Dear Friends: High Country News has always had a special relationship with its readers, dating back to the days when our founder, Tom Bell, ran out of money and his small but stalwart group of subscribers spontaneously pitched in to save the publication. That sense of personal investment in HCN grew into a familiar and warm exchange between those of us at the home office — whether in Lander, Wyoming (Tom’s hometown), or in Paonia, Colorado (where the magazine has been based since 1983) — and our far-flung community of readers across the West and beyond.
For many years, these pages featured photos of subscribers who stopped by our offices, recaps of our latest HCN potlucks, tales from the road and encounters with readers in Western coffee shops and on hiking trails.
But two things have happened in the past few years that have changed the way we connect. The first is the pandemic, which has kept us hunkered down, unable to hold gatherings around the West or welcome readers into the Paonia office. The second is that HCN itself has changed: While roughly a third of our staff still live and work on Colorado’s Western Slope, only a handful still come to the Paonia office on an average day. The rest of us are scattered across the region, from Tucson, Arizona, to Moscow, Idaho, and from Seattle down to Santa Fe.
Ed Marston, one of my predecessors and mentors, liked to say that being based in Paonia was HCN’s greatest strength — it kept us firmly rooted in a particular rural Western experience and gave a unique authority to our writing. But this new, dispersed arrangement makes a lot of sense for an organization trying to cover an almost 2 million-square-mile beat. We now have tendrils working their way into even more communities across the West.
This means, however, that like many organizations we’re having to find new ways to stay connected. The community pages — what you’re reading now — will be part of that. Starting with this issue, the format of this section will begin to shift as we look for fresh opportunities to include your voices and experiences in HCN. My hope is that together we can discover and nourish an easy exchange, the light and lively conversation of old friends.
It won’t be the same as visiting us in our old, ink-stained hub of desktop computers and messy light tables surrounded by mountains and mesas in western Colorado. But when the pandemic abates, we’ll start gathering in person again, too. With so many of us spread across the West these days, there’s a good chance we’re closer to you now than ever before. —Greg Hanscom, executive director & publisher
We want to hear from you!
How can High Country News foster community today? Live-streamed interviews with authors and experts, community happy hours on Zoom, a monthly book club or a public-lands challenge (whatever that might be), get-togethers with local HCN “chapters” or a blazing bacchanal in the Black Rock Desert every summer (oh, right, that’s taken) … How would you like to connect with us and your fellow HCN readers?
Dream big! Send us your ideas at dearfriends@hcn.org and watch this space in future issues. We’ll share some of the great ideas that come in and continue our conversation about the big, beautiful region we call home.
Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A community space for far-flung friends.
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