Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

Rock 'n Ride claims to be the website for "all things horses." They might be right. I stumbled onto the site about a month ago and was immediately drawn in. According to the home page, "Rock 'n Ride is a place for profiles, forums, articles, videos, blogs, etc.... a community of horse people sharing and exchanging ideas." I sent the publisher an email and the next thing I knew, she wanted to interview me. The interview, a Member Spotlight, is the February feature. You can read it in its entirety at Ride 'n Rock. Meantime, here's a bit of the interview: Question: How did you first find horses … or did they find you? Answer: As a little girl, I lived in the same mountain community where I live now. We had a black and white paint named Bingo. My mom used to sit my sister and me on his back, with our boxer dog Ben-Ben walking alongside, and take us for rides. When I was 14 years old, I bought a half-Arab, half –quarter horse strawberry bay 4-...

Last Thursday, February 5th, Rocky Mountain National Park began their new culling program to thin the Park's elk herd . Sharpshooters will be used to thin about 100 animals from the herds this year, which if allowed to overgraze might destroy many of the Park’s aspens and willows. That same day, in response to safety concerns when a 14-year-old had to fight off a coyote in the Denver metro area, the Greenwood Village City Council passed an ordinance allowing coyotes to be shot. A contractor will be paid $60 per hour, or $200 per day, to cull the habituated coyote population. Two years ago, a disoriented coyote was found huddling in a Chicago Starbuck’s next to the drink cooler, perhaps the closest thing to a cave he could find. More than ever before, we are being asked to explore what it means to co-exist – with one another, with the land, with the animals. When the Louis and Clark Expedition first encountered a coyote, they called it the Prairie Wolf. To many Native Americ...

Mike and Kathy Gear , authors of a gazillion novels and owners of the Red Canyon Bison Ranch in Wyoming, just received the Bison Producer of the Year Award at the National Western Stock Show in Denver. Their latest book, People of the Thunder, made the New York Times bestseller list within four days of release. Kathleen is a former state historian and archaeologist for Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas (Department of the Interior), and Michael holds a master’s degree in archaeology. They can tell you not only where the great bison historically roamed, but they can also bring to life the pre-history characters whose lives depended on the buffalo. Speaking of pre-history, I’ve been a board member of the Vore Buffalo Jump Foundation for several years. The Vore Buffalo Jump is one of the most important archaeological sites of the late-prehistoric Plains Indians. Discovered during the construction of Highway I-90 in the early 1970’s, the Vore site is a natural sinkhole that was used as a b...