smoky mountains

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.

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 Two

Part One