My latest ...
Will the world take seriously a cross-country skier from a desert nation who has no real hope of bringing hom a medal? When it comes to Robel Teklemariam, they better. More ...
Check out this great collection of travel tweets, including one of my own. More...
My Snowmass Sun column last week on John Hickenlooper and the Western Slope turned into quite a controversy on the pages of ColoradoPols.com. The liberal blog's message to the Western Slope: "Sorry but you don't really matter in a statewide election." I beg to differ. Check out my column here ...
As the 'new sheriff in town,' Ken Salazar promised a reform agenda for Interior. Did he go too far? Or not far enough? More...
This place of endless diversions for adults also provides endless distractions for children -- especially those with a love of pyramids, dolphins, chocolate, clay and monsters. Bonus points: They just might learn something about the culture without ever seeing a classroom. More...
Ralph Ball cherished the life he lived, and he taught me to do the same. More...
Jerome Osentowski plucks a ripe fig from a branch and hands it to me. I peel it open and smear the sweet, pulpy mass in my mouth. It’s a sensual experience, made even more decadent because of where I’m standing. This fig tree is growing at 7,200 feet in the Rockies. The Mediterranean is nowhere in view, but falling snow is. More...
Throw your weight forward. Lean into the abyss. Let go.
My skis are turned parallel to the edge of the cornice. The ground drops away and plunges into steeps and gullies studded with snowdrifts, trees and tree wells. Hints of rock and downed timber break through the surface. I stand on the cornice -- too long. More...
The caretaker opens up the door, a big door with the doorknob in the middle, and a musty whiff blows out. It's the first feeling you get of there being something special about this house, a place locked, sealed up, closed off.
This is the house Hemingway died in, but barely lived in. More...
Traveling and Tweeting: An Interview with Nicholas Kristof
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has used his press credentials to visit some of the world's roughest places. But what depresses him, he tells me, "is when I come back to the United States and find many people uninterested in any cause larger than themselves. More...
Suspicion Surrounds Colorado Wolf Death
Did the epic journey of Wolf 341F from Montana to Colorado end at the hands of a human? Officials aren't saying. More...
"We inherited a Garden of Eden," Burns says, "which Thomas Jefferson thought would take generations, hundreds of generations to fill up. In less than five, we were in danger of losing it all. The parks emerged out of this bittersweet sense of what we don't save we'll lose forever." More...
Travel writer Tim Cahill has the job the rest of us dream about. His writing is so funny, it is easy to forget how insightful it is. But by the end of his essays, readers find themselves transported not just across the globe but into a whole new way of thinking about the world around them. More...
Potato sheds were filled with zinfandel barrels. No breakfast was complete without a glass of wine. Vintners in the Grand and North Fork valleys may get all the attention, but winemaking in the Roaring Fork Valley has a history that goes back to the days when Italian immigrants were settling the region. More...
The documentary by filmmaker Robert Kenner is a forceful indictment of concentrated cattle ghettos, squalid chicken factories and cornfield deserts. At the film’s core is this: the way we eat has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000, and not for the better. More...
Authorities aren’t saying what killed the two-year-old wolf or whether foul play was involved. While her death remains a mystery, though, her travels in the months before are unusually well known. They were tracked by satellites that followed her every step and remain recorded on a tiny computer within her GPS collar. More...
Built to house energy workers during the 1980s oil-shale boom, then morphed into a community for retirees seeking the western Colorado sun, Battlement Mesa is entering a new phase — as a gas field. Wells are planned close to homes and off the sixth green. More...
Conrad Anker is among the most celebrated of today’s mountaineers. His high-altitude career path has given him a unique view of the world’s glaciers melting away at an astonishing pace. He’s scaling back on his big expeditions to study the effects of climate change on the Himalayas. More...
Long before Tom Joad and his family set out for California in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the West was a cradle of hope and tragedy for migrants seeking a new life in a strange land. It's still that way today. For many like the Joads, the West remains a place to re-invent themselves. Unfortunately, many discover a world that's even harder than the one they left behind. More...
The economic downturn has hammered the West’s resort economy, and it has hit immigrants particularly hard. From Las Vegas to Jackson Hole, Wyo., many are going home. Some set out in search of jobs in other states. Others hang on, relying on the kindness of friends and family, hoping for better times ahead. More...
