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Essay: In The New West magazine

I spread my sleeping bag on the floor and crumpled my coat for a pillow. I put the bag where my bed used to be.

The room still smelled the same. Aside from the echo, there was something homey, something warm, the smell of a vanilla candle still lingering in the empty walls. My brother and I were at the now vacant house for the night. It was Thanksgiving, and we wanted to stay somewhere familiar. The land had sold, but the house hadn’t yet, so we would stay the night on the floor in my old bedroom.

Facing me, in the wall, was a small hole about the size of a heel. My brother and I had been fighting about something teenagers fight about and, in a tantrum, my foot connected with the wall. My brother had laughed. I was 16 at the time.

I had forgotten about the hole, hidden by a dresser long ago. As I ran my fingers over it one more time, my brother walked in, shaking his head. He always told me I was too sentimental about this place. It’s just a house, just a farm. They’re just walls. It’s just dirt.

He didn’t believe it either. [more]

Boulder Becomes 'Smart Grid City'

If all goes as planned Boulder will become the world’s first “fully integrated Smart Grid City,” says regional utility Xcel Energy. Envisioned as the first true innovation in electricity distribution in close to a century, the Smart Grid movement is essentially developing ways to bring digital Internet-based technology to power lines, giving utilities and business and residential customers greater control and efficiency in the flow of electricity.

Ultimately, once the Smart Grid takes over a significant chunk of the existing power distribution infrastructure, utilities and governments will be able to use the power of the Web to better manipulate how electricity is generated and delivered.

In other energy news: Democrats ready populist energy legislation; Colorado eyes fine print on electricity bills; and O&G executives foresee oil-price downturn by the end of the year. [more]

New West Book Review

The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
By Alexandra Fuller
The Penguin Press
202 pages, $23.95

In her extraordinary new book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Alexandra Fuller does a cruel thing. She makes readers fall in love with a Wyoming boy in the space of a few pages, carries us through his life, which leads inevitably to a dangerous job on an oil rig, and makes us stand as witnesses to his end, however much we wish we could turn our heads away. I still feel heartsick a few weeks after finishing it. Fuller writes with simple grace and a cowboy twang, taking a rather unconventional approach for nonfiction by composing the book of the private conversations and intimate scenes that are the turning points of Bryant's short life, and though she must have spent months with his family and friends, the author stays offstage, disappearing into a bracing, honest voice that is motherly in its tenderness toward her subject.

Fuller will discuss her book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) in Denver on Monday, May 12 (7:30 p.m.), at Borders in Portland on May 13 (7 p.m.), and in Evanston, WY at the Uinta Library on May 16 (5 p.m.)
[more]

timberlands and real estate

Wednesday the Missoula County Commissioners sent a letter to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey asking him to drop consideration of the forest road easement amendment until the documents proposed for amendment have been identified and made available to the public.

The commissioners wrote: "...the failure to identify, review, and properly reference the easements to be amended will make the proposed Easement Amendment legally void, and the process leading up to your expected approval fatally flawed."

Rey, overseer of the Forest Service, said during a meeting last week with officials from western Montana that he would not make the paperwork available and invited a lawsuit, which appears imminent. [more]

From the Flathead Beacon Blog

The chances of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton returning to Montana took a hit Tuesday night. After Obama’s crushing victory in North Carolina and Clinton’s narrow win in Indiana, the majority of pundits have declared the race all but over. I hope not. The state press has been blanketed with high-profile attention from each campaign over the last few weeks and it would be a shame to find out that the media was simply used for political gain.

Since Obama and Clinton visited Montana last month, and subsequently opened campaign field offices across the state, the local press has been constantly updated on why each candidate is absolutely great and has the state’s best interests in mind. You see, we’re passed a deluge of daily notes, many with personal touches. [more]

In The New West magazine

It's 2:30 a.m., and Bud Boyce, 75, fumbles in the dim light of the pickup cab for the controls of the mounted spotlight.

Outside, the beam cuts the blackness, illuminating clouds of warm breath and glassy eyes as it pans from left to right, then back again across a herd of more than 250 Angus-Hereford cows, all pregnant and ready to give birth.

The cattle huddle in dark masses. Bud plays the light across them, carefully watching for a cow in labor or a newborn calf. With no signs of a delivery-in-progress and no new calves since the last check three hours ago, he wheels his pickup back toward the house and lurches down the frozen drive. In three hours, he'll do it again. Then, ranch hand Mike Horst will take over.

It's a grueling schedule, part of what makes ranching a lifestyle, not a job. [more]

LET'S GET OUR WORDS STRAIGHT

Have you ever heard somebody say they prefer "multiple use" over Wilderness? I have what seems like a thousand times, and every time I hear it, I say to myself, wrong!

So, it seems like a good time to say it out loud because the words, "multiple use" have been lost in the Wilderness. [more]

New West News Brief

As the controversy over the Yellowstone National Park’s population of bison continues, Bozeman-based TERRA shares a three-part video series on the “free-ranging” population’s scenerio and the hazing that is occurring. (Click video above for a preview of the series.)

As there are passionate people on both sides of the debate, this series tries to understand all sides of this issue. [more]

In The New West magazine

If you didn't know any better, you might think William Patrick (Bill) Foley II was just another retiring baby boomer looking for golf courses, open spaces and the chance to recapture an idealized childhood of summertimes on the family ranch. A frank man with an almost goofy charm, he speaks of his love for Montana, his concern for the landscape -- and the joy he gets bombing around the backcountry on an ATV or a snowmobile.

But the truth is, Foley isn't very good at leisure. He's got the fancy log home on Whitefish Lake, five West Coast wineries, the huge cattle ranch near Deer Lodge, and the requisite private jets, but he can't seem to help turning everything into a business.

Foley appears to be in a much better spot than most of the Wall Street moguls, Silicon Valley financiers and high-rolling property developers who see the surging "amenity economy" in the Mountain West as the next great capitalist frontier. In some ways, he's representative of the breed: a very rich man who's become enamored with the West, and whose first instinct is to buy it. [more]

Western Book Roundup

The Boulder Farmer's Market will open for its first Wednesday afternoon of the season today, kicking off with a book signing and talk by Lynn Rossetto Kasper, host of NPR's The Splendid Table. She'll be discussing her new book, How to Eat Supper. (Free, 5:30-6:30 p.m.)

The Bluff, Utah-based Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers announced that this year's winner of their annual award is Joe Wilkins. Wilkins plans to study and write about the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains from Texas to Montana.

Also in the Roundup: Margot Kahn tours behind Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith, and WyoFile.com excerpts Alexandra Fuller's new book. [more]

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