, BenissoisDominicanJoseph the near villageHaitian remote Cange,a Public Health and Human Services. andHumanServices. Public Health of Department Zoe Barnard Montana ofthe wherever we can,”and early intervention says swings, “webefocused onprevention needto centers. health shuttered somemental andeven budget cutshave services limited state since2017,brought aninﬂuxofmoney; however, In2016,system. 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H Community health programs are thriving in Haiti, OUG HTON &E S hcne.ws/mental-health-funding napshot Montana and the Navajo Nation RIC D IETRICH B Y A LEX SAKARIASSEN h saes 6 onis otie no psychiatrists. contained counties licensedsocial workers 2017;in 56lacked40 of state’s 15 the Committee, Healthcare Advisory Montana Workforce the to According bud solutions. local for need health pressing a — get mental Montana’s to last year cuts of wake the in particularly — and communities impoverished lations, Montana like popu- remote commonalities: many share states Western populated of sparsely parts and Haiti distinct, services inHaiti. 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N ews S 5 Howie Echo-Hawk wants to see you squirm The Pawnee comic draws on his experiences as an Indigenous man BY SAVANNAH MAHER

owie Echo-Hawk is halfway through much constantly squirming, so to put that telling jokes on stage is an inherently H his five-minute set at the Rendezvous back on them for a couple of minutes is Kiowa act. bar in downtown Seattle. He has used the just fine for me.” “That’s one of our favorite things to word “genocide” six times. Echo-Hawk says he knows of maybe do,” Chalepah says. “We sit around and we “This is a joke I keep telling because two Indigenous comics, including himself, crack each other up.” nobody laughs,” he tells the crowd. The who perform in Seattle — a scene domi- She’s inspired by the stories women in basement lounge he’s performing in has nated primarily by white comics. But he her family told around the kitchen table, been dubbed “The Grotto,” and it feels doesn’t think audiences should be sur- weaving in and out of English and Kiowa, ALAN STARK/CC FLICKR like one. It’s cramped. The air is stale. The prised to see Native people on an open-mic when she was a little girl. She says those THE LATEST audience members, mostly white, shift in stage. women could turn something tragic or their seats. “It’s not an illusion, folks, this is somber into a cartoon — something to be Backstory “Every morning when I wake up and another Indigenous comedian,” says laughed at and learned from. Scientists have go outside, I recognize that this might as Danny Littlejohn as he steps up to the “It can feel sometimes like our commu- long been baffled well be the zombie apocalypse for Native mic. nities are in a constant state of mourning, by a methane people,” Echo-Hawk says. “Y’all might as After the show, Echo-Hawk and like there aren’t enough tears to cry about “hot spot” in the well be zombies.” Littlejohn workshop the joke. every single tragedy,” Chalepah says. Southwest’s Four One woman close to the stage lets out “You should have said that we’re not “Native humor is part of why we survived Corners region. a laugh but quickly stifles it. Her friend brothers,” says Echo-Hawk. “They prob- genocide. It’s allowing yourself to feel a Energy companies maintained that the turns her attention toward her phone, ably assume that we’re related.” little bit of joy in a moment that might concentrated plume then her drink. Most comics would call “Man, we probably are related,” Little- otherwise break you.” of potent greenhouse this a bomb. On stage, Echo-Hawk is John says. Chalepah’s material can be dark, like gas derived from beaming. Indigenous communities boast vibrant Echo-Hawk’s, but never as confronta- naturally occurring A citizen of the Pawnee Nation of storytelling traditions that use humor as tional or antagonistic. Still, she says, some methane seeps, as it Oklahoma, Howie Echo-Hawk, 28, has a tool of teaching and resilience. Take, non-Native audiences aren’t quite sure couldn’t be explained been making people laugh all his life. But for example, the story of Maushop, the how to react. That uneasiness, she says, by the emissions after the 2016 election, he was compelled Wampanoag giant who created the islands is a form of erasure. That’s why she likes industry reported from to confront what he calls white liberal currently known as Martha’s Vineyard Echo-Hawk’s delivery style. coal, oil and gas, and other operations. In audiences with his “punishment comedy.” and Nantucket by dumping his sandy “He’s using his talent to confront 2015, NASA scientists Set after set, he seeks to agitate and even moccasins out into the ocean. Or the subjects like our genocide, what most began investigating irritate with jokes, stories and dispatches Kiowa anti-hero Saynday, who enlisted a Americans would otherwise be complicit those seeps and from his life as an Indigenous man in cohort of Great Plains animals to help him to forget and deny,” Chalepah says. other sources, such as America. steal the sun. Echo-Hawk says his relationship with energy infrastructure Reactions range from anxious laugh- “It’s a part of who we are,” Echo-Hawk comedy is complicated. It’s a release for (“Unlocking the ter to full-blown crying, and that’s exactly says. “We’re very funny people.” him — a way to keep painful emotions and mystery of the Four what Echo-Hawk wants. “It’s fun for me Adrianne Chalepah is a Kiowa-Apache experiences from festering in his head. Corners methane to see them squirm,” he says. “Because in comic and part of a touring stand-up act But it’s also a source of frustration. He hot spot,” HCN, mainstream colonizer-America, I’m pretty called Ladies of Native Comedy. For her, says the role can be tokenizing and tax- 8/31/15). ing. He’s only been at it for a year and a Followup half, but he feels jaded already and says In June, a new he thinks about leaving comedy. study in the journal Littlejohn can relate. Science reported that “Being an urban Indian comedian U.S. oil and gas is rough,” Littlejohn says. “So I’m with operations emit at Howie on that.” least 60 percent Littlejohn says he’s frustrated that more methane audiences need a history lesson just to than previously understand his jokes. Sometimes, he feels estimated by the pitted against the handful of other Native Environmental comics trying to break into the industry. Protection Agency based on industry Tonight, though, he and Echo-Hawk reports. Natural gas, say they feel inspired by each other’s which produces one- sets. “I would have killed to see a Native third of the nation’s comedian on TV as a kid. I would’ve electricity, is usually loved that,” Echo-Hawk says. “I don’t considered much more know if I’m gonna get there, I don’t climate-friendly than even know if I wanna get there. But coal. But the new the idea that I could make that happen data — which, for the for somebody is great.” first time, account for abnormal releases such as from faulty Savannah Maher is a public radio reporter equipment — may change that equation. and producer and a citizen of the Mashpee JODI PETERSON Howie Echo-Hawk and Danny Littlejohn, both Indigenous comics in Seattle, chat between sets. Wampanoag Tribal Nation. @savannah_maher TRISTAN AHTONE/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

6 High Country News August 6, 2018 neighbors. “Everyone can do something,” Lake Mead’s notorious Gonzales says, even as she and other “bathtub ring” is a In the Southwest, ‘drought’ ... or ... experts acknowledge that irrigation gulps stark reminder of up most of the West’s water. “But even the current low water Why ‘aridification’ is a better term for our new reality levels. small pieces kind of add up when you look CHRIS RICHARDS/CC FLICKR BY EMILY BENSON at the whole picture of how much water we have available.” While climate change is already shrink- n early June, more than 1,000 people they do is an Indigenous Australian lan- ing water resources in the Southwest, we near Durango, Colorado, had to leave guage that doesn’t use words for left and I shouldn’t throw out the word “drought” their homes as the 416 Fire swept across right. Its speakers orient themselves by completely, says Connie Woodhouse, a the landscape. Following a dismal snow- the cardinal directions — north and south, paleoclimatologist at the University of pack, the region experienced a spring so east and west — rather than the relative Arizona. It’s important to recognize that hot and dry that the U.S. Drought Monitor terms typically used in English. Research even a drier future will contain variability. labeled the conditions “exceptional suggests that in their thoughts and inter- “We’re going to have periods that are wet- drought,” the worst category. actions with others, their conceptions of ter, and we’re going to have periods that Colorado wasn’t alone. An irregular space are radically different from those are drier, within this baseline that almost bull’s-eye of dryness radiated outward who speak languages with relative spa- certainly will be more arid.” from the entire Four Corners region, where tial terms. Other studies have probed the Still, people in the Southwest must Colorado meets New Mexico, Arizona and ways linguistic differences may influence adjust to a more parched landscape. Utah. These circumstances offer some- a wide range of attitudes and outcomes, “There’s a need to (fundamentally change) thing of a preview of the coming decades: including support for political policies, the way we talk about these things, to While experts say the Southwest will con- entrepreneurial gender gaps among coun- bring attention to the fact that drought tinue to experience swings in precipitation tries, and the environmental attitudes of is normal,” Gonzales says. In other words, from year to year, overall, climate change tourists. even after the bull’s-eye dissipates from is making the region and its river basins But beliefs are not behaviors. this summer’s Drought Monitor maps, hotter and drier. That means humans Reframing our understanding of the Southwesterners need to keep acting as if must adapt to life with less water. “We Southwest’s climate — thinking of it as that red swath were permanent — a last- have to fundamentally change the mindset a place experiencing aridification, a dry ing marker of a more arid reality. of the public, and the way we manage this place getting drier, rather than a place resource,” says Newsha Ajami, a hydrolo- simply waiting for the next drought to end gist and the director of urban water policy — will have major ramifications only if it Emily Benson is an assistant editor at at Stanford University’s Water in the West changes how people actually use water. High Country News. @erbenson1 program. “And one of the ways you do it is, There is some evidence of the inverse you have to change the terminologies that — that when people conceive of the prob- we use in dealing with water.” lem as a temporary one, they use more This spring, the Colorado River water after they believe the emergency Research Group, an independent team of has passed. During California’s recent scientists focused on the river, labeled the five-year drought, residents of the Golden climate transition in the Colorado River State cut their water use by a quarter or Basin “aridification,” meaning a transfor- more amid intense media coverage and mation to a drier environment. The call water-use restrictions. This spring, a year for a move away from the word “drought” after California Gov. Jerry Brown pro- highlights the importance of the specific nounced that drought over, Californians language used to describe what’s going on were using nearly as much water as they in the Southwest: It could shift cultural had before drought was declared. norms around water use and help people How people perceive and value water internalize the need to rip out lawns, stop is essential to shaping how much of it they washing cars and refrain from building use, says Patricia Gonzales, a doctoral stu- new diversions on already strapped rivers. dent studying water resources at Stanford As Brad Udall, a member of the research University. And those perceptions and val- group and a water and climate researcher ues aren’t created in a vacuum. Officials, at Colorado State University, puts it: experts and the media frame and define “Words matter.” the issues; social pressures also play a Linguists have long argued over the role. For example, when an entire commu- extent to which words and language influ- nity is aware that water is scarce, people ence one’s thoughts and worldview. One might avoid washing their cars in order commonly cited example of evidence that to duck the scorn of water-conserving BRIAN FUCHS/NATIONAL DROUGHT MITIGATION CENTER

