http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/main/C396/L396/ New West Network: The Voice of the Rocky Mountains en info@newwest.net Copyright 2009 Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:23:31 MST Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:23:31 MST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/roeh_gl5hUo/ Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:00:31 MST The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & The Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 324 pages, $27 In August of 1910, the largest fire ever to sweep across forests in the United States claimed trees, buildings, and lives across a stretch of three million acres in the Rocky Mountains.  Timothy Egan writes in his follow-up to The Worst Hard Time, his National Book Award-winning exploration of the Dustbowl, that this blaze was known as "The Big Burn," and it stretched "from central Idaho, east into Montana, west into Washington, north into British Columbia." The smoke drifted as far away as Chicago.  "It was as if a volcanic blast had disgorged the airborne remains of the forested northern Rockies into disparate parts of the United States." Besides destroying several towns in the region, this fire had a lasting effect on the course of the country's conservation movement, initiated by Theodore Roosevelt and his close confidant Gifford Pinchot, first head of the United States Forest Service. Egan shows that many of the lessons derived from the Great Fire of 1910 were still followed by foresters a century later.  People on both sides of the conservation movement tried to use it to achieve their political ends.  To demonstrate the larger set of circumstances in which this fire played out, after a vivid opening chapter set in the midst of the fire, Egan steps back to February of 1899, when the 34-year-old Gifford Pinchot visits the Governor of New York, Teddy Roosevelt, who invited him to engage in a wrestling match and a boxing bout.  This afternoon of roughhousing cemented their friendship.  http://www.newwest.net/city/article/young_men_and_fire_timothy_egans_the_big_burn/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/hTaKVc4pw88/ Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:12:04 MST Skiing and snowboarding aren't exactly the TV spectacles that baseball and football are in this country, but every four years when the Winter Olympics roll around, they have their moment in the spotlight. Resort operators hope the Olympics will inspire more people to get out on the slopes this winter, and more traveling skiers to avoid Vancouver's crowds to come to ski areas south of the border. "The Olympics coming up are going to bring so much attention to the sport of skiing and ski resorts," says Billy Kidd, a former Olympian and director of skiing at Colorado's Steamboat Mountain Resort, as he signs posters for fans wearing his trademark Stetson hat at the annual Denver Ski & Snowboard Expo. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/resorts_hope_olympics_will_be_golden_for_snow_sports/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/u1qgbYHU_KY/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:47:21 MST Montanans living along the winding Teton River, well east of the Rocky Mountain Front were quick to notice their new neighbor this summer. As early as the beginning of July, ranchers and other landowners along the prairie began intermittently spotting a solitary grizzly bear journeying east away from the mountains. Residents of the rural grasslands, including Mike Madel, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park's Region 4 Grizzly Bear Management Specialist based in Choteau, were even more surprised in mid-July when members of a local ranching family captured photographs of the lone bear on their land along the Teton north of Fort Benton, ambling through open prairie nearly 100 miles from the mountains, where Ursus arctos horribilis is expected these days. For Madel and other bear managers in the state, the bear's arrival so far beyond the range of today's grizzlies and into historic habitat was a revelation -- and one that would be the first of many throughout the summer and fall. Madel, a 23-year veteran of working with grizzlies along the Front, called 2009 an "unprecedented" year for bears wandering back on to the prairie, and says the bears' presence there is only likely to increase in coming years. That means an entire population of humans will now have to learn how to cohabitate with grizzlies. While the plains are historically grizzly country, for many living there now, the return of the grizzly is -- to put it lightly -- a surprise.  http://www.newwest.net/city/article/grizzlies_on_the_move_back_on_to_the_wide_open_prairie/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/EccW_TMLV6k/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:01:45 MST As flu pandemics go, H1N1 sometimes seems hard to compute, given all the information flooding our way. Is it a panic? An impending storm? A party theme? Yes, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that some people are hosting "swine flu parties" where people who know someone with H1N1 purposely hang out and try to get infected. Their goal is to get a mild case and gain natural immunity, so they won't catch a more dangerous version later on. Health officials, not surprisingly, say this doesn't work and isn't smart. "While the disease ... has been mild for many people, it has been severe and even fatal for others," the federal health agency says. "There is no way to predict with certainty what the outcome will be for an individual or, equally important, for others to whom the intentionally infected person may spread the virus." Meanwhile, as news about the flu continues to spread at viral speed, a Montana health official offers a few facts to help put things in perspective. Elton Mosher is the influenza surveillance coordinator and an infectious disease expert with the Department of Public Health and Human Services. Here's his view of the flu, plus statistics from the World Health Organization and CDC: http://www.newwest.net/city/article/flu_update_h1n1_cases_down_but_is_uptick_ahead/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/rZ1qZHO9xbc/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:15:59 MST Moonlight Basin, the troubled Big Sky, Montana ski resort, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, just a day before a foreclosure hearing that could have put the property in the hands of its primary lender, Lehman Bros. Moonlight took a loan of $100 million from Lehman Bros. in the fall of 2007 with the intention of quickly selling the resort, but the real estate meltdown scotched that plan, and the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. itself in the fall of 2008 has left the six-year-old resort in limbo. In the bankruptcy filing, Moonlight seeks permission to obtain $21 million in interim financing from Trilogy Capital, a Connecticut based hedge fund, which would enable Moonlight to remain open and have a ski season as planned. Lehman Bros. indicated in the foreclosure case that it also intended to keep the resort open, but the investment bank wanted to gain full control and appoint a receiver in the place of current management before it provided the funds needed to continue operations. The foreclosure proceeding, which is a state court action, is automatically put on hold by the bankruptcy filing. