Ernie Atencio

This morning I ran into a friend who works for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, a local AmeriCorps and Youth Conservation Corps program that employs young people in all variety of community service and conservation projects around northern New Mexico. He is always so pumped about his work, new educational initiatives, inspiring success stories. I’ve worked with youth in the past – was once an Outward Bound “hood in the woods” myself – so I know it can be both brutally challenging and deeply gratifying. I understand why he’s always excited.

Today he was talking about the New Mexico No Child Left Inside Coalition. This is not new, but got me thinking and plowing back through some old material.

Richard Louv’s 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, certainly got a lot of people’s attention. That it is healthy for kids to have unstructured play outside is not a new idea, but Louv’s book drew clear connections between a deficit of nature in children’s lives and a costly epidemic of learning disabilities, behavioral disorders and childhood obesity. And the final link is the kind of adults those kids with nature deficit disorder turn into. No wonder we’re in such and environmental mess.

Louv spoke at a Quivira Coalition conference in Albuquerque two years ago and had hard-bitten ranchers teary-eyed as they recounted their own wild country upbringing. It rings true.

Since then dozens of New Mexico youth, educational and conservation organizations have coalesced together to get children unplugged and outside to learn in and from nature. I know people imagine all us Westerners always out on the land, running cattle, hiking the peaks, hunting and fishing and running rivers. But as one example of the disconnect, the New Mexico State Parks Division estimates that although 80 percent of our rural state’s school kids live within a half-hour of a state park, less than 10 percent have ever visited one. The coalition proposes to pay for this outdoor education program with a 1% tax on the sale of TVs and video games (undoubtedly the prime culprits), which would raise an estimated $4 million dollars a year. That could provide a lot of precious and transformational experiences for a lot of children.

I’ve got nothing against tests and educational performance standards, but our local school district seems to be in such a perpetual panic to meet No Child Left Behind standards that my son probably spends more of his school day preparing for and taking tests than he spends outside. We’ll all be happier when it’s the other way around.

Mary K. Bowannie

I was talking to Mario Atencio, one of my students in the Native American Studies program at the University of New Mexico, about the challenges of blogging. Putting one’s thoughts out there, keeping the word count tight, meeting the proverbial deadline, and addressing the issues from a personal (rather than a reporter) standpoint. Mario listened patiently as we sat outside on a very cold, windy day in Albuquerque, NM, waiting for The Longest Walk 2 event to start. When I finally stopped thinking out loud, he turned and looked at me and said, “Just let it flow.”

So here it goes.

The Longest Walk 2 event April 11 in Albuquerque was powerful and empowering. The local media coverage was mostly photo ops of the dancers, the colorful side of the event. Many folks heard the words of Dennis Banks and were reminded to keep fighting the fight. Banks feels not much has changed over the years.

While I respect Dennis Banks’ sacrifice and contributions, I have to disagree with his statement. Yes, some things haven’t changed: Indigenous lands and our sacred places are still being contaminated, endangered and raped. Tribes wrestle politically on a tribal, state and federal level to assert and exercise their sovereignty.

So what has changed?

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Art Goodtimes created quite a stir a few days ago when he announced that Club 20 should henceforth be known as Club 19. Art’s been a friend for years. He’s a poet and for the past decade or so, he has served as a San Miguel County commissioner. And as far as I know, he’s the only elected Green Party officeholder in Colorado.

He was also an officer in Club 20, which bills itself as “the voice of the Western Slope” in Colorado. Its membership ranges from individuals and corporations to counties and two Ute nations. That’s a diverse group; just the counties range from Democratic upscale resort zones like Pitkin County (its seat is Aspen) to Republican cattle-and-mining areas like Moffat County (Craig).

Basically, Art said the extractive energy industry had taken over Club 20, and it no longer represented the interests of places like Telluride and San Miguel County. The best account I’ve read is on Colorado Confidential, and there’s no point in repeating it here.

When Club 20 started in 1954, its main goal was better roads on the Western Slope of Colorado. There were actually 21 counties involved, but “Club 21 sounded too much like a night spot,” then executive director Greg Walcher told me once, “so they made it Club 20.”
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Ed Quillen

The other day I received an email from an acquaintance whom I’d lost touch with. The last I’d heard, he was living in Taos, N.M. In my reply, I started to ask if he was still a “Taosite.” Or maybe “Taosian.” Neither seemed right, so I settled for “Are you still living in Taos?”

As it turned out, he wasn’t, but I remained curious as to the proper term for a Taos resident, and eventually found an answer in The American Language, by H.L. Mencken. It says “Taoseño” or “Taoseña,” depending on gender.

Often this is an easy question to answer. I live in Salida, Colorado, so I’m a Salidan. (The town was founded as South Arkansas; had that awkward name remained I suppose I’d be a South Arkansawyer.) But am I a Coloradoan or Coloradan?

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Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Northern New Mexico is rich with tradition and beauty — pinon nut gathering, pilgrimages to a church known for its healing powers, dramatic landscapes captured on canvas by Georgia O’Keeffe. But another, darker tradition scars the lives of its residents — heroin addiction, at a rate four times the national average.

