mountains — Page 2

Home Again:

September 30, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

I’ve been in the backcountry of the Sawtooths, here in Idaho.

I can’t wait to tell you all about it and share the details with you!

We’ll chit chat soon,

Filed Under: idaho, mountains, rocky mountains, sawtooths

McCall, Idaho

August 17, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

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

PS If you want to enlarge any of the photos in this post, just click on them!

Filed Under: idaho, mccall, mountains, payette river, smokejumping, summer

You, Me & The Wildflowers

June 27, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

The Wildflower Festival,

last night,

on the side of a mountain.

Liquid sun delicious wind friends of sweet mountain view green valley rumpled earth tender wine barking dogs dancing kids flower power smell those flowers bucking around wild things of the West.

I met some fellow from the East Coast (a lovely little narcissist) up on the side of this hill who told me all about his life and his dysfunction and about his dislike for Pocatello because no one was friendly (NOT FRIENDLY??!!! Um. Were you in a different Pocatello, Idaho???) and it wasn’t at all like what the West should be. He said he hated it so much that he drove to Jackson and Yellowstone (!!!) where he felt so much more at ease — probably because he was with his own kind. Those places are some of the trophies of the West but they aren’t who WE are.

I listened with open ears.
I listened deeply with an open heart and heard what he really had to say and saw his brokenness for what it really was and when a friend finally came along to safely drag me away from his ranting he reached out and gave me a hug like we were old friends. Like we had connected in a real way as two human beings in hip high wildflowers on the side of a mountain. I said, as I walked away:

You know, I don’t know where his notion of what the West should be like came from but he’s got it all wrong. This is the West. We make it the way it is. And if you come from somewhere else and are blind to our true spirit, or if you come here expecting something else, then you make yourself blind to the beautiful reality of this space and you shouldn’t stay because you’re just cramping a horizon that would otherwise be wide open.

This is all to say, if you come West from someplace that isn’t West, keep your eyes and your heart wide open. Not everyone is a soft spoken cowboy or punchy cowgirl, there’s a blend out here, like there is everywhere, a steady blend of mountain, plains, river rock, stout hearts and crumbling facades. It’s where old meets new and new meets old. If you can’t see that, you’re missing the possibility of it all and the view from the vista is going to seem tarnished.

The entire experience directed my thinking to the actual true definition of the West. What makes West West??? Is it the people, the land, the space, the elk or a combination of everything wild and free out here? I’ve got a libertarian/independent streak a mile wide in my heart. I like to make my own decisions, I like to work hard, I like to range free and have as little meddling as possible in my life from outside organizations. I don’t like to be told what I can and can’t do. I don’t like to conform. I like to have space to buck around in. I like to put my head down and kick my heels until there’s nothing on my back and I’m light as a feather. RW does too. We know the difference between right and wrong, we believe in Love and laying it down as a foundation for our relationships with all things (humans, animals, land, The Holy), we believe in space. It’s why we live where we live and how we live. This isn’t a political statement. This is how I am. This is how we are. Give me the choice and I’ll gladly choose for myself. Tell me what to think and what to do and I’ll balk, dig in my heels and not go gently.

Not at all.

You could probably label this as a rebellious spirit but I like to think

I simply have an overdeveloped sense of free will.

Does any of this ranting define the West?

And furthermore, if I was living in the East, would I seem Western to the Easterners…would I carry this vastness with me and wear it on my sleeve like a steady down valley draft for everyone to feel?

If you aren’t from here, this chunk of:

pasture, lake, river, mountain, foothill, prairie, grasslands, slough, stone and wind…

how have you always dreamed this place would be?

And if you are from the West,

what is it to you?

And how does your existence help define it?

Are your heartstrings made of barbed wire?

Do you know that song that makes the tall grasses bend down at the knee?

Does your soul meander like a spring fed creek down the side of a mountain?

Does the wind know you by name?

Do you drink the sunlight and tame the bees?

Mine do. Yes I know it. It does. Yes. I do.

If you come West, come see me, we’ll sing the sun down together and breathe that wide open breeze into our bodies and rest on our sides in the grass like rocky ranges rising up. We won’t do as we’re told, not always, but we’ll always do what’s right.

In the sun, under the shadow of the West edge of the Rockies,

we’ll warm our bones with music, spun gold and tall grasses.

When the moon rises, full and bright

we’ll whirl wildly about the night.

Filed Under: idaho, mountains, music festival, pebble creek, pocatello, rocky mountains

Morning Has Broken

October 21, 2009 by The Noisy Plume

I woke up feeling like I’m a different person than I was yesterday.

I crossed the street and meandered up into the hills this morning. I was actually in search of a sunrise. With a perfectly blue Idaho sky I knew the sun would pierce the night with certainty and clarity.

I wanted to pierce the night in the same way, so I sought the sun, young in her nest, winging her way high.

And she did not disappoint.

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning…

Up in that holy blaze with the mountains in the distance and the sage at my knees I did a bit of thinking, a bit of singing, some strolling, some smiling, some praying, some glad hearting…