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 Restoration’s crisis of confidence To revive damaged landscapes, ecologists can’t look to the past BY MAYA L. KAPOOR

The sun sets over a arianne Campbell remembers the the planet’s rapid climate shifts, the con- ecologist at the University of Arizona. pond constructed C exact moment she fell in love with the nections between wild organisms and Reasons vary, from a severe drought in by Sky Island Sonoran Desert. As a botany major in col- their ecosystems are fraying, forcing res- the late 1500s to 1800s tree harvesting by Alliance volunteers lege, she joined a class field trip to Organ toration biologists, including Campbell, Euro-Americans. Today, forests continue at Camp Rucker, Pipe Cactus National Monument on the to rethink the purpose of their work. It to undergo constant change. “Many of the Arizona. The new southern border of Arizona, arriving and no longer helps to remember what a site forests we look at are in post-fire recovery, pond ecosystem setting up camp in the dark. Emerging looked like 20 years ago. “We need to be we just don’t see it,” Falk said. Outbreaks will support native Chiricahua leopard from her tent the next morning, Campbell, thinking about what it’s going to be like 20 of insects such as bark beetles, which frogs, bats and who grew up on the East Coast, caught her years into the future,” she said. can decimate forests, add to the constant pollinator species. first glimpse of enormous saguaros, clus- In the early 1980s, ecological resto- change. “We want to think of the prime- COURTESY OF SKY ISLAND tered organ pipes and bright desert wild- ration was much like cleaning up after val old-growth forest as having this stable ALLIANCE flowers. She knew immediately that she a rowdy house party: trying to return a characteristic, until we come along and wanted to work in this kind of landscape. degraded habitat to its former pristine introduce disturbance … but the idea of Today, Campbell is the restoration condition. Project managers focused on forests in equilibrium is probably wrong.” director for Sky Island Alliance, a non- returning the right numbers and spe- Indeed, events ranging from volcanic profit conservation organization based cies of plants — and by extension, ani- eruptions to the Pleistocene ice age have in Tucson, Arizona. She leads efforts to mals — to places that had been logged, left their mark on the West’s forests. re-establish native plant communities in mined, invaded by nonnative species or But with climate change, landscape- “sky islands” — isolated, ecologically rich otherwise altered by people. “I’ve always level transformations are happening mountain ranges that dot southeastern been taught that restoration is about tak- faster and becoming more extreme. As the Arizona and New Mexico and northern ing a degraded site and restoring it back West becomes warmer and drier, the idea Sonora, Mexico, and serve as home to to what it was before the disturbance,” of “recovery” becomes increasingly unre- some 7,000 species of plants and animals. Campbell said. alistic. Instead, ecosystems transform, Under Campbell’s guidance, Sky Island But increasingly, scientists who study such as in northern New Mexico, where Alliance restores riparian habitat that’s ecosystems, as well as land managers who Gambel oaks may replace pine forest after been overrun by invasive species, such as do restoration work, are questioning that a fire. “This is really a vexing problem for fountaingrass, which crowds out local spe- model of ecological restoration, which the field of restoration ecology, because cies and transforms the desert into fire- relies on the idea of a stable “climax com- our first instinct — and it’s not wrong — prone grassland. munity,” even though many ecosystems is always to want to put it back to the way The point of Campbell’s job used to be are always changing. it was before we screwed things up,” Falk relatively straightforward: She attempted The West’s forests, for one, are much said. to conserve local biodiversity by re-estab- more dynamic than many people realize. Restoration ecologists, in other words, lishing the wild spaces where native plant Notwithstanding individual tree outli- no longer know how to define success. and animal species once lived. But given ers, such as millennia-old redwoods and “The dilemma for the field of restoration bristlecone pines, most North American is, it’s almost damned if you do, damned if Maya L. Kapoor is an associate editor at forest ecosystems are, at most, 400 or 500 you don’t,” Falk said. “If you try to go back High Country News. @kapoor_ml years old, according to Don Falk, a forest to 1850, it’s just going to be a nonstarter,

8 High Country News August 6, 2018 because the climate has moved on, and Island Alliance planted native vegetation moving up in elevation and in latitude. lots of other things have moved on. But if in the spring, following the winter rains. “What this suggests is that if you’re in you’re not restoring to a reference condi- But two years ago, Campbell noticed that your site that needs restoration, the plants tion, then are you just sort of playing God most of the plants died. With spring arriv- from that area are probably no longer and inventing new landscapes?” ing earlier and becoming hotter, “there’s well-adapted to the new conditions of that This identity crisis is global: This year, not enough time for those new plants to area,” Gornish said. This raises prickly at conferences from Iceland to Washington become established, and then be able to go questions about whether or not to start state, the Society for Ecological Restoration dormant to make it through to monsoon using plants from farther south and lower is grappling with the question of restora- season and become good members of their elevations, or even from entirely different tion during climate change. vegetation society,” Campbell said. She regions. “People get extremely nervous, Instead of trying to re-establish a has stopped spring planting altogether and with good reason, when you start talk- checklist of plants and animals, as they at restoration sites, waiting instead until ing about moving plants around,” Gornish might have in the past, some restoration after the summer monsoon rains. said. The U.S. has not had a good track practitioners are now focusing on ecosys- The new focus of ecological restoration record with introduced species. “Some of WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE tem functions. For Campbell, that means is “less about identifying the particular our most noxious invasives, like tamarisk INC/CC FLICKR worrying about pollinators, including birds, species, and more about the traits,” Elise or buffelgrass, are things we planted 80 bats and insects, in the sky islands. Across Gornish, a cooperative extension special- years ago,” she said. THE LATEST the West, spring is thawing earlier and ist at the University of Arizona, said. Not that long ago, the inclusion of Backstory broiling into summer faster, and the region Gornish surveyed almost 200 California nonnative plants species in restoration is getting hotter and drier overall, creating managers, including master gardeners, projects “was heretical,” Falk agreed. Millions of tons of coal ash, a toxic a mismatch between periods when pollina- ranchers, nonprofits, federal employees Now, however, those species may be the byproduct of burning tors need flowers and the times and places and others, about nonnative species. Close best-adapted flora for a region’s changing coal for energy, where those flowers are available. “How to half of her respondents, including most climate. But for Falk, managing for func- have long been can I use various plant species in ways to of the federal employees she interviewed, tions more than for species is still ecologi- stored in 1,400 pits ease that?” Campbell said. already used nonnative plants in restora- cal restoration. It’s always been true that, around the country, Campbell keeps climate change and tion projects, often for erosion control. One ultimately, “you’re trying to maintain the potentially leaching pollinators in mind when she’s selecting reason was that they were less expensive. ability of a system to adapt,” he said. arsenic, lead native vegetation to plant. A low-elevation But almost 40 percent of the manag- For her part, Campbell is learning to and sulfates into site might have red, tubular flowers in ers also contemplated using nonnatives reconsider the role of exotic species on the groundwater. States had patchy regulations, the spring, for example, and then again because of climate change. landscape. For example, she sometimes but none existed at in September, but none during the hottest “It’s clear that folks are really, really spares bird-of-paradise, an evergreen the federal level until summer months. “I could plug in a species concerned about climate change and res- shrub in the pea family that is native to the Environmental like desert honeysuckle, which would be toration,” she said. “A lot of folks wouldn’t Uruguay and Argentina, in her restora- Protection Agency blooming in that interim time, and provid- use the term ‘climate change’ to describe tion planning. A fast-growing ornamental began writing them in ing a more constant source of nectar,” she their challenges; they would say things with feathery leaves and bright red and 2009 (“The EPA rides said. like ‘drought,’ ‘changing environmental orange flowers, bird-of-paradise thrives again,” HCN, 1/3/10). Research on the timing of flowers and conditions.’ ” But the bottom line is the in the Southwest’s disturbed landscapes, Finished in 2015, they pollinator arrivals supports Campbell’s same: “Practices people have been using where it can crowd out native species. included inspection concerns, although scientists don’t yet historically, and probably pretty success- But removing the plant now may actu- and monitoring requirements, know the consequences of these mis- fully, and things that are now policies ally rob hummingbirds and other pollina- contamination limits, matches. Nicole Rafferty, a University of among the federal agencies … are not suc- tors of meals. “It flowers opportunistically and drinking water California, Riverside ecologist, studied cessful anymore,” she said. with rain,” Campbell said, “so in summer protections. the flowering schedule of manzanita, a Some plant populations, for exam- months, it can be the only flowers avail- mountain shrub with wine-red stems and ple, are responding to climate change by able.” Followup glossy leaves, in the sky islands. The tim- In July, under ing of the winter rains determines the brand-new EPA head appearance of manzanita blossoms, which and former coal are among the first mountain flowers industry lobbyist each spring. But with winter rains arriv- Andrew Wheeler, ing later, manzanitas are not flowering in the agency rolled time to feed the earliest native bees. Those back many coal ash regulations, despite later-flowering manzanitas also end up a March analysis by growing less fruit, which mule deer, black Earthjustice indicating bears and other animals eat. Most plants that most storage pits have a wide enough variety of pollina- were contaminating tors that they won’t disappear entirely, groundwater. Now, Rafferty said, but the fate of those pollina- states can end tors is harder to predict. monitoring in Overall, Campbell’s goal is still to con- some instances, serve as much biodiversity as possible and state officials, in the sky islands, where each mountain rather than professional range has its own unique combination of engineers, can plants and animals. But she knows she approve storage can’t simply reassemble historic plant sites. Some communities. “Certainly now, we (take) contamination a forward view,” Campbell said. “How is limits have been this (species) going to be durable into an removed, and ash uncertain future, where there’s going to be ponds at risk of larger, more intense wildfires, and more leaking can be used erosion, flooding, drought, all of those longer. The changes will save industry up things?” to $31 million per She’s had to adapt how she uses Sky Island Alliance volunteers assess the diversity of species in a spring in Graham, year, according to the native species, because of the changing Arizona. Evaluating current conditions allows them to determine how best to support EPA. rainfall patterns. For many years, Sky the ecosystem. COURTESY OF SKY ISLAND ALLIANCE JODI PETERSON

