Bodies of two experienced hikers found after pair went missing on hiking trip; 2026's particularly bad wildfire seas; Delta County School Board passed a ban on transgender students participating on sports teams aligned with their gender identity

Your weekly Regional Science Update.

6000 Road in Montrose County closed indefinitely due to flooding; Colorado farmers and ranchers looking to hire extra help next year could qualify for up to five thousand dollars in state funding; Tina Peters' travel raises questions about parole; The list of states authorizing the storage of carbon dioxide thousands of feet underground is growing; Miss Shirley brings story hour to Gunnison

In early September, President Trump signed an executive order that continued to rely on big-bad-wolf myths. He claimed that living in wolf country is “very dangerous.”He then directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether gray wolves and Mexican wolves should lose federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Without waiting for an answer, he also directed Burgum to support Congressional removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list.

Montrose County focused on next year's budget; Montrose Police Department searching for missing manInside the 2026 Uncompahgre Powwow

An interview with artist Kelly Moody at the 25th annual Mountain Harvest Festival in Paonia, Colorado.

Delta County School Board bans transgender students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity; Montrose pastor arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse; Taking farmland out of production can impact wildfire mitigation; Flower dyeing at the Mountain Harvest Festival

“What is the most important thing about writing?” That’s the question botanist and writer Susan J. Tweit asked Barry Lopez. His answer helped inform her newest book, Earthbound: A Year of Mindful Connection in Nature. We talk with Susan about how she weaves photography, science, haiku and spiritual practice through each chapter, and how these different genres help us connect more wholly with the natural world. We also talk about making up language for our own passions to better understand them, the reciprocal relationship between reader and writer, the effects of negative self-talk, and how simple conversations with other creatives fuel and ignite our own creative endeavors.A plant ecologist by training, Susan J. Tweit traded fieldwork for writing when she realized she loved telling the stories in the data. Her fourteen books don’t pigeonhole well at all, ranging from memoirs (Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying and Walking Nature Home: A Life’s Journey) to nature (Seasons on the Pacific Coast and Seasons in the Desert, Chronicle Books) and travel (Colorado Scenic Byways). They are united by the idea of turophilia and “re-storying” the human-nature bond. Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers from Audubon and Popular Mechanics to the Los Angeles Times and High Country News, and in Best American Nature Writing along with two dozen other anthologies. She lives in an orchard-growing valley on Colorado’s rural West Slope, where big sagebrush perfumes the air and high mesas define the horizon. Her newest book is Earthbound: A Year of Mindful Connection in Nature.

One of the super-powers of mindfulness is that we get to observe our thoughts and let go of the ones that don't serve us. We learn that our thoughts are not who we are, we don't have to believe them and that we are the ones who create them, so we can just as easily choose to uncreate them.