On The ION

Robbie is finished work for the 2020 fire season and we’re thankful to have made it through another one. To celebrate the end of his work season, and because our chest freezers are bare, we headed South, deeper into the ION which is the Idaho/Oregon/Nevada Desert at the heart of the Great Basin of the West. It’s the desert we call home.

It is tremendously beautiful this time of year. The rabbitbrush is blooming. All the world is sneeze inducing. The nights are cool and the afternoons hot beneath a blazing sun that wears on the eyes. We were bird hunting and pronghorn hunting with friends and I wish we could have stayed out for another full week but the camper was out of water, we were short on food, duty calls, the garden is bursting with food that needs preserving and processing, and I’m starting to have weird creativity tremors. It’s time to get into the studio.

Anyway, who am I kidding? I have access to this kind of terrain right outside the front farm gates where public land yawns outward beyond the horizon line from our patch of cultivated earth. It’s always good to be Idahoan, but this is the best season to be Idahoan.