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for helping us reach new summits

Gwen Moffat was the first female mountain guide in Great Britian. She is also known for her crime novels and barefoot climbing, and for deserting the British Army during World War II. JIM HERRINGTON

THE CLIMBERS, Jim Herrington A welcome to our new intern 192 pages, large-format hardcover: $75. Mountaineers Books, 2017. July has been a busy month Back at our headquarters, If you flipped through Jim Herrington’s The here at High Country News. in Paonia, Colorado, we have Climbers without reading the title, you might While some staff members have greeted a number of visitors. not realize that the subjects defined rock climb- begun to pack their belongings Stephanie Thliveris from ing and mountaineering. In black-and-white photographs, aging climbers pose, wearing for the move to Gunnison, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, oxygen masks or sitting underwear-clad in their Colorado, where we are setting and her niece, Lyndsey Kirchner, kitchens. By capturing its figures modestly, The up an experimental satellite from New Orleans, took a Climbers humanizes the “golden age” of climb- office, others have spent the break from picking cherries ing, when skill made up for feeble gear and month attending conferences at their family’s annual Berg mountains weren’t dressed with bolts and chalk and speaking engagements harvest and get-together. The dust. The book opens with a simple portrait of around the country. In the various Berg relatives gather Glen Dawson, who ascended Mount Whitney in midst of all that hustle and in Paonia each summer to help 1931. Subjects vary in age and fame: Some, like bustle, we’ve had the pleasure out on the orchard, which has Reinhold Messner, are clothed in celebrity, while of welcoming a new intern to been in the family since the others, like French mountaineer Sonia Livanos, climbed more quietly. According to Greg Child’s the team. 1940s. Stephanie’s Buckingham introductory essay — climber Alex Honnold also A graduate of Yale Friends School is part of the contributes a foreword — the golden age was University, Elena Saavedra HCNU program, which delivers simply “decades of innocence, exploration, and Buckley comes to HCN with a free magazines to classrooms, experimentation … uncertain, like the outcome degree in humanities and a pen- and she’s hoping to connect of a good climbing adventure.” Herrington’s chant for long-form journalism. with other educators to learn resolute images ask for a long stare — much like The Albuquerque native first how they use HCN in their a mountain in the distance. tapped into her creative muse classrooms. ELENA SAAVEDRA BUCKLEY for a classical music blog she Finally, we have one correc- started in high school, which tion to make. Our cover story eventually led to an internship “Little Weed, Big Problem,” Rolanda A. Port | Albuquerque, NM Neal & Cheryl Wilkinson | Greeley, CO at NPR. At Yale, her passion for (HCN, 6/25/18), incorrectly Stella Portillo | Sandy, UT Norman Williams | Rye, CO journalism led her to serve as stated that GMO creeping bent- the editor-in-chief for The New Susan Putnam | Aurora, CO Leslie Wood & Edward Spauling | La Grande, OR grass escaped from test fields Journal, the school’s creative during an August 2013 wind- George Raino | Boise, ID R. Zimmerman | Eagle, CO nonfiction magazine, where, storm. It was actually a 2003 John Ratts & Elizabeth Stanek | Mosier, OR Susan Zwinger | Langley, WA she says, many weekends were windstorm. We regret the error. Don Rea | Albany, OR Marjorie True | Paonia, CO spent laying out the pages in —Jessica Kutz, for the staff John Reber & Sarah Wynn | Longmont, CO her college apartment. Kenneth R. Reed | Bishop, CA FRIEND At HCN, Elena says she William Reffalt | Albuquerque, NM Anonymous (9) hopes to craft stories about Louis Regnerus | Bozeman, MT In memory of Ester Johnson | Paonia, CO the West’s changing dynamics Edwin & Sylvia Reis | Bethesda, MD T.J. Brown and “how people are experienc- Hap Ridgway | Cody, WY Dr. & Mrs. Robert E. Carlton | ing climate change in more Colorado Springs, CO Jerry Roath localized ways.” In college, for Noreen Clifford | Milford, NH Daniel Robinett & Linda Kennedy | Elgin, AZ example, she focused her thesis David W. Dirks | Fruita, CO Milly Roeder | Lakewood, CO on a small town in New Mexico David M. Rose | Silver City, NM Linda Grey & Terry Root | Golden, CO that was transformed into Ellen M. Rosenau | Berkeley, CA Cindy Guthals | Denver, CO an anti-terrorism facility, an John Santangini | Denver, CO Gerald Ireland | Highlands Ranch, CO experience that has her itching Osman Sanyer | Salt Lake City, UT Christopher M. Ives | Flagstaff, AZ to write about how militariza- William E. Sawrey | Long Beach, CA Frank Landis | Erie, CO tion has impacted communities William Scheible | Cedar Rapids, IA Dan Lincoln | Evergreen, CO across the West. Charlynn Schweingruber | Evanston, IL Brian Loughman | Grand Junction, CO Meanwhile, HCN editors Randy Selig | Corvallis, OR Carole Morain Tristan Ahtone, Graham Brewer, Herb Simmons | Visalia, CA Dorothy Musil | Denver, CO Ruxandra Guidi, Kate Schimel, Raymond Smead | Boulder, CO Bill Schoenecker | New Castle, CO Anna Smith and editorial Cameron D. Smith | San Francisco, CA Lorin Stearns fellow Jessica Kutz attended Greg A. Smith | Durango, CO Maruyi Wendt | Tucson, AZ the 2018 joint conference of Jerry Smith | San Jose, CA Larry & Chris White | Evergreen, CO the National Association of Morgan Smith | Santa Fe, NM Victor Whitmore | Boise, ID Hispanic Journalists and the Richard Smythe | Sister Bay, WI G.H. Wiegand | Inkom, ID Native American Journalists Association in Miami. There, Tyrone & Deidra Steen | Colorado Springs, CO Jim Wilkinson | Boulder, CO Tristan was re-elected to the Frank P. Stewart | Denver, CO Phil Williams | Oreland, PA NAJA board of directors, and Kiki Tidwell | Redwood City, CA Susan L. Williams | Las Cruces, NM will be serving alongside Pamela Timmerman | Chimayo, NM George R. Wilson | Coeur d’Alene, ID Graham and Bryan Pollard, who Eric Twitty | Lafayette, CO Jeff Woodard | Idaho Falls, ID Kenilynn Zanetti | Rock Springs, WY was re-elected as president of Stan Usinowicz | Lake Havasu City, AZ the association and serves as William Van Moorhem | Klamath Falls, OR Joe Zebrowski | Las Vegas, NM Intern Elena Saavedra Buckley, the Linda C. Zeigenfuss | Carson, WA a member of HCN’s board of newest addition to our editorial staff. David Viskochil | Salt Lake City, UT directors, as well. LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Warren Weaver | Genoa, NV Dave & Kathy Zezulak | Davis, CA www.hcn.org High Country News 11 What Are We Doing Here? Drought, dread and family in the American Southwest

our years ago, my fiancé, Colin, and I eyes. He is also logical: When I try to FEATURE decided to move to New Mexico. We had eyeball our oatmeal rations before back- BY CALLY been living in a secluded river valley in packing trips, he suggests I calculate how CARSWELL western Colorado, but both of us were ven- much we’ll need per meal and multiply it turing into self-employment and thought by our days on the trail. Colin grew up in it’d be easier in a bigger town. So we Ohio and loves mountains and the space of PHOTOGRAPHS rigged our pickup with a load the Beverly the Western horizon, but he doesn’t pine for BY STEFAN Hillbillies would have admired — furni- the high desert. He notices with annoying WACHS ture, lamps, buckets full of pottery glaze frequency how little water Santa Fe has. — and drove south. We crossed the Chama He likes big trees and he likes to grow food, F River, turned left into the Española Valley, and he wonders if big trees and homegrown and stopped at a Lotaburger for the cheap food will exist here in 50 years. Or in 20. thrill of green chile on a fast-food cheese- Or in 10. These are reasonable concerns, I burger. The burger was bad but the chile know. I’m a journalist who covers climate was hot, and I was happy. I’d waited my change, and I’ve written thousands of whole life to make this move. words about the Southwest’s hot, dry Every summer of my childhood, my future. Yet whenever Colin fretted, I found family had made a similar migration, leav- myself punting, offering half-baked reas- ing our duplex in Illinois and driving West. surances that we’d be fine. The drive was awful and awfully long. And then this year, winter never came. When you’re stuck in them, the monoto- I watered the trees in our yard in early nous plains of Oklahoma feel like an February. On April Fool’s Day, I hiked to inescapable vortex. But they were worth it 11,000 feet without snowshoes. A friend for what came after. We’d spend a couple and her husband, who were planning a of months in the scrappy adobe house on spring trip to Montana, said they wanted a hill in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my to scope it out as a place to live. “We can’t dad grew up. Though we had a great life have all our money tied up in property in a in Chicago, this house cast a spell on all of place that’s going to run out of water!” she us. The hill’s edges looked soft and green told me. from afar. Up close, the land was spiny and I began to worry, too, that after a long jagged, a pile of pinkish granite with squat and frequently distant romance, I’d mar- trees and tough succulents. The house was ried us to a town without reckoning with a fawn-brown color, with curved white the particulars of its future. How likely is interior walls and my dead grandmother’s this place to become barren? How soon? purple velvet drapes still hanging from Will we have the tools to endure it? We’d the curtain rods. It seemed even then that eloped. though I didn’t live here, it was where I Now, in this rapaciously dry year, a came from, the place I always wanted to quiet question grew louder: What are we get back to. doing here? I felt a sudden need to under- Colin and I are married now. Colin is stand what Colin and I stood to lose as the generous and goofy, a self-taught profes- heat intensified and the world dried out. sional potter with impossibly pale blue And I wondered if we should leave.

12 High Country News August 6, 2018 My husband notices with annoying frequency how little water Santa Fe has. He likes big trees and he likes to grow food, and he wonders if big trees and homegrown food will exist here in 50 years. Or in 20. Or in 10.

