idaho — Page 9

After spending the entire day looking at my computer screen, answering emails and Etsy convos, ordering supplies and sourcing stones, I ran for the hills this evening.

Tonight, it was just the cheatgrass the sky and I;

burning bright and burning out.

Looking West:

Looking up:

Looking East:

Bracing against the wind and watching the world fade into night:

Sometimes, when I sit on a mountain top, I look around me and I ask God this question:

When you made the Earth, why didn’t you make a little more Idaho and a little less of everything else?

I’m a greedy and ungrateful little lady. I know.

That reminds me, did you know Idaho is one of the five states in the union that holds the most wilderness area, in terms of overall acres? No wonder all the wild things move here.

Keep it wild, my sisters and brothers, keep it wild.

Claws, fangs and bushy tails,

The Plume

RAWR

PS I just fell head over heels into THIS.

I made my way over and up to McCall this weekend.

I had a handful of reasons for going:

1. I had a delivery to make to Heidi.

2. I wanted to meet the McCall jumper base dispatch women (Oy vey, such amazing gals! More on them later!).

3. I wanted to check out this little mountain town because I’m trying to decide where I’d like to live next summer and this is a town RW can transfer into if he (we) decides he’d (we’d) like to transfer.

4. I really felt like swimming in a proper lake.

I departed for McCall on Saturday around noon. I had a South Dakotan house guest who left for the prairies on Saturday so when I finally hit the road I had a lot of summer in my hair and eventually a bunch of dust since the combines were ripping it up in the Snake River Valley between here and Boise.

Things started cooling off as soon as I started up into the mountains along the Payette River. The heat was filtered out first by clusters of ponderosa pines and then fir trees and the spray of whitewater on the rushing bends of that sweet mountain stream. I rolled into McCall exhausted and just in time for a glass of cold wine and some sushi at the local brew pub with a handful of lovely people.

The fire community in McCall is a tight one and it has me tied up in envious knots. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a tough little woman who gets to see her smokejumper man so often. It made me want to cry to watch them all dancing, holding hands, tasting each others beer, talking face to face, finding out who was working when; for this reason, my trip was horribly bittersweet. It was so wonderful to be with fire families and so sad to be without RW.

I want to live in the town where RW is based, so badly.

So badly do I want this that it really does honestly hurt.

A bit.

I didn’t realize it until a half hour ago when I ran out to the local grocery store for avocados but I’m a bit sad, I’m really quite a bit sad tonight.

I knew what I was getting myself into when I married that mountain man of mine. The fact is, life would be half the adventure it is if it was only half as torturous as it is! HA!

Anyway, Sunday was a full day. Heidi and I blitzed out to a meadow where the McCall boys were doing a practice jump and I nabbed a few shots for you just to solidify the fact, in your minds, that smokejumping really is the dead sexiest job a fellow (or a lady) could ever have (besides being a fire dispatcher or a lion tamer…). The sun was strong on my face while I watched the boys, one by one, appear magically into thin air, spit out by their orange and white plane, and then drift down like Kevlar suited dandelion seeds into the meadow below:

*round of applause*

Heidi and I spent the rest of the day driving about in the Landcruiser, hiking (she’s preggers, but she’s tough as nails and fit as a fiddle — former smokejumper you know), eating ice cream, swimming in the lake, talking and laughing.

The dogs frolicked about like wild things in the mountain streams and in the lake.

The sun felt so good.

The company was fantastic.

I don’t want to jinx my friendship with this girl but boy oh boy, it

would take a lot of something strange for me to grow weary of her presence.

This morning, after a tasty breakfast with Heidi, I popped over to the jumper base to say toodaloo to the dispatch gals and here’s where I’m going to talk about them for a second:

THOSE GIRLS!

Yeesh. I took a glimpse at some of their desks and it was so brilliant to see pieces of me pinned to their workstations. Photos of mine. Jewelry write ups! Bits of my heart and soul already mingling with theirs. I think this is one of the brightest reasons why I feel like I fit in so well in McCall. These beautiful, funny, talented, strong, independent girls are part of my life already and I can’t help but feel drawn, even more strongly, to the area because of them! Oh you dispatch ladies, you fire talkers, you tough cookies, you feisty huckleberries, you’re quite the bunch and you won my heart over. I’ll see you again, and soon, I’m sure of it.

Before leaving McCall today, I drove around the lake, swam at three different locations, squinted in the sun, splashed about with my dog and dreamed about living in McCall next summer. Then I drove down out of the mountains and swam in four different sections of the Payette River before descending into the heat of Boise and beyond.

Oh McCall.
McCall, I have a crush on you,

for serious,

and someday I’m going to make you mine, all mine.

In case you were wondering, I officially love this state more than I did the day before. It’s so diverse. It’s so sweepingly grand.

I hope your weekend was stuffed full of adventures!

…and watermelon.

The Noisy Plume