BOOKS AND ESSAYS SPECIAL ISSUE High Country ForN people whoews care about the West September 14, 2015 | $5 | Vol. 47 No. 16 | www.hcn.org 16 No. 47 | $5 Vol. 2015 14, September Close Ties in Big Landscapes Finding a bit of the Rockies The long road home for in Northern Mongolia one California tribe By Sarah Gilman By Ana Maria Spagna CONTENTS High Country News EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Paul Larmer MANAGING EDITOR Brian Calvert SENIOR EDITORS Jonathan Thompson Jodi Peterson ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling ONLINE EDITOR Tay Wiles D.C. CORRESPONDENT Elizabeth Shogren WRITERS ON THE RANGE EDITOR Betsy Marston ASSOCIATE DESIGNER Brooke Warren COPY EDITOR Diane Sylvain CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cally Carswell Craig Childs Sarah Gilman Judith Lewis Mernit Jeremy Miller Sierra Crane-Murdoch Michelle Nijhuis Horse tour guide Batdelger, above, demonstrates how to befriend reindeer in the Mongolian taiga. Right, three generations of Maidu, including elder CORRESPONDENTS Beverly Ogle, her daughter, Brenda Heard, and granddaughter, Yasmin Holbrook, display the traditional baskets woven with local willows by their Ben Goldfarb ancestor, Ce’éste (known as Nellie Thomas). SARAH GILMAN, LEFT, COURTESY MAIDU SUMMIT CONSORTIUM Krista Langlois Kate Schimel Josh Zaffos EDITORIAL FELLOW BOOKS AND ESSAYS Sarah Tory Close Ties in Big Landscapes SPECIAL ISSUE INTERNS Paige Blankenbuehler Gloria Dickie ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER FEATURES DEPARTMENTS Alexis Halbert DEVELOPMENT MANAGER 10 By Sarah Gilman 3 HCN.ORG NEWS IN BRIEF Alyssa Pinkerton Claustrophilia 8 THE HCN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT 24 The Exact Same Place By Ana Maria Spagna Christine List Research Fund, Dear Friends SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETER JoAnn Kalenak INSIDE 14 SPECIAL SECTION: HOT OFF THE PRESS MARKETPLACE WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel 4 Not on a rez: Finding a complete life in the urban West DATABASE/IT ADMINISTRATOR 28 MARKETPLACE Alan Wells Q&A with Erika T. Wurth. By Laura Pritchett COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 4 The counterpoint of home Q&A with Mitchell S. Jackson. By Devon Fredericksen 36 HEARD AROUND THE WEST Gretchen King By Betsy Marston FINANCE MANAGER 6 The landscape of inspiration Bev Magennis, author and artist, Beckie Avera follows her whims in New Mexico. By Devon Fredericksen ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Jan Hoffman 7 Agriculture and aesthetics go hand-in-glove CIRCULATION MANAGER By Page Lambert Tammy York Author Bryce Andrews pursues ranching and writing in Montana. CIRCULATION SYSTEMS ADMIN. Kathy Martinez BOOKS CIRCULATION Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, 15 A baker’s dozen of self-published books Stephanie Kyle 23 By Jodi Peterson ADVERTISING DIRECTOR The fall reading list David J. Anderson 31 Reviewed by Jenny Shank A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. GRANTWRITER Janet Reasoner 32 American Copper by Shann Ray. Reviewed by Melissa Mylchreest FOUNDER Tom Bell 33 Reviewed by Charles Finn On the cover Into the Valley by Ruth Galm. Tsaatan nomads in [email protected] 34 Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man a traditional felt [email protected] roundhouse, called a ger, [email protected] by Jason Mark and The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation [email protected] Reviewed by Emma Marris where these “people of the by Fred Pearce. reindeer” tend herds that BOARD OF DIRECTORS provide food, clothing and John Belkin, Colo. 35 ESSAY transportation in northern Beth Conover, Colo. Mongolia. Jay Dean, Calif. By Michael Engelhard Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Notes from the road to bestsellerdom ART WOLFE / ART WOLFE STOCK Wayne Hare, Colo. Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. High Country News (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Complete access Dan Stonington, Wash. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Printed on High independent media organization that covers the issues Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. POSTMASTER: recycled to subscriber-only Rick Tallman, Colo. paper. Luis Torres, N.M. Country that define the American West. Its mission is to inform Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. 