sawtooths

Part Three: Wherein The Lowlander Goes To The High Country

July 26, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

When I put my shoes on the morning we took this walk, I was rather upset to find that they were smaller than when I wore them last. While driving, I stored them beneath the bench seat that folds out into a bed in the bus. Apparently it gets hot under there. Because of the heat shrinkage, I had to keep my tough little loafers wet on this walk, because they fit better that way.

The smoooshing of a wet shoe can be quite musical.

Let it be known, M is from 200 feet above sea level in the hottest part of the Mojave Desert of Arizona. When I was planning our trip, I wanted to take her someplace beautiful, pristine, unspoiled and perhaps a tad snowy. This said, marching her up to Alice Lake at 8596 feet above sea level may have been an abuse of my trip planning powers.

However, I was pleasantly surprised when she managed the six mile hike up to Alice Lake like a trooper. And, as we all know, what goes up must come down, especially if it wants its dinner. Right? Of course right. I didn’t have to leave her up top with the mosquitoes, bears and mountain lions — she trotted right back down the mountain into a bottle of beer and a barbecued pork chop (the pork chop was donated to us by our campground neighbors who were really and truly, very hilarious).

In point of fact, we acquired our pork chops when one of said campground neighbors leaned out of his camper and bellowed,

“Hey! Want a pork chop?”

And so began a night of hilarity, half cooked s’mores created by the blondest little daughters I’ve ever seen, a cocktail, a bonfire, too much caesar salad and a Facebooking slum lord. Yes. That all really happened in one evening. Oh. And there were tricks on moving bicycles too.

Aw. How cute.

I’m passionate about the Sawtooth Range.

The front, rising up out of Stanley, is spectacular and perhaps one of my very favorite range views of all time. Once you’re up in them, the granite spires rise like cathedrals, nearly vertical in many areas, to cut away at blue sky.

It’s a magnificent, awe inspiring, humbling and purifying place to be, like so many places in Idaho are.

Love.

It.

So did M.

I even made M bushwhack on a few creek crossings.

Favorite quote of the day, while crossing a furious stream:

“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh! It’s so cold!

It’s like I have a toothache in my knees!

How can you stand it???“

Quite easily, in fact.

I am all things Arctic.

Of course, we chatted while we walked, opined,

photographed and even applied some salve to a few wounds.

Hey M,

thanks for coming out.

This morning, your absence has fallen on my home like a cloak of silence.

I just washed your breakfast dishes from yesterday

and it’s almost like you were never here.

Come back soon.

Filed Under: camping, idaho, mountains, sawtooths, summer

Part One: Flora

July 23, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

A True Story:

M and I stood in swarms of mosquitoes on the side of a mountain in a slippery pile of ankle breaking talus to photograph wildflowers — she whipped out her wide angle lens and I chose my trusty, rusty 50mm. We shared our photographic secrets freely, laughed a lot and she swatted a million bugs (they don’t seem to care for me like they do her). There was so much softness captured: softness of petals, softness of light, softness of the baring bright of souls…

____________________________________________

We don’t need many.

No one does.

A few true is enough.

A few true who allow that softness,

make room for it (as it billows and consumes

the quiet of spaces)

and beam it brilliantly back

into the palms of open hands,

into the quiet corners.

You can choose to see.

You can choose not to see.

But if you choose to see,

there is a second choice to make therein:

to see deeper, to see harder, to sometimes strain,

but always to illuminate.

______________________________________________

On that talus,

you can let the weight slide off,

down the mountain,

like so many tumbling pieces of granite and fir.

Tumbling.

Turning.

Turning to sand in the sun.

Disappearing in the hungry mouths of wind and water.

Filed Under: idaho, just a day in my summer life, sawtooths, wildflowers

Babes in the Woods

July 22, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

Three months ago, M and I decided to do a trip in Talulah in the month of July. I’m just now home from that trip. I haven’t been so lean, so brown, so blond, so FULL in a long while!!!

Can’t wait to tell you all about it!

In the meanwhile,

do some wonderful living this weekend,

my fine feathered friends!

Filed Under: idaho, sawtooths, talulah

Part Three

May 25, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

Talulah rolled us down the mountain like a spinning seed on the wind,

then she rolled us back up the mountains into Hailey where we stopped at a restaurant for a shockingly delicious supper (he had lamb, I chose the gaucho steak). We felt a tad out of place. We felt grubby and under dressed. RW’s curls were more feral looking than usual and I was sporting sun blasted cheeks with braids wrapped up and over the top of my head.

We looked like an Irish fisherman and his wife.

Despite our greatest efforts, our boots loudly clomped us over to a corner table, we leaned in together and quietly talked or sat in easy silence while listening to the hilarious, high-end conversations swirling around us. When we left, we tipped big, because even though we found ourselves bobbing about in a senseless sea of ill-informed snobbery, the food was incredible and the service wonderfully smooth and relatively invisible.

Camping that night, just up the pass from Ketchum, was very cold and wet. The conifers wore fresh white in the morning and I was chilled to the marrow and beyond.

We coasted back down the mountain for hot drinks and breakfast. I bought and wrote silly postcards for friends and family.

RW had a drippy nose.

Later that morning, we chugged over Galena pass in the Sawtooths at 8701 feet — the highest highway summit in the Northwest! Winter combed her cold fingers over our rig, Plum shivered on the back seat, I could feel the frost creeping through the fibers of my very being. Alabaster breath pouring from my lips. RW drove with his fists shut tight, steering with the soft sides of his wrists. Some places are harder to thaw than others, just like people, spring can come slowly or not at all.

