Articles

Feds to pour money into public lands projects—for now

In the short term, the government will make big investments in public lands infrastructure
Boardwalks overlooking Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park (photo: NPS/David Restivo cc2.0).

In August 2020, Congress did something remarkable. In the throes of a heated political campaign season and in the middle of a deadly viral pandemic that was literally killing Americans left and right, the nation’s legislative branch set aside its daily political rancor and passed the Great American Outdoors Act.

In Patagonia, spring is for dry flies

Perception isn't always reality
A Rio Munoz brown trout (photo: Earl Harper).

Fly fishers tend to rely on perception. And that perception often becomes our reality. For many Northern Hemisphere anglers, particularly those who fish the high-elevation rivers and streams of the Rocky Mountain West, we spend the months of May and June dredging deep runs in cloudy water hoping to pull a big, belligerent trout off the bottom as we power through heavy, turbid spring flows. The folks out east may get to enjoy springtime dry fly fishing, but those of us who live where towering snow-capped peaks predominate the landscape, spring is runoff season.

When entomologists attack

A call to action
Illustration: cc2.0 + Chad Shmukler [edits].

One of my favourite reference books, The Urban Dictionary, finds entomology rather dull and swotty. It comes close to apologising for any guilty pleasure that might be found in creepy crawlies. The entry reads: “Entomology" – noun - The scientific word for the study of insects. It’s bug research pretty much. I enjoy studying entomology. Really.”

When it snows, it flows

This year's epic snowpacks have set the stage for an epic runoff season in the West
Spring runoff on a river in California in 2017 (photo: David Brossard / cc2.0).

Thirty years ago, as the only reporter for “The Chaffee County Times” in quiet little Buena Vista, Colo., I covered the biggest story of the year, largely by just looking out of my office window.

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