The New York Times just ran a story examining this drug plague. The article quotes Angela Garcia, an anthropologist who in 2006 wrote a deeply personal story for HCN about the same topic (”Land of Disenchantment” won that year’s Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for reporting on drug and alcohol use). Angela described the messy and painful lives of addicts and their needless deaths from overdoses, and traces the drug use to a profound sense of loss among the Hispanic people of the region, whose families were pushed off their historical land grant properties more than a century ago:
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Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Have you ever stood on the edge of a strip mine, stared into the kelly-green waste water pooled at the bottom, the bright mineral colors of eroding earth and tailings, and thought to yourself: “God, that’s beautiful”? Then there are the lit towers — strange gothic cities — of coal mines and refineries at night; the eery, soundless sweep of oil derricks pumping in a greening field; the twisting arcs of sprawling suburb streets seen from the air.

If you’re like me, you find yourself struck dumb by such scenes. There is something of the sublime in them. They have the power to entice and repel, and challenge us with the idea that development, industry, even poison, have their own strange, terrible loveliness.

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Felice Pace

Ed Quillen’s Writers on the Range essay in the March 3rd HCN - “We’re in the land of Lincoln” - is not only erudite and well written, it is also a public service.

Americans are notoriously ahistorical in outlook. Westerners are often even worse - many of us believe outrageous myths about our past which function to hide not only past injustices but also current inequities and the likely consequences of current decisions. So anyone who provides a truly historical perspective is worthy of praise. LET’S SEE MORE ESSAYS WHICH PROVIDE WESTERN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES!

There is one problem with Quillen’s essay, however. He fails to sufficiently identify one of Lincoln’s most questionable western legacies - the railroad grants. During the 1860s Lincoln and the Republicans provided the big railroad corporations with generous land grants. The seminal law was the Pacific Railway Act signed into law by Lincoln on July 1, 1862.

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Fraser, Colo., is no longer “The Icebox of the Nation.” Don’t blame global warming — blame International Falls, Minn.

International Falls sits just south of the Canadian border; Fraser is a couple of miles down U.S. 40 from the Winter Park Ski Area. For years, the two towns have battled in court for the trademark to the phrase.

The rivalry between the two cold towns started back in the 1950s, and the legal disputes revolve around which one first described itself as the nation’s icebox. In 1986, International Falls got a trademark, and Fraser accepted $2,000 to drop its claim. About a year ago, though, Fraser discovered that International Falls had apparently let its trademark registration lapse, and filed for it.

But in February of this year, International Falls received a federal trademark, and so it is officially “The Icebox of the Nation.” Fraser has lost its motto.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Guess this is inevitable. With a half-million-dollar federal grant, an “educational software developer” now encourages us to pretend to howl at the moon. And run after elk. And, I presume — if it’s really realistic — chew into elk and sire pups.

As Steve Karnowski of the AP reports:

The new video game “WolfQuest” allows players to follow the call of the wild in the role of a wolf in Yellowstone National Park.

Players learn quickly, with help from realistic graphics, that wolves do a lot of running — across plains, through forests and up and down steep slopes.

“You have to learn how to hunt, survive, defend your territory and ultimately find a mate and establish your own pack,” said project director Grant Spickelmier …

The first episode, “Amethyst Mountain,” was officially released Dec. 20 as a free download at www.wolfquest.org …

In the first episode, as a solitary wolf roaming Amethyst Mountain in Yellowstone, players chase down elk and hares, relying on their eyes and sense of smell. When the “scent vision” screen toggles on, the background goes black and white and scent trails light up. The screen also shows how old the trails are.

To howl like a wolf, players just hit the “H” key, which in future episodes will help draw in their pack.

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Ray Ring

Senior Editor

David Nolt, writing for NewWest.Net, dissects a Montana development that illustrates a disturbing regionwide trend. The development is called the Ameya Preserve, and this blog has already found it irritating, here and here.

A few excerpts from Nolt:

There are many unique aspects to the proposed Ameya Preserve … but in one key respect the project is almost commonplace in the New West: it’s aimed at the ultra-rich, those who can afford to spend many millions of dollars on a second or third or fourth home.

… What the developers hope will set Ameya apart are its eco-friendliness and its emphasis on cultural amenities. Call it the thinking-man’s second-home community, or, if you’re more cynical, the liberal elite’s luxury retreat.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The New Yorker magazine broke the story with a very funny 700 words, and then The New York Times added a few more grins in its longer piece. Basically, a bunch of congressmen who are either indicted or enmeshed in scandals — including Idaho Sen. Larry Craig and Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens — happen to live on yachts in a marina neighborhood in D.C.

As the New Yorker’s opening line says:

There’s something about politicians and boats.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Today’s New York Times article about more and more people fleeing the cities for the resort towns of the West, and then telecommuting from there, offered few surprises. Most of us who live in the rural West have watched this phenomenon take root and then grow over the years. The Times’ John Leland sums it up:

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Time was you could tell the urban refugees in places like this: corporate achievers who quit the rat race to open a bed and breakfast or a candle shoppe.

Jim Moylan represents a new tribe in this bucolic mountain town, named for its loud sulfur spring. Mr. Moylan, 59, is a lawyer who specializes in securities and commodities work. When he moved from Chicago in 2003, he did not downscale his career for the small town, keeping his secretary and associates in Chicago and his clients around the country. He conducts his practice by fax and e-mail, just as he did in Chicago.

As a multi-generational native of the rural West myself, I am ambivalent about this sort of thing that technology, mostly the Internet, has made possible. It’s liberating to know that most of us — at least those of us who work mostly from a desk, in front of a computer — can work from wherever we please, as long as there’s a high speed Internet connection and cell phone reception. It increases our mobility, which, whether we like it or not, is part of American culture.

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