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I wrote for High Country News an essay that describes J.J. Anselmi’s recent memoir, Heavy, as something of a sequel to another good Wyoming memoir, Skin Deep by Karol Griffin.

"[Griffin] was old enough to have been [Anselmi's] mother, and their books read like a two-part saga in which the reader witnesses how both trauma and resilience are passed from one generation of Wyoming misfits to the next."

Read the essay at High Country News.

Photo by Ryan Dorgnan

#Wyoming #high country news #books #memoir #jj anselmi #karol griffin #heavy #skin deep

The butchering surface

2016 mule deer

#wyoming #hunting #butchering #knives #steak #mule deer

I wrote for @vicemag a dispatch from the 19th annual Northern Rockies Machine Gun and Cannon Shoot, which took place in June near Casper, Wyoming:

“People are bringing newborns here, unborn children. I've seen the elderly in wheelchairs. You get the whole gamut. A lot of people can relate, obviously, to firearms.”

Read the dispatch at VICE.

(photos by Ryan Dorgan)

#vice #wyoming #machine gun #cannon #firearms #casper

Teddy Bear Corner

Near Kemmerer, Wyoming

For more than 70 years, people have left their teddy bears and other stuffed animals near this fence post on a dusty dirt road in the desert. No one remembers why.

From the Casper Star-Tribune:

A man named Matt McCloud remembers visiting once a year as a kid. His dad, now in his 70s, went when he was small, too.

"All I know is dad said, ‘Get your old stuffed animals, we're headed up the creek.'"

McCloud brings his daughters there today. He said hunters sometimes meet there for a beer at the end of the day, the corner the only landmark for miles.

"It's been there since Moby Dick was a minnow," he said.

#wyoming #teddy bear corner

I’ve been working as a guide again this summer, running multi-day kayaking trips on Jackson Lake into the Teton backcountry. When my group returned from a hike last week, we were waylaid onshore for an hour or so by a mama moose and her calves hanging around our kayaks and support boat (pictured).

#moose #grand teton national park #oarslife #wyoming #eagles rest

I wrote for Western Confluence an article about how John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s land grab to expand Grand Teton National Park in the mid-20th Century anticipated Doug and Kristine Tompkins’ controversial park-making project ongoing in Patagonia.

(Photo: The chic visitor center at the Laurence Rockefeller Preserve adjacent the Tetons emphasizes aesthetics and bringing luxurious orderliness to the wilderness)

#john d rockefeller jr #horace albright #elena louder #laurie hinck #wyoming #doug tompkins #patagonia #grand teton national park

I wrote for The Wilson Quarterly an article about a new federal anti-poverty program in Wyoming that—in the age of global warming and a busted oil industry—trains low-income youth to work in the oilfield.

Thanks to @kimraff for the nice photos.

#oilfield #job corps #wind river #working class #wilson quarterly #global warming #wyoming #riverton

This New Yorker story by Kathryn Schulz about Zarif Khan, a.k.a. Hot Tamale Louie, who arrived in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1909 and eventually became a local legend, is a few weeks old now, but to anyone interested in Wyoming who may have missed it, I cannot recommend it enough. Aside from being a wildly entertaining, mostly untold piece of Wyoming and American history, it speaks directly to the present moment of Trump, Brexit, nationalist anti-immigrantion hysteria in which the world finds itself.

Who the Khans are and where they came from and what they’re doing here is a long story, and a quintessentially American one. The history of immigrants is, to a huge extent, the history of this nation, though so is the pernicious practice of determining that some among us do not deserve full humanity, and full citizenship. Zarif Khan was deemed insufficiently American on the basis of skin color; ninety years later, when the presence of Muslims among us had come to seem like a crisis, his descendants were deemed insufficiently American on the basis of faith.

Over and over, we forget what being American means. The radical premise of our nation is that one people can be made from many, yet in each new generation we find reasons to limit who those “many” can be—to wall off access to America, literally or figuratively. That impulse usually finds its roots in claims about who we used to be, but nativist nostalgia is a fantasy. We have always been a pluralist nation, with a past far richer and stranger than we choose to recall. Back when the streets of Sheridan were still dirt and Zarif Khan was still young, the Muslim who made his living selling Mexican food in the Wild West would put up a tamale for stakes and race local cowboys barefoot down Main Street. History does not record who won.

Background about Schulz, the Khan family today, and telling the story of Hot Tamale Louie can be found at WyoFile.

#hot tamale louie #kathryn schulz #zarif khan #sheridan #gillette #wyoming #new yorker #immigration #islam

I wrote for @theatlantic an article on the collaborative work taking place between scientists and storytellers in Wyoming to protect some of the longest wildlife migration routes on the continent.

(Photo: Joe Riis)

#wyoming #migration #arthur middleton #joe riis #hall sawyer #greater yellowstone ecosystem #elk #pronghorn #mule deer #red desert

For a brief period last month, I worked a job for which I drove around Wyoming looking for stores that sell cigarettes. I made an audio postcard about it for Wyoming Public Radio.

There are only four places to buy cigarettes in all of Hot Springs County if you don’t count liquor stores or bars. I know because it was my job to know. I was a Synar driver.

Synar drivers scour the state looking for stores that sell tobacco. We don’t use Google or Yelp. We drive the roads. We pound the pavement. We ask questions. It’s good old-fashioned detective work. Except we’re not looking for clues—we’re looking for smokes.

Listen to the audio postcard at Wyoming Public Radio.

#wyoming public radio #wyoming #tobacco #cigarettes #hot springs county #synar #audio postcard #e-cigs #weird jobs

In honor of the National Park Service’s centennial, I wrote for The Baffler a salvo (sort of) against national parks and utterly against the grotesque neoliberal nature playground in Montana called The American Prairie Reserve.

The proliferation of national parks—which took place, not coincidentally, at the same time as the widespread establishment of Indian reservations—punctuated the continent’s transition from a place inhabited by people who lived in concert with the land into one increasingly covered by the detritus of industrial and agricultural civilization, save a handful of pretty preserves set aside to visit. No doubt, national parks provide important habitat for wildlife and other ecological benefits. But as a serious conservation strategy, let’s face it: aesthetic quarantine is a woefully inadequate response to our present ecological mess. In fact, philosopher Timothy Morton argues that the whole notion of capital-N Nature—something pristine and wild that’s “out there,” as opposed to the inescapable ecological medium of our existence—is an anesthetic that allows us to forget about things like global warming, mass extinction, and ocean acidification. Don’t worry about that melting glacier, folks—just concentrate on the picturesque peak beneath it.

Read the salvo at The Baffler.

#national parks #koch brothers #national park service #baffler #wyoming #nature #wilderness #conservation #american prairie reserve #ranchers #capitalism

Taking aim with a .50 caliber sniper rifle at the recent Northern Rockies Machine Gun and Cannon Shoot near Casper, Wyoming. Stay tuned for a dispatch.

(Photo: Ryan Dorgan)

#machine gun #sniper rifle #cannon #nfa #wyoming #casper