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/moonlight_basin_files_for_bankruptcy_protection/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/R66o7GUybBY/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:14:21 MST I used to play basketball, but not too much since the day my coach took me aside, patted me on the head, and said, "Bill, you're short, but you're slow, and you really need to follow your shots." Well, that was a long time ago, and I admit to never doing anything about the shortness or the slowness, but I have learned to follow my shots. And sometimes, they're worth following. When I write my columns, I frequently hope something happens, and guess what sometimes it does. Check out these updates to past columns. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/road_rage_explained_getting_kids_outside_usa_still_rocks_and_more/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/f5FZtsDL0Is/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:00:26 MST The Denver Post reported this weekend that Denver writer Mark Obmascik's Halfway to Heaven: My White Knuckled and Knuckleheaded-Quest for the Rocky Mountain High won this year's outdoor literature prize from the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation: "The book is about climbing Colorado's 14,000-plus foot mountains, all 54 of them, in one summer. The problem, though, as Obmascik points out in this humorous work, is that he's completely out of shape." Obmasik was the lead writer for the Denver Post team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Columbine shootings. He will discuss his book at the REI in Boulder on November 30 (7 p.m.). • John Jurgensen's insightful interview with Cormac McCarthy ran in the Wall Street Journal last week in advance of the opening of the film version of The Road.  Their discussion ranges all over the place in subject matter, from the movie versions of McCarthy's films, to fatherhood, to his writing process.  Jurgensen writes, "McCarthy shuns interviews, but he relishes conversation." One subject that McCarthy cycles back to several times is the apocalypse, something that he frequently discusses with his friends at the Santa Fe Institute. Also in the Roundup: Missoula's Fact and Fiction adjusts to ebooks, Moscow, Idaho's Joan Opyr celebrates her new novel with leftover turkey, and Denver's Printed Page Bookshop offers free books in exchange for food donations for the needy. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/denver_writer_formerly_out_of_shape_climber_wins_the_national_outdoor_book_/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/WpnovoM8vas/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:27:45 MST Sweetwater Station, Wyo.--If you blink once or your attention drifts for an instant on the two-lane highway between Muddy Gap and the Lander, Wyoming, you may miss one of the world's great road signs, a weathered, wooden square flanked by an American flag:  "Old Books Fresh Eggs For Sale." And if you don't stop and go inside the two-story, structurally-reinforced, climate-controlled book barn stuffed with more than 75,000 hardback volumes ranging from leather-bound Balzac to first-edition Beatrix Potter, you will miss one of Wyoming's and the Mountain West's hidden treats. Owners Lynda "Mad Dog" German and Polly "The Pilgrim" Hinds moved their Mad Dog and The Pilgrim Booksellers from Denver to Sweetwater Station in 2000 after an unpleasant encounter with the Aurora, Colorado, Police Department. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/mad_dog_and_the_pilgrim_booksellers/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/XxWJCZJ0w14/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:02:10 MST Every year, the Annie E. Casey Foundation supports an amazingly comprehensive and important look at the well-being of the nation's children, taking into account, state-by-state, the factors that help or hinder children's welfare. The foundation's "Kids Counts" reports look at leading indicators like poverty rates, the availability of daycare, school performance, the number of children without health insurance, median household incomes, obesity rates, and neighborhood safety, and then rank the states to show which are doing the best (and worst) jobs. So how does Montana add up? As in most years, there's reason to celebrate--and to worry. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/montana_childrens_health_good_news_and_bad/C396/L396/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/bozeman/~3/xpwq36zO0yE/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:34:01 MST Many of us will be afield this fall spending time in our favorite hunting and fishing spots. We will be enjoying the tradition of these field sports so important to our lives. But as you head out to the fields, rivers and streams we want you to be aware of an important tool for conservation of those areas we find near and dear to our hearts. The United States Congress this fall will have a unique opportunity to secure full and dedicated funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the principal source of federal dollars for protecting land in America's national parks, forests, and other public landscapes and ensuring recreational opportunities for Americans in every state in the nation. Since 1977, this fund has been authorized at $900 million per year. Most of the funds come from off-shore oil and gas leases, and are to be used for the purchase, from willing sellers, of land with outstanding natural, recreation, scenic, and other attributes, and for the development of outdoor recreation lands and facilities at the state and local level. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/funding_for_land_conservation_makes_good_economic_sense/C396/L396/