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 AFTER OUR WEDDING, Colin and I planted forests. Drought, heat and insect out- up the caretaker, who told them he was an elderberry bush, his favorite plant, breaks had killed 95 percent of the old retiring. Why not take his job and his in our yard in Santa Fe. We had found a piñon pines over large portions of the lodge? They drove back to Carmel, and variety native to New Mexico, and our southeast Jemez, and where unusually packed up their life. parents had added soil from their homes hot fires torched hundreds of thousands They took over the caretaking respon- to the plant’s pot during the ceremony. of acres, ecologists worried that the for- sibilities and ran a sandwich shop for ski- Putting it in the ground was our first act est might never grow back. This year, ers. They eventually moved to town and as homeowners. the moisture in living trees in the Santa started a restaurant, which is still in the We had started to look at real estate Fe National Forest has hit levels lower family. They screen-printed the menus soon after moving, though Colin was than those you’d find in lumber at Home and hosted jazz concerts there, and when reluctant to make the financial and Depot. The fire risk was so high by June 1 business was slow, they pulled the boys physical commitment. I had promised that the U.S. Forest Service closed all 1.6 out of school and took road trips through that our move to New Mexico didn’t have million acres of the forest to the public. Mexico. They bought the house on the hill to be final. We’ll give it five years, we The forecasts for our water supplies and were laid to rest beside its back door. said. We looked at loads of houses before are equally grim. The Colorado River’s Their story taught me about where I we found one that met Colin’s unlikely flows are down about 20 percent since came from, both the place and the people: conditions: a passive-solar design for the start of the drought, and scientists brave, adventurous, entrepreneurial folk less than $100,000. It was a bank-owned believe the remarkable heat is respon- who took risks and led lives that were, wreck with a leaky roof, a root-choked sible for up to half of the decline. By the above all, interesting. Yet when I asked sewer line, a bathtub that drained into end of the century, some say, the amount my family about this story recently, the yard through a haphazard hole in the of water in the Southwest’s rivers could hoping to understand it better, another By the end of wall, and a mess of once-wet dog food still well plummet by 50 percent. version emerged. Thornton told my Aunt the century, caked to the kitchen floor. Yet it had “good We could see the power of the parched Linnea that the family had moved to New bones,” as they say, and we knew right air and scorching sun in our own yard. Mexico in part for protection from Polly’s some say, the away that it fit. More than money, we Our elderberry seemed to melt in the troubled mind. Once, when my dad was had time and the innocent enthusiasm of midday sun. It sacrificed limbs, their an infant, Thornton found Polly carrying amount of first-time renovators. leaves shriveling brown and crisp. Is it a him toward the ocean, intending to give water in the We thought we’d move in within bad sign if our wedding plant dies? We him to it, to let the waves swallow his months. Instead, it took more than a joked about it, but it felt like an omen. tiny body whole. In this version of the Southwest’s year. I learned how to tile and chiseled We gave the plant extra drinks, and Colin story, Thornton came here to escape the fossilized gunk from the floors. And Colin built it a shade structure. Last year, he ocean, drawn by the sense of security that rivers got to entertain his fantasy of raising his divided its roots, and he transplanted came not from what New Mexico had, but own house, rebuilding walls, replacing part of it into the shade this spring, a from what it lacked: too much water. could well windows, building a shower, plumbing kind of insurance against death. plummet by sinks. Realizing our dreams, we learned, I LIKED THE ARIDITY for more superficial was sometimes a giant pain in the ass. ARIDITY, IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, has reasons. Midwesterners describe the 50 percent. We laughed about how unreasonable it pushed or drawn people to New Mexico summer air as “sticky.” It sucks cloth- was to move, become self-employed, get for centuries. Pueblo peoples came in part ing to your skin like a leech, and it’s married, and buy a fixer-upper, all within because a punishing drought strained relentless. When the sun sets, the sticky six months. But really, we were proud of their societies in the Four Corners and it stays. In Santa Fe, sweat evaporates in ourselves. was time to start anew. In the late 1800s, an instant, and the sun’s glare is escap- Still, neither of us slept as well as we white Easterners came because the able. You go up in elevation, find shade, used to. We were stressed by our irregu- aridity healed. These so-called “lungers” or wait for dusk, when you are likely to lar paychecks. We’d begun a splintered suffered from tuberculosis, and doctors need a sweater. “The weather in Santa Fe conversation about having children. Our believed that dry air and sunshine could is awesome, except that it doesn’t rain,” house was on a well. At first, we thought sap the damaging moisture from patients’ Colin remarked one cool April morning this was a liability, but people told us lungs. Albuquerque advertised itself as over breakfast. “Except it’s awesome that it was an asset: In Santa Fe, city water the “heart of the well country.” it doesn’t rain.” is expensive and well water is free. We My mom’s family moved from clammy As this spring wore on, though, the looked into hooking up to the city system Illinois to Albuquerque in the 1960s to thirsty days piling up, this force that had anyway, but it would have been pricey, give her mother, Ann, relief from arthri- lured my family here with its power to and the guy who replaced our sewer line tis, while my dad’s family came for art heal, and apparently, to protect, began advised us to just wait until our well ran and adventure. In the 1940s, his parents, to feel like a real threat. Halfway across dry. Polly and Thornton Carswell, were living the world, amid another deep, multi-year Conversations like this felt like little in Carmel, California, a countercultural drought, the residents of Cape Town, warnings. One truism about the future is refuge from their buttoned-up hometown South Africa, were anticipating “Day that climate change will spare no place. of Springfield, Illinois. Polly was a free Zero,” when the city’s taps would run Still, I suspect the threat of warming spirit, a weaver, who kept a few demure totally dry and residents would have feels more existential in New Mexico beige dresses to wear back to Springfield. to line up for water rations. Could that than it does in Minnesota, the land of Out West, she wore flowing skirts, color- happen here? And if it did, what would 10,000 lakes. Drought has gripped the ful aprons, heavy turquoise jewelry and become of this home we were building? Southwest for 19 years, more than half orange lipstick, carrying a basket instead The house was our shelter, our first big my life. It’s been dry in two ways: First, of a purse. project together, but it was also a founda- less water has fallen from the sky. And In the story I knew, Polly and tion. We’d both chosen fulfilling careers second, it’s been unusually hot. In an arid Thornton took my dad, Rodney, and that paid poorly, and if we wanted to climate, heat is like a steroid, amplifying his brother, Courtney, on a camp- travel, go out to eat, support a future child, the atmosphere’s power to suck moisture ing trip to Santa Fe. Polly loved New make self-employment viable long-term from plants, soil, rivers and human skin. Mexico instantly, with its mix of Native and generally not live in perpetual fear of By the time we arrived in Santa Fe, American, Spanish and Anglo cultures, our bank balance, we figured we should the Jemez Mountains west of town had its beaders, painters and miscellaneous grow the modest money we made. The become an archetype of the murderous misfits. They pitched their tent in a state house would help us build a life. Unless it impact climate change will have on park outside of Santa Fe and chatted handcuffed us to a place running short on

14 High Country News August 6, 2018 There’s no place like home Climate change hits close to the heart for many northern New Mexicans

Don Bustos Don Bustos farms the same Española Valley land his ancestors did 400 years ago. Water is delivered via acequia, a traditional ditch system managed by a collective of irrigators. “The whole community lives or dies by the decisions made along the acequia,” Bustos says. “They’re the ﬁrst form of democracy in the U.S.” Bustos’ farm is doing OK this year, but he’s concerned about the future. “I don’t think all agriculture is going to survive climate change in the Southwest,” he says. “We’re going to have to really articulate the reasons water has to stay in agriculture.” Bustos believes growing your own food is “an act of freedom,” and essential to long-term resilience. Plus, northern New Mexico would be a fundamentally different place without farming and acequias. “We can make more money building houses,” he says, PHOTOGRAPHS but what if the cost is culture? “If we lose BY STEFAN that, we just become another Dubai in the middle of the desert.” WACHS

