Letters From The West

Chequmegon Bay as the sun sets on Northland College The last 55 years or so has been a time of change of a geologic scale. The debate...

Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior, the home of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute The day I arrived at Northland College, August 27,...

The announcement last week  that Northland College of Ashland Wisconsin, my alma mater, would close at the end of this academic year ,...

Schafer Dam is on Lake Success near Porterville, Calif. and President Trump has drained water from the reservoir to aid the firefighting...

A vista in the backcountry of the Boise National Forest east of Boise. The Supreme Court refused to hear Utah’s lawsuit seeking to...

A wall of fire burns through California (Courtesy Tim Walton of Calfire) The one thing we know will happen in the wake of the giant fires...

Jimmy Carter and his family float down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho in 1978. By Rocky Barker The most significant land...

Grizzly Bear 399 in Grand Teton National Park with a cub by her side (National Park Service/ A.J. Adams) By Rocky Barker The life and...

Guide Mike Hicks looks at the hatchery steelhead caught by Brad Marczuk on the Salmon River 600 miles from the Pacific. Wild steelhead...

William Perry Pendley During the Vice-Presidential candidates debate last month Republican J.D. Vance raised the idea that we can solve...

The mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific Veteran Northwest Journalist Randy Stapilus is baffled that Idaho’s...

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm looks at fuel recycling facilities and liquid metal experiments at Oklo's lab at Argonne National...

Ice Harbor Dam dumps waters from the Snake into the Columbia Former President Donald Trump suggested there was a “large faucet” up North...

Jeff Wilson rarely missed a chance to make an encounter with an animal or a human a learning experience. The Iowa farm boy, who made a...

A falls in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness This week, 60 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act,...

We paddle the free-flowing Kennebec River a day after Edwards Dam came down (NRCM) Shrouded in the New England mist, Everett “Brownie”...

The Wapiti Fire near Stanley creates its own weather during the heat of the afternoon(U.S. Forest Service} The worst may be over for the...

Salmon still survive in the Columbia and Snake rivers and again depend on an election to safeguard their future

I stand before the mine adit where Pulaski survived the 1910 fire in 2010 The memory of Old Faithful in 1988 stuck I my mind as I crawled...

Sixty nine years ago, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 generated enough electricity to power a string of four light bulbs at what is now...