Project 2025 puts public lands in peril

Google “Project 2025.” It’s a 920-page manifesto for a potential second Trump administration that has something (bad) for everyone, but our great public lands estate is put in particular per...

Paddling Birch Creek, Alaska: Dispatch from a warming world

This summer, with Fort Lewis College alumni and a current FLC history student, seven of us canoed Birch Creek, which is one of Alaska’s wild and scenic rivers east of Fairbanks. We paddled f...

‘Content to move at a cow’s pace. Ungulates amble’

I like cows. Yes, I am a bovinophile. They are warm cuddly independent beasts who choose to go through life at their own pace. If you want to befriend a cow, you must adapt to its leisurely ...

Unmined coal ‘follows market, law, public opinion’

The coal mining industry reacted with outrage when the Bureau of Land Management recently announced plans to stop issuing new coal leases on the eastern plains of Wyoming and Montana. From i...

‘I’ve become a person I could not even imagine in my youth’

The quest for a personal and unique identity attracts a great deal of attention these days. Contemporary society seems to urge each of us to adopt an identity, a definition of who we are com...

Rapid growth, water: ‘Not just concerning; it’s alarming’

Colorado and the other six states that share the Colorado River will not solve the current water crisis without implementing intelligent land use. We can address our disconnect between water...

‘Advocate, reliable source of support’ came in principal at Indigenous Wyo. school

By the time she took the dais at the Arapaho Charter High School graduation this spring, Principal Katie Law was beyond tired. She’d spent the last two days coaching students at the state tr...

‘30 bills sponsored, signed in 2024’

Recently I wrote about what we in the state Legislature did for Colorado this year; I am proud to have been a part of that team effort. This month, I present the 30 bills I sponsored and the...

After grief, caregiver may recognize new signs of life’

What do you have left in your life when you’ve lost the two men you loved most because of dementia? Gone are the dreams of future times together, that data bank of shared memories, that one-...

‘30 bills sponsored, signed in 2024’

Recently I wrote about what we in the state Legislature did for Colorado this year; I am proud to have been a part of that team effort. This month, I present the 30 bills I sponsored and the...

Mountain bikes and wilderness: ‘Must we get everything in the outdoors?’

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” — Wallace Stegner The goal of the Wilderness Act, now celebrating its 60th birthday, wa...

‘Far better ways to gather, sort’ mustangs

An enduring symbol, the mustang, symbolizes the largely mythological vision of the West as a place that is wild and free, similar to the eagle and the bison. The word comes from the Spanish ...