Claudia Borchert Claudia Borchert grew up in hilly, green eastern Kansas. She’s lived in Santa Fe for 30 years, and has worked on water issues for the city and county for over a decade. Santa Fe is not in imminent danger of running out of water, she says. Nevertheless, “I’m likely to become a climate migrant. Four months of no rain just doesn’t suit me.” Borchert served on a recent working group to advise the mayor on sustainability issues. Thanks to recent changes in its water supply and management, the city doesn’t have to impose water restrictions on users this year. But the group has proposed implementing additional conservation measures and water restrictions during drought anyway, to satisfy the strong local desire for action. “There was a feeling of, we want to worry about it, we want to do something,” she says. “People want to take some personal responsibility.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 one of life’s most basic necessities. water supply is considered relatively I got in touch with Kim Shanahan, secure because its sources are diverse. the head of the Santa Fe Area Home Recently, a couple of rural New Mexico Builders Association, to gauge how towns with poor infrastructure and little reality-based my fear was. It wasn’t that money have temporarily run out of water, long ago that the developers and contrac- or come close. tors he represents had faced their own Strangely enough, though, learning demise. In 2002, a nail-bitingly dry year all this made me less fearful. It helped that followed several pitiful winters, to define the problem, and reminded me Santa Fe’s aboveground reservoirs dipped that we were agents in this mess, not precipitously low, and the city was drain- blind victims. In that sense, in Santa ing groundwater through its wells at Fe the drought had a strange upside: It frightening rates. The city implemented forced the conversation. And the result so water restrictions, and the citizenry far seems to prove journalist John Fleck’s aimed pitchforks at developers. If there principle of water: When people have wasn’t enough water for the people less, they use less. Even my husband was already here, they felt, there wasn’t a more adaptable than I’d expected, worry- drop to spare for new homes. The city ing as I had that the high desert would council debated whether to stop issuing never satiate his desire for leafy canopies building permits. and grapefruit-sized garden tomatoes. He This year, though, for whatever told me recently that, when we started “On a reason, the city didn’t seem to be fac- looking at houses, he decided: Screw the personal ing imminent crisis. Were water cuts or consequences. “Look, if we all run out construction moratoriums on the horizon? of water and lose everything,” he told a level, yeah, Shanahan didn’t think so, and he told me friend, “that’s just going to be part of our something had changed: toilets. To deal story.” this is with the water shortage and to avoid a Colin had confronted the uncertainty frightening. building moratorium, the city purchased by making peace with it. I was search- 10,000 low-flow toilets and offered them ing instead for objective information I’ve never free to anyone who would replace an to confirm my fears that our move was aging one. Old toilets use as much as 5 misguided, our own act of climate change Tom Swetnam seen it so gallons per flush, while toilets manufac- denial. But the question of whether we University of Arizona fire ecologist Tom damn dry. But tured since the mid-1990s use 1.6 or less. should stay or go was turning out to be Swetnam and his wife, Suzanne, recently The city also required builders to replace complicated; even the angles that seemed retired to forestland outside Jemez Springs. I’m feeling toilets in existing homes and businesses straightforward weren’t. Shanahan This is Tom’s home turf, and it’s near the before they could pull permits, so that pointed out that if water limited the city’s site of one of the Southwest’s most serious more bullish the savings offset the water use of new growth, the value of our home might recent blazes — the 2011 Las Conchas construction. Then the city added a water go up. That’s how supply and demand Fire, which he and his colleagues believe about our conservation fee to utility bills that funds should work, Grady Gammage, a lawyer, foretells the bigger, hotter burns to come. rebates for things like efficient clothes water expert and sometimes developer “When I first bought this place, several of ability to be my friends in the fire science community washers, fixtures and rain barrels. The in Phoenix, told me. But the idea that said, ‘You bought where?’ ” he recalls. sustainable water saved through the program goes there’s not enough water to build houses? “The reality is we could lose this place into a “bank,” and today builders have to “That’s going to scare people, so it might tomorrow.” with buy offset credits from it so that water constrain demand.” Claudia Borchert, But Swetnam doesn’t buy the argument use doesn’t rise with new construction. Santa Fe County’s sustainability man- that people shouldn’t live in the forest. diminishing All this has allowed the city’s popula- ager, remarked over coffee that she’d just “These landscapes have been livable in resources.” tion to grow even as water consumption fielded a call from an anxious homeowner the past, and we can get there again,” he has declined. Combined with rules that asking if his property value was safe. says, by allowing certain fires to burn and —Kim Shanahan, the limit outdoor watering and pricing that “Boy, in the short term, yes,” she told him. thinning overgrown stands. For him, it’s a head of the Santa Fe incentivizes conservation, Santa Fe has “In the long term, all bets are off. It won’t landscape of hope more than fear, with one caveat: If warming spikes by 4 or 8 Area Home Builders reduced its per capita consumption from necessarily be that there’s no water, but Association degrees Celsius — around 7 to 14 degrees 168 gallons per day in 1995 to 90 today. will people want to live here?” Fahrenheit — “I don’t know where is safe.” Crucially, it has also diversified its sup- It occurred to me that the drought is a ply, piping water from the Colorado River little like the Trump presidency. You know Basin to the Rio Grande, allowing the city it’s bad, and that it could herald much to rest wells and turn groundwater into worse. But in the present moment, life drought insurance. So far, it’s worked. feels strangely normal. Sure, draconian “On a personal level, yeah, this is water shortages and the demise of our frightening,” Shanahan admitted. “I’ve democracy are real possibilities — not never seen it so damn dry. But I’m feeling even distant ones — but you’re not really more bullish about our ability to be sus- suffering. Not yet. It’s hard to tell how tainable with diminishing resources.” much you will. If this is your reality, as The city doesn’t have much choice but it is mine, you’re probably not an immi- to try. An in-depth 2015 study of the risk grant, or a farmer, or a tribal member, climate change poses to Santa Fe’s water or poor, or sick, or brown-skinned. You’re found that as the population continues lucky. The crisis is real, and it’s not. to grow, the city and county’s supply could fall short of demand by as much as IN THIS LIMBO, I felt a melancholy that 3 billion gallons by 2055. That’s a lot — was both hard to identify and hard to about equal to the city’s current annual shake. A hot day no longer felt like just a consumption. Another sobering reality: hot day, something that would pass. On Among Southwestern cities, Santa Fe’s a cloudless Saturday in May, shoppers

16 High Country News August 6, 2018 Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. J. Michael Chavarria The Santa Clara Pueblo Reservation runs from the Rio Grande to the Jemez Mountains. Recent wildﬁres have burned 80 percent of the forest there, putting the tribe’s watershed at risk and transforming its ancestral landscape. In adversity, the tribe has looked to its past and the power of prayer for guidance. “We’ve lived here and been resilient to change over time,” says the pueblo’s governor, J. Michael Chavarria. Take ﬁrst contact with the Spanish in the 1500s. “They hurt our women, they killed our children, they killed our traditional leaders. They told us, ‘If you don’t convert to Christianity, you’re … basically nothing.’ So our religion, the culture, went underground. But we kept strong, and we’re here today.” Now, the people are investing in forest restoration. “We can’t just pack up our bags and leave,” Chavarria says. “The whole reservation is considered a place of worship, a spiritual sanctuary. So it goes back to remembering who we are, and where we come from — and not to give up.”

Marilyn & Ed friends and community, and a year ago, the couple moved back. “I’ve Winter-Tamkin heard it said that when you leave here, For years, Marilyn and Ed Winter- they tie a rubber band to your leg, and Tamkin talked with friends about at some point, they snap it back,” Ed leaving Santa Fe. They worried about says. “This is our place.” water scarcity, ﬁre and toxic waste from “Every place has their problem,” Los Alamos National Lab’s nuclear adds Marilyn. “In Bellingham, we were research. Then came severe ﬁres around at the base of a volcano. We know Los Alamos and the widespread death what the pimples are here — it’s the of the state’s piñon trees. In 2013, the poisons from Los Alamos and the Winter-Tamkins sold their house and drought. We’d rather go down with moved to Bellingham, Washington. those issues with our friends, our But they were homesick for their community and near our family.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 at a plant nursery griped about how Santa Fe was becoming like Albuquerque, the sweatier city to our south. The heat seemed imbued with finality, a change that could not be undone. My grandmother Polly died the year before I was born. After my dad’s birth, she suffered bouts of what the family calls “sickness.” Her illness was mental — schizophrenia, manic-depression, or some other condition doctors didn’t understand. With her glasses on, she could see St. Peter. She wailed in bed. One night at the hospital, she continued to wail after doctors had pumped her full of enough sedatives to, as they told my parents, “kill a horse.” Yet she was also a magnetic personality. At the restaurant, Thornton was the workhorse and she the muse. Sometimes, she spent the entire lunch service sitting and talking with a Luis Torres Torres lived through a deep drought in the single customer. 1950s, but this one feels different. “I look at My parents used to rent the house Luis Torres grew up on a subsistence ranch hillsides where whole piñon ecosystems die. on the hill during the school year. Once, in northern New Mexico, a place his seven When we get rain again, something’ll come a renter abruptly moved out mid-lease, brothers hoped to escape. But Torres loved his back, but not those trees.” And he worries saying that Polly’s ghost had appeared home mountains, and with only a high school about his grandson, who wants to follow in his over her bed in the middle of the night, degree, leaving never seemed an option. When wildfire-fighting footsteps. “I say, ‘Stay away growling at her to “get out.” As a kid, the he was young, working for a time on Forest from that,’ ” Torres explains. “From what I see, Service wildfire crews, all he needed was a haunting didn’t scare me. I thought it it ain’t your grandfather’s old fire. It’s was awesome, and hoped it was real. I horse and a chainsaw to earn money. Now, more dangerous. These are explosive, bomb- secretly hated the renters: Nice as they he’s a community organizer for environmental type fires.” (Luis Torres is a High Country News groups, who hire him for his knowledge of board member.) were, I didn’t want them in our house or place. on our land. My attachment to the place was always instinctual. My parents occasion- ally talked about selling it, daydreaming about what they’d do with the money. I reacted to these conversations defen- sively, like a coiled snake. I’m an only child, and I told them that when they died, it was what I would have left of my family. The house and the land would be my memory. “Querencia,” the late New Mexico poet and historian Estevan Arellano has written, “is a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn. Folklore tells us that ‘no hay mejor querencia que tu corral,’ there is no better place than your corral – a typical saying that alludes to where someone is raised, the place of one’s memories, of one’s affections, of things one loves and, above all, where one feels safe.” Staying put may not mean that Colin and I lose what we’ve put into our home, and it may not mean running out of water. But it may mean bearing witness to the slow death of the Rio Grande. It may mean biting our nails with the rest of the city every June, hoping this won’t be the year that a mushroom cloud of smoke rises from the Santa Fe Mountains, which are primed for a on private-land conservation. “I sometimes Lesli Allison dream of buying a small farm in some other destructive fire. If the mountains do Lesli Allison’s mother lives alone in Allison’s part of the country with good topsoil and burn big and hot, and the tourists that childhood home near Pecos, New Mexico, in moisture,” she says, “just to have the feeling are Colin’s customers stay away, it may a canyon with a high risk of fire. Growing up, that I could grow food and not worry about mean recalibrating his business plan. It “we never worried about fire,” Allison says, “but water or forest fires.” But New Mexico is home. may mean longer drives to reach green now I fear for her safety.” Allison’s own home It would take a lot for her family to leave, mountains. It may mean more summer is vulnerable, too, and she worries about her she says. “Sometimes I imagine that if water months when we can’t escape to the cool son when he’s home alone because a fire could shortages end up driving other people away, of the forest because the forest is closed. block the exits to their rural subdivision. there would be enough water for those of us And it already means grappling with the Allison is a former rancher who now works stubborn enough to stay.” CALLY CARSWELL