We found Stanley, faint green, at the base of the Sawtooth front and trickled out of town beside the roar of the Salmon River. A brief stop at Sunbeam hot springs allowed me to stand in my galoshes in hot water and thaw out my feet. We slipped into the heart of Idaho, up through Challis, and finally to the destination of the day, Goldbug hot springs. A few miles of uphill hiking took us into the quintessential Idaho hot springs complete with a spectacular view and a stiff, cold wind.

To my left, an ancient juniper. To my right, a roaring waterfall, behind me, RW sunning himself on a boulder and below me, the mountains tumbling away into forever.

I hummed to myself, as I soaked:

…we run like a river

runs to the sea

we run like a river to the sea…

[U2]

The golden hour arrived and we made our way up to Salmon and then started out across the majestic Lemhi Valley towards home. There was an eternal hunt for a place to camp, gale force winds that tried to push the bus off the highway, the wrong BLM road that took us to:

a herd of black angus,

a split rail fence,

Talulah stalling,

a short and tidy spat due to low blood sugar and freezing temperatures,

apologies,

a rock behind the back wheel of the bus and four hands steering, shifting and pulling the e-brake off.

There was a campsite finally, out of sheer desperation, in the middle of the sage flats on federal land, a full moon, an empty fuel canister, cold soup for dinner, the slap of the wind on the side of Talulah as we slept fitfully through the night, spooned up tight against each other, my arm reaching out of my own sleeping bag to wrap around the warmth of RW’s shoulders.

In the morning, the unforgettable and lonesome Lemhi Valley.

Desolate and wild.

Snow capped in the sun and blanketed in sage as far as the eye could see.

This road took us home.

Talulah flew free and the yellow lines were a single blur until we found Pocatello again, nestled in her sweet little valley, temperate and kind.

Well done Talulah.

Well done.

Seven hundred miles later you look just as svelte.

May your silly little engine purr forever.

Love,

Mister and Missus Plume

Filed Under: central idaho, HOLIDAY, hotsprings, idaho, sawtooths

Part Two

May 23, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

In the morning, we took our time,

brewed our tea, cooked our eggs and toast,

and watched the sun turn everything to fluff and gold.

The snow that fell in the night sloughed off rapidly and the day grew warm.

We filled our backpacks and hiked out to Skilliner hot springs, a few miles from our campsite. The trail we walked was a highway! We made the first hot spring foray of the year in this area and the animals, with the nonexistent local human population, were using the trails as their own. We saw cougar tracks like dinner plates and followed, for at least a full mile, the Smoky Mountain grey wolf pack.

This was the largest track of them all:

Startlingly large, if you keep in mind that I have really

big hands for being such a little girl — bigger than RW’s!

I strained my eyes, searching and searching the mountain sides for a glimpse of the powerful grey wolf pack that calls the Smoky Mountains home…but we saw nothing but the scuffle of tracks and frequent piles of scat, thick with elk hair.

I can’t explain why I wanted to see a wolf so badly, besides the fact that it’s a rare and special thing to see one romping about in the wild. Had I come face to face with the wolf that made this track, he’d have easily stood higher than my waist…

I suppose…

I suppose I sometimes feel like a wolf.

A solitary wolf.

A few weeks ago, a friend referred to me as a “…lone wild woman…” and while these wolves seemed to be running as a pack, there is still an unfettered spirit and a lonesomeness associated with the species that I identify with.

I prayed to see one.

I wished I may.

I wished I might.

I wished to see a wolf that night…

The Smoky River blasted through the canyons, scouring the mountains with silty snow melt. RW, being the fisherman he is, continuously commented on eddies, holes and quieter bends that would hold fish later in the season. Then he lamented how his summer months are stolen by his work every year. Then I reminded him that whenever he jumps out of an airplane and into a forest fire, he always carries a broken down fishing rod in the leg pocket of his jumpsuit and that last year, he fished remote regions of British Columbia, Alaska and the North Cascades…and then he felt much better.

All things were leaning into spring.

The Douglas firs were dropping their snow melt in fat drips on a quiet forest floor.

I hugged every ponderosa pine I encountered.

The lodge pole pines were weeping their sap.

Plumbelina fell in the river.

We came to Skilliner, shucked off our shoes and clothes and then slid into the natural hot spring pool like Adam and Eve before the fall of Eden. There was a rough wind whipping down the valley, cooled as it flowed over river water and pink on our faces as it buffeted our sanctuary again and again. There was the awe that comes with soaking in water that flows hot out of the ground, hot from the crust, warmed by the earth instead of the fires of humankind. We had a larger than life feeling of smallness, and the glorious actualization of goodness and God.

There was Robert, primal and beautiful…

…as beautiful on the outside as he is on the inside.

There was lunch, a sip of water or two, carrot sticks for Plumbelina who burned her feet in a secondary hot spring creek that was much hotter than our pool. There were bare feet gripping rock, a cascade like a perfect shower and sock tracks that wouldn’t leave my ankles.

There was the walk back to our campsite, distant mountains rising up so rich with life and seasonal promise, so ancient and stalwart. I felt gaurded by the natural and kept by the strongest Keeper.

Best of all,

there was a feeling of grandness of heart,

of potential for survival,

the defeat of the fear that sometimes

comes with another season of fire.

We walked down through the sun and dust

to Talulah, piled into her happy space and hit the road again.

Filed Under: hiking, HOLIDAY, hotsprings, idaho, sawtooths, smoky mountains, the most handsome smokejumper you ever saw, wolves