little city of rocks

Yesterday was RW’s birthday!

Sometime last week I asked him how he’d like to spend his special day — though I don’t know why I ever ask because the answer never changes. We spent the day over in the Little City of Rocks area of Idaho hunting chukar, nibbling on a picnic and exploring the sage laced hills and coulees there. Hunting was a four hour hike up and across the rim rock and volcanic hoodoos of Little City of Rocks (not to be confused with City of Rocks by the folks who like to climb Idaho) at the end of which we were terribly sun beamed and wind blasted — I felt exhausted. Farley had run at least seven more miles than we hiked and he was exhausted too. We coasted back down onto the Snake River Plain, grabbed some delicious Italian for dinner with a friend in Twin Falls (lasagna is one of RW’s other birthday requirements — he’s like Garfield) and eventually we arrived home in Pocatello where we covered the tomatoes with blankets out in the gardens, belly flopped into hot baths and tossed ourselves into our warm bed.

It was such a splendid day.

You know, when you’re out strolling across the shifting hands of the seasons there’s an extraordinary amount of texture applied to all the senses. Those patches of lichens that are so busily lipping at the surfaces of stones seem

twice as thick and vibrant as they did in the summer months.

The small body of water in the sea of sage glimmers like holy

sapphire! The mountains in the distance, capped white and groaning with imperceptible

shakes and quakes, grind away at the sky and the blue holds the faint pulse of indigo crushed fine in the smooth bowl of the mortar.

It’s.

Nearly.

Too.

Much.

For.

Me.

To.

Bear.

I perish. I die in the wonder of creation, time and time again.

I move through it like I belong in it, like a wild horse owns the rock that trims its hooves, like rivers to the seas, like the clouds so designed and destroyed by the lift of the mountains

and the grace of the plains. I move. I belong.

This small body lives to leap up and over stones, scramble through thorny thickets with my heart beat glowing bright in my throat and there on the soft sides of my wrists. Then sifting, sifting like the river water sifts the silt, claiming clarity and purity as it flows. I am lost, divided, made whole again, raked into neat stacks by the tines of the wind and then spread out once more and drifting.

But I digress.

This was all to say, happy birthday Robert.

I loved being out on the land with you yesterday.

The wind burned my cheeks red and coaxed some tired coal in my soul into flame once more.

I hope you had a wonderful day too.

Let’s do it again sometime.

:::POST SCRIPTUS:::
I nearly forgot!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow
Canadians! I hope your lives have been
full of family, friends and blessings this weekend
and always.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/10/09/1111/

RW and I don’t really believe in luxurious holidays, with the exception of our 6 year late honeymoon we took in Hawaii, which was actually a marriage present from my parents. It was nice! When we return, we’ll rent a jeep and take it places no jeep should go in order to camp on quiet stretches of beach beside a roaring surf.

We like to camp, fish, hike, build campfires, cook over our pocket rocket stove or over an open fire, filter water, blister our feet, hike too far, fish too late, spook a pair of mule deer, marvel at the size of wolf tracks, sweat, summit, swim and suffer (just a bit).

When we realized that time was running out for a pre-fire-season holiday the obvious choice for accommodation was Talulah. We put Farley and Penelope in the slammer, loaded our sleeping bags, food and Plumbelina in the bus and took to the road. We drove her nearly 700 miles on a series of loops though some of Idaho’s biggest country.

Here’s what day one looked like:

We made a quick stop at Shoshone Falls on the mighty Snake River, just outside of Twin Falls. Idaho water is running fierce and high with snow melt and springtime rains so the falls were robust and roaring, simply spectacular. Shoshone Falls is called the Niagara of the West. It’s not nearly as broad as Niagara Falls but it boasts a larger drop and it mists you just as well!

We took a blue highway over to Buhl and stopped off at the local dairy for a bottle of milk and a pint of chocolate milk for RW.

We zoomed (which is a relative term when referring to Talulah) down through Thousand Springs where the water simply pours out of the basalt cliffs in white streams and picked our way through the twists and turns of Hagarman, delighting in all the acreages with private trout fisheries (RW wants one of his own very badly, you know, he was a fish biologist before he became a firefighter).

Then we crossed the desert.