18 High Country News Date,August 2018 6, 2018 more unsettling feelings that accumulate on wildland fire for the Santa Fe Fire He wanted me to fantasize out loud about from these smaller worries. Department, told me. “It felt like this was how I imagined him as a father, but it In 2005, the Australian philosopher never going to repair itself.” was hard for me because the conversation Glenn Albrecht coined the term “solastal- But with time, the feeling shifted in clammed him up; he didn’t give back. gia” to characterize the peculiar modern Santa Clara, a close-knit, deeply rooted Eventually, though, the difficult condition caused by circumstances like community, where the cliff faces pre- conversations grew more honest and these — “a form of homesickness one gets served 1,000-year-old dwellings. People empathetic. We turned toward each other, when one is still at ‘home.’ ” Solastalgia found solace in one another and in their closing the raw space between us, and describes a loss that is less tangible than history, Chavarria said. “Those communi- as we did, we felt more in love. Still, the psychic. “It is the pain experienced when ties that feel like they have a sense of issue was unresolved. Some days, I was there is recognition that the place where place, or culture, or something that binds fine with that. Others, I’d be struck by a one resides and that one loves is under them all together,” he explained, “they are sudden and profound sadness. The night immediate assault,” Albrecht writes. “It more resilient to say, ‘This has happened, before had been one of those nights, so I is manifest in an attack on one’s sense we feel bad, we need to think about how decided to write what was hard for me of place, in the erosion of the sense of we go forward.’ ” Nobody thought about to say. I told him that if we didn’t have a belonging to a particular place and a feel- leaving. kid, I still wanted to buy the weedy dirt “Regardless ing of distress about its transformation.” Some people in Los Alamos did flee, patch next door together and build a stu- of what we When the drought began in the late though. Foxx told me about one couple dio and make it beautiful. And if we did 1990s, my parents and I had stopped who left because they loved trees and have a kid, I wanted Colin to teach them do, nature spending summers in Santa Fe. They’d couldn’t stand to look at a mountain to make buttermilk biscuits, to hear them opened a restaurant in Chicago, a busi- of blackened sticks. They moved to squeal as he chased them around the is here. ness it’s hard to leave for even a day. Colorado, right back into the pines. yard like a deranged zombie. I wanted A couple of years into the drought, my Others rebuilt, the fire strengthening that child to feel the same full acceptance I say nature uncle called to report that the piñon their resolve to stay. When we experience Colin gave me. I told him I wanted him adjusts to trees surrounding the house on the hill loss, Foxx said, “It’s like, ‘What can I do?’ to change all the diapers. He cried when were dying. My parents and I had been You either feel a deep sense of depres- he read the letter, and then he baked me change easier pissed off when rich people changed the sion, or if you can, you find some way to a perfect apple pie. He told me he would landscape by building prominent houses help.” Two men formed a group called the not change all the diapers. than we as across the arroyo. But the news of the Volunteer Task Force that rebuilt trails, I began to think that our relation- humans do.” tree die-off inspired different feelings — planted trees and pelted the burn scars ships with places aren’t so different from apprehension and a kind of fear. My dad with golf ball-sized mash-ups of clay and our relationships with people. They are —Terry Foxx, fire said he was afraid to go back. wildflower seeds made by schoolchildren, emotional and particular. Over time, ecologist and collector nursing home residents and others. It there is tumult. That has been true for of fire stories THE TOTAL TRANSFORMATION OF LAND- gave people a sense of ownership, Foxx as long as people have lived on the side SCAPES — and of a community’s sense told me, and of hope. of volcanoes or in deserts or on top of of place — isn’t an abstract possibility “Don’t get me wrong,” Foxx said. “I tectonic faults. What’s both hard and in New Mexico. It’s already happened to believe we need to be doing everything hopeful about this new tumult is that, communities in the Jemez Mountains, we can to prevent polluting and chang- unlike an eruption, a natural drought where a series of big, hot wildfires have ing our area. But regardless of what we cycle or an earthquake, it’s not inevitable. torched the forests. And so on a Sunday do, nature is here. I say nature adjusts to The change is the result of the choice we afternoon, I visited a woman named change easier than we as humans do.” are making to continue our carbon binge. Terry Foxx at the home she’s evacuated The answers I sought, I began to The disturbance in my marriage twice during recent burns, interrupting understand, could not be found in climate had ultimately deepened our commit- her afternoon sewing to ask about the studies, water plans or market analyses, ment to our joined lives. And maybe the aftermath. because my questions, my doubts, weren’t same should be true of our relationships Foxx has studied the fire ecology of ultimately about logic or pragmatism. with our places. A better response than the Jemez since the 1970s, and after the They were about love. running might be to spend more time 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, which burned walking the forests and canyons of the more than 400 homes in Los Alamos, she AFTER LEAVING TERRY FOXX’S HOUSE, I landscapes we love, even as they change, also became something of a community drove to the forest and hiked to the edge to engage more deeply, to fight for them. therapist. She collected fire stories and of a burn scar. I sat below a gnarled old After all, leaving might not be a form of published them in a spiral-bound book. ponderosa that had survived the fire, protection, but just another form of loss. She gave community lectures on how facing a hillside that looked like a moon- life returns to the forest, and about the scape, and wrote Colin a letter. MY PARENTS RETIRED a few years ago, and spiritual toll of landscape loss. Ecologists call wildfires “disturbance their desire to come home overrode any “There was grief, just intense grief,” events.” In nature, disturbance often fear of what they’d find there. They’re liv- Foxx told me. “Some people would say, ‘I gives rise to new life. The large aspen ing in the Santa Fe house again — back in have no right to be grieving because so- stands in the Sangre de Cristos facing their “corral” — and the tree die-off wasn’t and-so lost their home.’ I thought, wait a Santa Fe, the trees whose colors help us as bad as they’d feared. The junipers are second, we have all lost something. It was measure the seasons, are there because a toughing it out, and some piñons sur- that mountain that used to have trees on fire raced over the mountain, killing coni- vived. A decent number of piñons are even it.” fer stands whole. My marriage had been resprouting in the shelter of old junipers. North of Los Alamos, Santa Clara through its own disturbance event. For There was something else, too: A weed Pueblo has endured even more devastat- months, our conversation about children that popped up near the front door. My Contributing editor ing fires, with three blazes scorching had not gone well. I wanted a child, but dad didn’t recognize it, but he didn’t pull Cally Carswell writes from Santa Fe, 80 percent of its forest in the last 20 the idea made Colin anxious. He wasn’t it up. Then, one day, it erupted in purple New Mexico. years. The most destructive, the 2011 ready yet, and unsure that he ever would flowers. It was a native wildflower called @callycarswell Las Conchas Fire, incinerated an entire be. I was hurt by his reluctance. One desert four o’clock, and he thought it watershed, the tribe’s spiritual and night, I blurted out a tearful and angry might be Polly, signaling her approval This story was funded ancestral home. “People freaked out right ultimatum, without knowing whether I that they were back. Every year since, with reader donations after it happened,” Porfirio Chavarria, meant it. It bruised him in a way that one it has returned. And every year, it has to the High Country who is from Santa Clara and works apology, then another, couldn’t quite heal. bloomed. News Research Fund.

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www.hcn.org High Country News 21 BOOKS

her by wearing sweatpants emblazoned with the word “Juicy” on the derriere. She Learning the hard way appalls them, in turn, by refusing to wash her hands after using the bathroom, following her father’s instructions. Tara Westover’s astonishing debut mem- but Westover writes with understanding, Westover writes about her studies oir, Educated, chronicles how she grew love and forgiveness. with extreme humility. She’s never heard up on a southern Idaho mountain in a Gene encourages Westover’s mother of the Holocaust and is flabbergasted to survivalist Mormon family, never setting to train as a midwife, assisting a woman learn that black people didn’t begin to foot in school, but eventually earned her who “had no license, no certificates,” obtain equal rights until a hundred years Ph.D. in history from the University of Westover writes. “She was a midwife after the Civil War ended. She’s fre- Cambridge. “There’s a sense of sovereign- entirely by the power of her own say-so.” quently lost in classes and fears failing, ty that comes from life on a mountain, a Westover’s mother eventually becomes yet performs well enough to keep the full perception of privacy and isolation, even a revered midwife and “wise woman,” scholarship she needs to remain in school. of dominion,” Westover writes. Her father, crafting herbal treatments and essential Her professors, struck by the extraor- a charismatic and self-reliant but often oils for healing — ultimately launching dinary quality of her mind, mentor her, unhinged man — imagine Pa Ingalls a business that has become a major com- eventually boosting her to a scholarship with a few screws loose — exercises that munity employer by the time Westover at Cambridge, a fellowship at Harvard Educated: A Memoir dominion in myriad ways. heads to college. University, and a Ph.D. Westover’s father, whom she calls by Because Gene believes that his wife Tara Westover Westover chooses history as her focus. the pseudonym Gene, limits his inter- can heal anything, the Westovers never 332 pages, hardcover: She writes: “What a person knows about actions with the government and the receive treatment, even for serious acci- $28 the past is limited, and will always be medical establishment to an extreme: He dents and ailments, including hard falls, Random House, 2018. limited, to what they are told by others.” doesn’t want his kids born in a hospital, severe burns, gashes and car crashes. Westover still loves her family and many issued birth certificates, vaccinated, or One of Tara’s brothers, whom she calls by aspects of their way of life — including educated in schools where they could be the pseudonym Shawn, suffers so many the mountain she grew up on, and her “seduced by the Illuminati.” He makes a head injuries that it’s tempting to arm- singular mother, “that docile woman” who living as a junk dealer, and trains each chair diagnose him with brain trauma; he “had a power in her the rest of us couldn’t of his seven kids to perform dangerous becomes sadistic and controlling, brutal- contemplate.” As Westover becomes in- work, using metal-cutting machinery izing everyone in his orbit, especially creasingly dedicated to seeking the truth, with no safety equipment, and hauling women. though, a confrontation with her family sharp and heavy scraps. Tara’s desire to escape Shawn’s abuse about Shawn threatens to prompt her In 1992, when Tara is 5, news of the eventually motivates her to pursue expulsion from it. FBI standoff at Ruby Ridge in north- college — aided and encouraged by her Whatever Westover’s father may ern Idaho spikes Gene’s paranoia. He brother Tyler, who earned a Ph.D. in think, his daughter’s life has in fact stockpiles weaponry and food and builds mechanical engineering. Brigham Young embodied the ideal of individual sov- a hidden bomb shelter. His prepara- University accepts homeschooled kids, ereignty that he modeled. It’s just that tions intensify as Y2K approaches, an and Tyler suggests she study for the ACT. her pursuit of self-dominion led her on event after which he believes “all would Despite learning little beyond how to a quest for knowledge, resulting in a sink into chaos, and this would usher in read and write (the Bible has been her broader perspective than the one offered the Second Coming of Christ.” We feel primary textbook), Tara grinds through on the beloved Idaho mountain where she Westover’s sense of perplexity and loss an ACT prep book and scores high was born. This gorgeous, heartbreaking when Jan. 1, 2000, dawns and she looks enough to be admitted with a scholarship. memoir, the product of the thoughtful at her father. “The disappointment in his Tara’s initial experiences at Brigham reflections of a seeking mind, has the ring features was so childlike, for a moment I Young are a huge culture shock; it’s as if of a classic. wondered how God could deny him this.” she had been raised by wolves and then A less subtle writer might have carica- brought into human society. Tara’s room- BY JENNY SHANK tured or demonized some of these people, mates are Mormon, but they scandalize

Supporters of Randy Weaver demonstrate at Ruby Ridge in 1992. FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi was ordered to stand trial on manslaughter charges in the shooting death of Vicki Weaver. JEFF T. GREEN/AP PHOTO

