New West Feature
For Sale: The West’s Wild Horses
The Bureau of Land Management is holding adoptions for wild horses and burros June 24-25 in four Rocky Mountain states, following a June 18 sale in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
The size, personality and usefulness of wild horses varies by region, Wheatland, Wyoming, rancher Steve Mantle says. Generally, they make excellent hunting or wilderness companions, or even roping horses on a busy ranch.
“One I got comes from Colorado,” Mantle said, describing a stocky horse that stands 15 hands high. “I can heel on him. Can’t head on him. Start tons of colts on him. Probably the thing I’ve noticed the most about him is our north pasture, we raise about 300 head of prairie dogs. He will just hit a spot going right through that prairie dog town. He will not step in a hole.”
Mantle has broken horses as a BLM contractor for 13 years. Together with his two sons and a summer hand, Mantle works with 60-90 new animals each year, and his ranch is home to 100-160 head at any given time. The ranch will host its Steve Mantle Annual Adoption on June 25.
New West Feature
Wyoming Kids’ Outdoor Time Nearly Double National Average
While the nationwide trend of children spending time outdoors seems to be on a gradual decline, Wyoming shows some tentative promise.
A statewide study (PDF), conducted by the University of Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center, shows that Wyoming children spent almost twice the amount of time outside in August 2010 (3.7 hours a day) in comparison to the national average (two hours).
The survey found that most time spent outside was at home in the yard or neighborhood, doing chores, playing or participating in outdoor sports. But close behind were the 67 percent of kids who spent time in local parks. Also on the list were backpacking, hiking, camping, snow recreation, fishing, hunting, trapping and tracking.
The question of why Wyoming kids are so far ahead of the national average is more complicated to explain.
“We don’t really know all the reasons,” says Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead.
WyoFile Feature
Wyoming Insect Expert Turns Author
At the height of his scientific career, Jeffrey Lockwood walked away to teach in the humanities and write.
“The flame had gone out, in terms of science,” said the entomologist. “I really felt like I was turning a crank.”
For 15 years, Lockwood was a star in the University of Wyoming’s Department of Plant, Soil and Insect Sciences (renamed in the mid-1990s the Department of Renewable Resources). He conducted groundbreaking research on grasshoppers, insecticides and biological controls. He developed 10 courses, raised over $1.3 million in grants, and received tenure at 33. He solved a 100-year-old science mystery: why the Rocky Mountain locust, which plagued American settlers in the 1800s, disappeared in the early 1900s.
“He really established himself in the field,” said Scott Schell, a research scientist in the Department of Renewable Resources, who studied grasshoppers under Lockwood. “He was high up in Orthopterists’ [those who study grasshoppers, crickets and the like] Society, traveled around the world. He was widely respected in his field — all at a relatively young age.”
But in 2000, Lockwood gave it up to pursue a vague dream of writing.
Today, at 51, Lockwood has published a small shelf of books, is a revered professor in UW’s Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program, and teaches in UW’s philosophy department.
What might have been a suicidal career move has panned out.
Daily Yonder Column
A Broadband Bonanza in Powell, Wyoming
Powell, Wyoming, at first glance may appear to be the typical rural community that large and even some small broadband service providers avoid. The town has just over 5,000 residents in a county with a population density of four people per square mile. The last place for a fiber network, right? Wrong! Powell’s community-owned network, Powellink, is one of the great success stories in broadband.
Powell’s network broke even in 18 months and has operated profitably ever since. Two service providers, including the town’s partner, Tri-County Telecom, compete for subscribers of data, voice and video services. And most stunningly, this $5 million project put no taxpayer dollars at risk.
In 2005, constituents and businesses decided they needed better, faster broadband than incumbent providers were willing or able to deliver. Powell already had built a fiber ring around the town in 2000. The next step was to extend this ring with a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network. Powell would have been an ideal candidate to apply for a broadband stimulus grant or Google gigabit network – if either had existed at the time. Instead, Powell opted to follow a do-it-yourself path that today provides a valuable lesson for rural communities and small towns everywhere.
Powell’s method is relatively easy to describe; the devil, of course, is in the details. Every community is different and each will need to tailor the approach. Some may even reject it. But here’s how Powellink became a reality.
News Briefs
Flooding Roundup: Rain, Runoff Pummel Rockies
Heavy rains pelting western Montana this week sent area officials scrambling and Cottonwood Creek over its banks in the rural town of Deer Lodge on Tuesday, where sections of newly constructed retaining walls intended to prevent flooding failed their first test and collapsed into the creek.
It was the town’s first flood since its historic 500-year-level flood in 1981, residents said. Despite dozens of volunteers and local contractors contributing trucks and equipment to help the city crew, at one point the community ran out of sandbags and had to send for more from neighboring Anaconda. More rain is expected through the week.
Spring floods have been an ongoing problem throughout the state and the Rockies, thanks to a drenching combination of rapid snowmelt and excessive rainfall. In Montana, the counties of Clearwater, Deer Lodge, Flathead, Granite, Lake, Lincoln, Mineral, Missoula, Powell, Ravalli and Sanders are all under flood warning. Silver-Bow and Idaho’s Lemhi County are also on flood watch, the National Weather Service reports. In particular, the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers in Missoula and surrounding counties will be problematic, with the Clark Fork at Missoula already flooding and predicted to be two feet higher by Thursday, according to the Missoulian.
New West Feature
Jackson Hole Artist Turns Scraps Into Sculptures
From the back porch of Suzanne Morlock’s home along the western border of Jackson Hole, Wyo., I observed on a mid-May day how the sky, a color like office paper, illuminated winter’s final gestures: gray aspens, brown leaves in patches on the ground, matted grass, granular snow full of debris. Morlock pointed to a gap in the porch railing where snow from the roof had wiped it out, and then to the tilted fences around her berry bushes, trampled by a herd of deer that inhabit the hillside. The depressed landscape seemed to punctuate the dichotomy between humans and nature so prevalent in her artworks: In the midst of conditions designed for decay and renewal, humans strive for durability to the point that even our disposable products last indefinitely.
Morlock creates large sculptures out of found and discarded materials (some more biodegradable than others) that not only call our attention to the amount of unnecessary waste our society produces, but also question our idea of permanence. Newspapers, the most disposable of media, become durable yarns when rolled together. Audiotape, made to preserve the preciousness of its content, outlasts its usefulness in the face of new technology. And petroleum-based materials headed for the dump take the form of comfortable “everyman” clothing. Morlock became interested in repurposing trash while working on her master’s thesis at UCLA, a project that took her to the region’s landfills. “At that time, I said that every child should have to go to one of these landfills to see at a formative age what we create, what we produce,” she said.