800-905-1155. All content Andy Wiessner, Colo. and inspire people to act on behalf of the region’s rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 2 High Country News September 14, 2015 CONTENTS HCN.ORG NEWS iN bRi EF Editor’s note The real work On a hot, dusty August Saturday a honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where few years ago, people from all over it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the the North Fork Valley convened at a thing that it makes and the user of the made thing.” country veterinarian’s office just outside This special issue of High Country News looks at what Paonia, Colorado (HCN’s hometown). we all can do as a community, when we let go of our We came with paintbrushes and paint, Western individualism. Despite our rugged reputation, we wheelbarrows, buckets, rakes and shovels, are often stronger together than standing alone. Rebuilding food and drink. About a dozen of us, ranging in age from 8 to a connection to a place can also build connections among 70-something, got to work scraping and repainting the shabby people, as Washington writer Ana Maria Spagna describes old building, cleaning up the grounds and repairing the roof. in “The Exact Same Place,” in which Mountain Maidu We did all this for Dr. Norman Vincent (known around Indians formed a broad coalition to reclaim a sacred valley town as “Doc V”) — the man who stitches up our injured in California’s Sierra Nevada from a utility company. In dogs and tends to our sick cats at any time of the day interviews with writers such as Erika T. Wurth, Mitchell S. Mushroom hunters or night, vaccinating them and cleaning their teeth, and Jackson and Bryce Andrews, we hear other perspectives on A colorful and diverse collection of workers spends charging just a fraction of what a big-city vet would. After transcending the limitations — and learning the lessons — months scouring forest floors for money-making we’d finished, Doc V’s place was transformed. And, in a way, of community. And in “Claustrophilia,” contributing editor fungi, as seen in this gallery. Here, Dao sorts burn so were we. Sarah Gilman finds that in the harsh, unpeopled spaces of morels in Carmacks in the Yukon Territory. He and his wife, Aloune, fled war-torn Laos in the 1970s That night, I looked up a half-remembered passage from Mongolia, as in the American West, closeness is more than Horse tour guide Batdelger, above, demonstrates how to befriend reindeer in the Mongolian taiga. Right, three generations of Maidu, including elder and now spend nine months of the year on the Beverly Ogle, her daughter, Brenda Heard, and granddaughter, Yasmin Holbrook, display the traditional baskets woven with local willows by their the writer and critic Wendell Berry: “And the real name of comfort: It can mean survival. (Especially if you haven’t road picking and buying mushrooms. ancestor, Ce’éste (known as Nellie Thomas). SARAH GILMAN, LEFT, COURTESY MAIDU SUMMIT CONSORTIUM our connection to this everywhere different and differently brought a tent.) OLIVIER MATTHON hcne.ws/hunt-mushrooms named earth is ‘work.’ We are connected by work even to the Whether to get through one bitterly cold night, or to places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is thrive over a lifetime, we need each other more than we’re clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin willing to admit. Accepting that we are part of a community, the percent of California’s of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is that we rely on each other — that can be where the real 8-27moisture deficit attributable to warm tempera- ‘good work,’ for good work involves much giving of honor. It “good work” is. —Jodi Peterson, senior editor tures caused by anthropogenic climate change. CALLY CARSWELL hcne.ws/CAdrought-climate Contributors Michael Sarah Melissa Mylchreest writes Jenny Chemistry 101 on the Animas Engelhard Gilman has poetry and nonfiction in Shank’s novel lives in Cor- plenty of western Montana. When The Ringer While there are a variety of ways that mining dova, Alaska, awkward Dr. she’s not writing, she likes to won the can pollute watersheds, the most insidious where it’s Fleischman cook, make High Plains and persistent is acid mine drainage, a natural impossible to moments in functional Book Award phenomenon exacerbated by mining. Acid mine drive to any- her new city art, and and was a drainage was the root cause of the Gold King where with a bookstore. He is of Portland, spend as finalist for blowout, and it plagues tens of thousands of working on a book about po- Oregon, where she is an much time the Mountains & Plains abandoned mines across the West. It’s almost lar bears but will not consider HCN contributing editor and as possible Independent Booksellers impossible to fix, and it lasts forever. How it works: bringing a bear along on his freelance writer. She was the outside. Association’s award. Her before mining next promotion tour. magazine’s associate editor work has appeared in The Snowmelt and rain seep in Paonia, Colorado, for more Laura Atlantic, the Washington into natural cracks and Charles than six years. Paskus is an Post, the Guardian and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater Finn is the independent others.