22 High Country News August 6, 2018 ESSAY | BY JOSEPH BELLI Except for the frogs ack then, they were known as ~ mountain yellow-legged frogs, In September 2016, I found myself drawn though when I first saw them back to that childhood campsite. I’d done in an alpine meadow, taxono- some summer reading, thoughtful pieces Bmy wasn’t exactly on my mind. It was the on place and time. Maybe it was only 1970s, and I was just a boy out exploring nostalgia, but I felt the urge to acknowl- while my grandparents set up a picnic edge those long-ago outings, which, like table at their favorite Forest Service so many good things in life, had ended campground near Mount Rose, just north almost unnoticed. of Lake Tahoe. At least once every sum- Escaping the pall of the Soberanes mer, they’d drive up for the afternoon. I Fire and the heat of the lowlands, I remember the tablecloth, the pines and headed to the mountains. Finding the firs ringing the campsite, the aroma of place again, however, proved tricky. I the barbecue. But mostly I remember the didn’t know the campground’s name and frogs. had only a general sense of where it was. They weren’t the tree frogs I routinely Nothing looked familiar on the drive to- saw back home in the Bay Area. They ward Mount Rose, until, near the summit, were slightly larger, and an unremark- I recognized a spur road and campground able earth-tone in color. What made them sign. The campground had recently closed so memorable was their abundance. for the year, its gate locked. I parked by Caption. CREDIT Walking along the stream in the meadow, the road and walked in. Several roads I flushed several with every step. There branched out just beyond the entrance. A were hundreds, possibly thousands; I had golden-mantled ground squirrel scolded never seen so many frogs. As a curious me, and looking past it, I saw the old boy fascinated by wild things, this place campsite. It had been rejuvenated — new was better than anything I’d ever known. picnic table and grill, a bear-proof trash I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. receptacle instead of the old metal gar- But the years of picnics and frogs bage cans — but the trees looked just as I were brief. When I became a teenager, I remembered. spent less and less time at family outings. Beyond, the meadow beckoned. In By the time I got my driver’s license I my boyhood memory it went on forever, was off on my own, exploring elsewhere. but this clearing was hardly longer than And I never saw those frogs again. a football field. I walked out into it, eyes groping for something familiar. Yet it was ~ my feet that remembered first: I stepped Time was not kind to mountain yellow- onto some moss and sank, just as I’d legged frogs. Their numbers plummeted. done here as a boy who had wondered if The California Department of Fish and he’d hit quicksand. Just ahead lay the Wildlife had introduced trout in numer- stream’s headwaters, a rivulet barely a ous high-country lakes and streams, and foot wide. Flecks of granite and pyrite those fish gobbled up tadpoles with gusto. sparkled in its clear, shallow water, and Worse, chytrid fungus, an introduced just beyond, at the confluence of another pathogen, arrived like the amphibian tiny stream, was a boulder I recognized equivalent of the Black Death. In one like a long-lost friend. Suddenly, every- watershed after another, frogs disap- thing fell into place, except for the frogs. peared. The population on the flanks of And without them, how could this place Mount Rose was the only one known in ever again mean anything to a 10-year- Nevada, but sometime before 2000 it, too, old? had vanished. Those frogs surely played a My head and heart battled over what role in my decision to return to school for to do next. The heart won. For the next a degree in conservation biology. I read hour, I scoured that stream, my heart about their demise through the distance searching for frogs my head knew were of field guides and journals. long gone. I returned to the boulder. ~ Something monumental happened to me In the early 2000s both my grandparents here all those years ago, and I was torn passed away, and that got me reminiscing between jubilation and despair. There’s about our picnics and those frogs, which no adjective to describe it; it was akin to are now known as Sierra Nevada yellow- bittersweet, but amplified. The time for legged frogs (Rana sierrae). Genetic picnics had passed; both the frogs and my analysis concluded that those inhabiting grandparents were gone. But the trees, the Northern and Central Sierra were campsite, and meadow were still here, distinct from populations in the Southern and so was I. Sierra and the mountains of Southern California. The species was split in two. Joseph Belli is a wildlife biologist Both were eventually listed under the who writes from Pacheco Pass in Endangered Species Act, but not before central California. He is the author the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog had of The Diablo Diary, a collection of vanished from over 90 percent of essays from California’s its range. Diablo Range. REBEKA RYVOLA www.hcn.org High Country News 23 PERSPECTIVE

President Donald Trump welcomes attendees at his rally for Republican Senate candidate Matt Rosendale in Great Falls, Montana. TONY BYNUM

Sightseeing at the political circus In Montana, Trump’s spectacle draws a crowd — for now

When Judy Barbelt staggered into the small town upstream from Great Falls on the Rocky Mountain Front and mention Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls on the Missouri River. “I think he’s tied up how much you love wolves, and you’ll see Thursday, July 5, her husband, Lee, was with Soros,” she said. I asked her where what I mean. visibly relieved. They’d both waited sever- she got that information — Facebook? “I And Montana’s image as the last al hours under the harsh Montana sun to don’t trust Facebook,” she scoffed, before refuge of stolid, respectful rural people see President Donald Trump speak, and explaining that she got her news primar- belies a history and enduring culture of Judy, in her late 60s, was flushed, sweat- ily from members-only Facebook groups. bigotry that makes Trump’s popularity ing and limping. Lee reached out and “But I’m not going to tell you what they less baffling. The same year that Wilmot caressed his wife’s shoulder. They wore are.” Collins, a Liberian refugee, won the may- matching black “America” T-shirts and Judy’s belief that Trump would fit oral race in our capital, Helena, the state NEWS “Make America Great Again” hats embel- in here — that he’s just an average Joe Legislature proposed an anti-transgender COMMENTARY lished with gold oak leaves on the bills. trapped in a billionaire’s fake tan and “bathroom bill” and passed an anti-Shar- BY ELLIOTT “Long line?” I asked. Judy muttered an ill-fitting suit — is pervasive in Montana, ia bill, later vetoed by the Democratic WOODS expletive under her breath, then smiled. as it is in much of rural America, and I governor. I’ve seen “White Pride” and “I said, ‘Frick!’ ” she joked. “We’re hard- have often struggled to understand why swastika tattoos and heard racist com- core Trump supporters,” she said proudly. my neighbors find it so easy to relate to ments thrown around even in Montana’s “You can’t buy him, he loves America as him. I think of Montanans as generally most liberal towns. much as we do, and he’s not a quitter. He polite people who are often reluctant to Looking around at the crowd flowing would fit in here in Montana.” express their opinions or boast. Mean- into the arena, however, it was hard to Judy said she was lukewarm about while, Trump is loud and bombastic. ignore the feeling that Trump’s unrepen- Matt Rosendale, Montana’s Republican He is notoriously germ-averse, and one tant rudeness is central to his appeal WEB EXTRA candidate for U.S. Senate, on whose be- wonders how he’d handle mucking stalls here. The rally was heavy on T-shirts and Read more from Elliott half the rally was ostensibly being held. or gutting an elk. However, while I’ve buttons with aggressive messages clearly Woods and all our But she didn’t have any doubts about met plenty of unassuming rancher types designed to anger “liberal snowflakes,” commentators at Rosendale’s competition, incumbent in Montana, I’ve also met my share of even though such people are exceedingly www.hcn.org Democrat Jon Tester, a farmer from a loudmouths. Just walk into a bar along hard to find at Trump rallies, or any-