We passed a shepherd tending a flock of at least 800 sheep with only the help of a handful of dogs. The Basque who still tend sheep in this state free range their stock on BLM land, if they have the right to. My one regret in life, at this junction in time, is that I did not photograph that shepherd. The Basque ship their sheep down to Arizona every winter to feed on alfalfa stubble and to lamb in in a warmer climate. I used to spend hours watching them in the valley we lived in when we still resided in Arizona. There is nothing like a pasture speckled with the gentle silliness of sheep, the bleating and tail wagging of wee lambs, the oceans of starling sweeping through blue sky and the careful watch of a Peruvian shepherd over his flock. Seeing this shepherd moving his flock over spring grasses really moved my heart and mind into the past lives RW and I have lived. It was pretty magical.

We popped by Little City of Rocks to run Plum.

This is a prime example of why I love this state so well. It’s empty. It’s beautiful. It’s wild.

When I find myself traveling to large city centers, I nearly always meet a handful of urbanites who are dismayed when they discover I live in Idaho. They drop their jaws and ask me, quite simply, perhaps even snottily, “Why would you ever live in Idaho?”

Here’s my answer:
Because it suits me.

Because I can find myself in a wild, lonesome space without any effort at all. For goodness sakes! Directly across the street from my home are miles and miles, acres and acres of Forest Service and BLM lands! I don’t have to fight the masses to be in a soul expanding patch of wilderness. I can run for miles without seeing anyone else. The water is still clean. The mountains are free of litter. The cougars and bears don’t try to eat me because they aren’t yet habitualized, when they see me coming, they run away! If I need to, I can be the only person on earth, and sometimes, I like to be the only person on earth…I like life to be simple, just me, creation and The Creator on the side of a mountain with immaculate winds combing their fingers through my hair.

To phrase it simply, Idaho appeals to my reclusive soul.

Her wilderness is a healing salve for my heart scrapes.

She takes me in.

She practices tough love.

Her grace is abundant.

I see God in her. Everywhere.

I am brought to my knees.

I know RW feels the same way about this state, though he’s not half so windy about it.

He is enchanted with it. I can tell.

His bones have become Douglas fir roots, drinking up all the land has to offer. The mountain water here is a strong libation, there’s crystal music in every drop, and we align ourselves to the way this big country flows and get carried away.

Big country.

Big dreams.

Big hopes.

We rolled on.

Up and over a high pass.

Some previous owner of Talulah welded her heating ducts shut so at about 5000 feet, we could see our breath and we couldn’t feel our hands or feet. Life was feeling positively Russian.

When ever I’m desperately cold,

I imagine I’m a poor Russian in bad times

burning any scrap of wood I can find to heat my shabby home —

tundra twigs,

the lid of a grand piano,

the knobs off the dresser drawers…

you know…so cold, it feels Russian.

We hit the snow line, we hoped we could make it over the pass. Life was uncomfortable. This fact might be our very favorite thing about camping. It isn’t easy. The effort makes us feel alive. Sometimes it’s miserable, but those awful tales of hard times often make the best stories.

We passed a blue grouse putting on a spectacular mating display.

I’m not a female grouse, but if I was, I wouldn’t have said no!

His sweet vanity must have been driving his ladies batty.

Though I don’t think their view from atop the aspens was half so fine as mine.

We poured down the other side of the pass like so many mountain rivers, streams and creeks that were blown out with springtime run off. Rushing, rushing, rushing. The mountains are deranged with water right now. The trout are hiding in the treetops. There was fresh snow on the Douglas fir and lodge pole pines. Winter still had an iron grip on the high country.

Finally, finally, we rolled into our campsite, in the Smokey Mountains of the Sawtooth Range. There was a dampness in my bones and a lightness to my verve — RW too, I could tell, was basking in the space. We were the first campers of the spring season, the mountains were only ours. We sparked up our stove and warmed up the antelope chili we made the night before, brewed a pot of tea and watched the sky slowly clear into night. A full moon rose up. The stars did their spangling. We hoped for wolf song, but they never came, or if they did, they had nothing to sing about. When we crawled into the warmth of our sleeping bags, with Plum curled up in a small doughnut at our feet, snow began to fall quietly all around and rest came easy.

Part One