Writers on the Range
Tuesdays at 10:00 am
Writers on the Range is a Western opinion service, providing content to newspapers across the West. An independent nonprofit, Writers on the Range is dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. Each week on KVNF a new short feature, read either by the author or by Editor Betsy Marston.
To find out more, or to sign up for the Writers on the Range newsletter, visit writersontherange.org If you’ve thought about it, we’ve probably written about it.
Latest Episodes
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The Glen Canyon Dam is dangerously close to deadpool because it was built with a significant design flaw: There is no drain at the bottom. If the reservoir continues to decline, billions of gallons of water would be trapped in the dead-pool reservoir with no easy way to release the water into the Grand Canyon, writes Zak Podmore, who has a new book coming out on the subject. What once was heresy, he says, must now be considered: Drain Lake Powell.
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For 40 years, writes Ben Long, biologist Diane K. Boyd studied the return of wolves to the West, first at Glacier National Park where they trickled in from Canada. Then she moved to Montana's North Fork of the Flathead River, a place so wild and remote that when wolves colonized it on their own, they joined grizzlies, lions, wolverines, lynx and more. The major lesson she learned through the years was that entanglements with humans, especially the ones who wished wolves had never come back, made her job difficult: "Wolf management is people management. Period," she writes in her new memoir, A Woman Among Wolves – My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery. Her hope, she says, is for a more tolerant world: "We can live without wolves, but the world is a much richer place with wolves in it.”
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Colorado’s famous 567-mile Colorado Trail got going in the 1980s, thanks to people like Gudy Gaskill, who recruited and worked with hundreds of volunteers every summer. She taught them how to build trail with tools like Pulaskis, and they worked hard during week-long stints in the high country. Now, the trail that spans the Rockies is a beloved institution, and volunteers continue to show up every summer to maintain the trail.
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This year, writer Katie Klingsporn spent four months regularly visiting Arapaho Charter High School on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. She wanted to know how principal Katie Law had turned the school around, from zero graduates in 2018, to 14 graduates this spring, with eight going on to college or Job Corps. The answer was Law's total dedication to her students. She never gave up on them. She helped them deal with the many challenges they faced. The result, as Klingsporn puts it, is something to celebrate: "One caring adult can make an enormous difference in a student’s life."
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Wilderness designated by Congress occupies just 2.7 percent of the Lower 48 states, yet mountain bikers have convinced Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee that their sport fits into areas deliberately set aside from motorized or mechanized intrusions. Wilderness advocate Kevin Proescholt warns that bikers are not alone in wanting in: Rock climbers, trail runners, paragliders and recreational pilots all want their piece of the wilderness pie. But as the writer Wallace Stegner put it, "Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…”
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Before water managers decide that agricultural ditches lose too much water destined for the Colorado River, writer Rick Knight urges us to remember that the West's wetlands have been largely created by porous ditches. Wildlife, trees and plants reap the benefit of "inefficient' irrigating, he says, but once ditches are piped, semi-arid conditions would take over.
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If you ever plan to embark on a guided outdoor trip, you might consider taking advice from writer Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, who can tell you what to expect from the great outdoors. With tips ranging from efficient packing to “don't be a twit,” Woodruff is prepared for any scenario.
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Molly Absolon writes about the Teton Pass highway disaster in Wyoming. It's adding hours of drivetime for the thousands of workers who make the resort town of Jackson function.
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High winds, hail, catastrophic wildfires starting from grass as well as overgrown forests—all add up to a perfect storm causing more expensive premiums for insurance in Colorado, writes Dave Marston. And dry land and higher temperatures add to the risk of wildfire. Western Colorado insurer Kevin Parks has some tips for people looking at where they live in a brand new, defensive way, but it means making some changes. Among other hazards, trees that provide welcome shade might just be way too close to the house.
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Writer Jacob Richards grew up in Aspen and learned as a kid that if his dentist couldn't afford to live in Aspen— commuting from over 70 miles away— then he hadn't a prayer of living there either. But then he watched as commuter towns became pricey. Richards says Aspen's lesson is that satellite towns sending workers to rich resort towns like Aspen must come together and press hard for worker housing.