24 High Country News August 6, 2018 Republican congressional nomination, similarly devoid of substantive refer- he put out an ad that attracted national ences to Montana, focusing instead on attention, in which he shot down a drone the size of the crowd at his inauguration, with a hunting rifle to express his op- the enduring evil of the Clinton family, position to domestic spying. Daines and the sleaziness of the lying media, Eliza- Gianforte are typical of the Republican beth Warren’s heritage, and the success Party that preceded Trump, eager to echo of Elton John, which Trump said he has populist sentiments about respecting the managed to surpass without even own- flag and the war on Christianity, but also ing a musical instrument. “I don’t have buttoned-up and allergic to controversy a guitar or an organ. No organ,” Trump (although Gianforte famously body- said. “This is the only musical: the mouth. slammed a reporter on the campaign And hopefully the brain attached to the trail). Daines did not endorse Trump mouth, right?” In a later analysis, the until late in the 2016 primary, and when Washington Post concluded that 76 per- he finally did, he said, “Donald Trump cent of Trump’s claims were only loosely, was not my first choice, he was not my if at all, tethered to fact. second choice, but I’m going to do all I The president spoke for an hour and can to make sure that Hillary Clinton is a half; people started leaving in ones not elected.” Both Daines and Gianforte and twos after about 45 minutes. By refuse to hold town halls in Montana, the one-hour mark there was a steady fearing the kind of confrontation that stream of people flowing toward the door. ensnared former Utah Republican Rep. I wondered what the turnout would be Jason Chaffetz in Salt Lake last year. if Trump came to Montana again. Short Short on None of the Montana politicians who on substance and heavy on spectacle, substance spoke that Thursday said much of any- Trump plays better in tweets and cable thing about Montana. There was no men- news sound bites, which can be consumed and heavy on tion of the farm bill, for example, which comfortably from home. In Great Falls, I spectacle, Trump is up for renewal this year. The House waited for Trump to say something about version would cut millions of Ameri- how the government might help Montana plays better in cans from the rolls of the Supplemental escape the clutches of a substance abuse tweets and cable Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, epidemic that now accounts for over 65 also known as food stamps. In Montana, percent of Child and Family Services news sound bites, 120,000 people could lose their benefits cases and has cost Montana hospitals and you can get — roughly 10 percent of the population. nearly a billion dollars since 2010, but all (In Cascade County, where the rally took he had to offer were vague commitments your fill of those place, roughly 20 percent of children live to support ICE and crack down on MS-13. below the poverty line.) The Senate bill, In a state with one of the highest sui- from home. by contrast, protects SNAP, crop insur- cide rates in the country, where over 13 where else in Montana. A typical example ance programs and the Conservation Re- percent of the population lives in poverty, bore crossed AR-15s and read, “I am serve Program, and it has the support of and where public schools could face over politically incorrect, I say Merry Christ- both Daines and Tester. It’s a bipartisan $20 million in budget cuts next year, mas, God Bless America, I own guns, eat effort that seemed at odds with the rally’s Trump joked that Montanans were “tired bacon, and salute our flag & thank our raging rhetoric. of winning,” and that constituents had troops. If this offends you, I don’t care. In As for Trump’s remarks, they were sent Daines to ask him to slow down the God we trust.” When Trump finally took the stage at around 4 in the afternoon, he quickly trotted out Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines. “Every morning I wake up and thank God that Hillary Clinton is not president of the United States,” Daines said, “and that Donald Trump is.” The crowd roared. Greg Gianforte, Montana’s Republican congressman, also spoke briefly, followed by Matt Rosendale, who said the president is fighting for “those miners down in Colstrip who produce that beautiful clean coal.” There is no such thing as clean coal, and Colstrip is actually in the process of reducing its capacity because of demand for renew- ables from its biggest customers — Or- egon and Washington — but the crowd did not seem to mind Rosendale’s magical thinking. Not surprisingly, Trump didn’t mention that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — a climate change denier who sued the EPA on behalf of energy companies as Oklahoma attorney general — had resigned that very morning following months of ethics scandals. Of the three Montana politicians, Rosendale follows Trump’s model most Rather than bringing up issues like the substance abuse epidemic in Montana, Trump focused closely. During a 2014 campaign for the on the crowds at his inauguration, the media and cracking down on MS-13. TONY BYNUM www.hcn.org High Country News 25 pace of victories. “I said, ‘Steve, go back said. When I asked her what she thought broke out while I was inside, but things to the people. … Tell them Trump can’t about Stormy Daniels and the way had reached a détente by the time I honor that request,’ ” Trump said. Trump talks about women, she said, “I exited. The Trump supporters passing by At one point, Trump said of the think it’s sick.” shouted “commie scum” at the protesters, crowds at his rallies, “Why do they come?” “I thought it would be a once-in-a- along with insults laden with four-letter I feared the answer was a dark one: They lifetime opportunity,” said Vicki Roath, words and rude gestures. A man wear- come for the same reason mobs have as- 68, a retired church secretary from Great ing an American flag do-rag and riding a sembled throughout history — to watch Falls who came with her husband, Lee, Harley throttled his engine and glared at the guillotine fall, to watch men fling 65, a Vietnam veteran who did two tours the protesters while an armored vehicle ropes over tree limbs, to watch things on medevac helicopters with the Marine surrounded by heavily armed policemen burn. I looked at all the children in the Corps and now works as a statistician looked on. audience, their faces beaming up at their for a local hospital. Vicki, who considers A few steps away from the policemen, parents as they joined in chants of “build herself a conservative, said she “really among the protesters, I found Gloria Zell, that wall” and “lock her up,” and I felt a struggled” with the last election and 66, from Shelby, Montana. She was talk- At one point, profound sadness. This man was a hero chose Trump as the “lesser of two evils.” ing to a Trump supporter in a skirt and to them, a role model. In this simple way, But she has been disappointed with the a MAGA hat who was trying to convince Trump said of the danger of the Trump presidency goes constant scandals and, more recently, Zell and her friends — over the roaring the crowds at far beyond his reckless policies: His influ- with the family separation policy. “As Harley engine — that human trafficking ence will be generational. a mother, that would just kill me,” she rings exploiting the porous U.S.-Mexico his rallies, “Why As for what the rally portends about said. Lee, who wore khakis and a sport border were engaged in organ harvest- do they come?” November’s elections, the answer is coat, said he voted for Trump “to be ing. Zell was trying hard not to lose her probably not much. No one I spoke to felt against Obama,” but like his wife, he’s patience as the woman said, repeatedly, I feared the very strongly about Rosendale one way uncomfortable with Trump’s vulgarity. “You have to open your heart.” Zell, a U.S. answer was a or the other, beyond a vague loyalty to Lee said he appreciated Tester’s work citizen, came from Michoacán 40 years the Republican ticket, and several said on behalf of veterans, and respected the ago. I asked her if anyone had specifically dark one: They they liked Tester and might vote for him. senator for his opposition to the nomina- singled her out because of her brown come for the Tickets to the event were free, and I sus- tion of Admiral Ronny Jackson to head skin, and she told me one man walked pected a large number of people turned the Department of Veterans Affairs. up and said, “I only know one word in same reason up just for the show. “I’ve never met a “It’s not a political thing — do the right Spanish, and it’s puta.” The word means mobs have president or been to an event like this,” thing for the people,” Lee said. Moments “bitch,” or more accurately, “prostitute.” said Kelly Silverstein, 42, a home nurse’s later, when Trump attacked Tester over “It’s really disturbing,” Gloria’s hus- assembled aide. She came with her elderly parents his opposition to Jackson, Lee shot me a band, Zane, 69, told me. “I knew we were throughout and wore a pink “Keep America Great” knowing glance. in dire straits, but all of this confirms my hat, the new slogan of the Trump 2020 If there was a significant takeaway worst fears.” Zane, who carried a large history — campaign. Silverstein said she didn’t from Trump’s rambling monologue, it’s American flag, noted that the protesters to watch a follow politics closely, but that she was that his shtick hasn’t evolved much: He’s had sung the national anthem. When peo- deeply concerned about school shootings still campaigning against Hillary. On ple gave them the finger, they responded guillotine fall, to and gun violence, and that she favored the edge of the Montana prairie, that with the peace sign. watch men fling stricter gun control. She hoped her son, a still draws a crowd, for now. Outside student at Montana State University in the arena, about two hundred protest- Elliott Woods is a freelance writer in Liv- ropes over tree Bozeman, would stay away from Great ers were gathered, holding signs that ingston, Montana. He is a correspondent limbs, to watch Falls forever. “There aren’t good jobs and read “Love Trumps Hate” and “Love at Outside Magazine and a contributing there’s too much drugs and alcohol,” she Builds Bridges Not Walls.” A scuffle editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review. things burn.

Outside the arena, about 200 protesters gather. Passing Trump supporters threw insults and lewd hand gestures at them, which were met with peace signs and a singing of the national anthem. TONY BYNUM

26 High Country News August 6, 2018 ESSAY | BY XXX

Caption. CREDIT Minion hed Body flush left U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

CALIFORNIA Natural Resources, which declared bankruptcy Angela Hernandez, 23, will always have an amaz- in 2015. The missing tax money was a blow to ing story to tell if anybody ever asks her about the county, as it’s used mostly to ﬁnance public her most interesting road trip. The adventure schools. So the county played hardball, hiring began when she set out on a journey from her both local and out-of-state lawyers to build its home in Portland, Oregon, to Lancaster, Cali- case against Wyoming’s largest coal company. fornia. On the way through Big Sur along the Campbell County didn’t get everything it was Northern California coast, she swerved to avoid owed, but the settlement will bring in close to a small animal in the road and lost control of $15 million. Now, county commissioners are her Jeep, which hurtled over the cliff to the urging the state to attach liens to a company’s beach below. “They say I fell somewhere around property “at the time of production in favor of 250 feet. The only thing I really remember after the county” — thereby avoiding future problems that was waking up. I was still in my car and I of this sort, reports the Casper Star-Tribune. could feel water rising over my knees.” Though And in California, the Nestlé Corp., after bot- her head hurt and she was bleeding, reports tling billions of gallons of water from the San the Willamette Week, Hernandez found a tool to Bernardino National Forest for 30 years without smash the driver’s side window so that she could a current permit, will face limits on how much crawl out of the car and onto dry land. But her water it can withdraw, reports EcoWatch. On accident was completely invisible to drivers on June 27, the Forest Service offered Nestlé a the road above, and she remained invisible, too, three-year permit that ups its annual fees from though she yelled for help. Hernandez survived $624 to $2,050 and requires the corporation to alone for a week, despite sustaining a brain maintain “minimum ﬂows” of surface water. hemorrhage, four fractured ribs, two broken The Forest Service said the watershed’s health collarbones, a collapsed lung, and ruptured blood is now rated as “impaired,” and that water vessels in both eyes. Despite her injuries, she extraction will be allowed only “when there is was calm and resourceful, rigging a hose from water available consistent with the forest’s Land her car after three days to collect fresh water Management Plan.” Nestlé, which bottles the MONTANA dripping from cliff moss. “It would be a lie to say Anything to cool of in this heat. spring water it captures under the brand Ar- MARC LUTSKO that things got easier as the days passed. They rowhead, has operated with remarkable freedom never did,” Hernandez wrote on her Facebook in the national forest: In 2016, for example, the page. “But they sure got predictable.” On July “to climb 30 feet up into a tree.” Perched on a company depleted Strawberry Creek by piping 13, a couple hiking on the beach found Hernan- branch, she used a satellite phone to call the 32 million gallons from San Bernardino Moun- dez, and her ordeal was over at last. Hernandez Okanogan County sheriff, who then called the tain. The proposed permit is a victory for The wrote: “I’m sitting here in the hospital, laughing state Department of Natural Resources, which Desert Sun, the newspaper that wrote an exposé with my sister until she makes broken bones sent a helicopter to the rescue. The noise from of Nestlé’s decades-long water grab, as well as hurt. … I don’t know, you guys, life is incredible.” the rotors scared away the gathered wolves and for the three environmental groups that went People like Hernandez are pretty incredible, too. enabled the staffer to climb down from the tree. to court to try to halt the water withdrawals: It is somewhat reassuring to note that wolf at- the Center for Biological Diversity, the Cour- WASHINGTON tacks in this country remain “exceedingly rare,” age Campaign Institute and the Story of Stuff Not far from the tiny towns of Winthrop and with only eight aggressive incidents recorded Project. Nestlé has 60 days to decide whether to Twisp, in west-central Washington, a Forest between 1962 and 2001. accept the permit’s terms. Service staffer was doing some surveying work in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest THE WEST WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see when a wolf “approached her,” reports The Asso- Sometimes, private companies get a well-deserved hcn.org. ciated Press. This is unusual wolf behavior, but comeuppance, though it can be costly. After then something even more unusual happened: spending nearly $1 million in legal fees, Camp- Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and Bear spray failed to deter the animal and other bell County, Wyoming, has recouped much of often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag wolves suddenly appeared, forcing the staffer the $20 million in unpaid taxes owed by Alpha photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

High When I reeled in my first bluegill, a lead split-shot hung Country between my hook and bobber. When I killed my first News “ For people who care about the West. deer, 120 grains of lead brought it down. High Country News covers the important issues and Jesse Alston, in his essay, “Hunters and anglers need to get the lead out”, stories that are unique to the American West with a from Writers on the Range, hcn.org/wotr” magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

28 High Country News August 6, 2018