idaho — Page 20

May The Mountain Rise Up To Meet You

December 9, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

May the mountain rise up to meet you, as it is rising up to meet me. Honestly, I have a mountain in my face. There is nothing behind me but space. The next razorsharp ridgeline rises up like a brick wall and the next and the next until the landscape is reduced and augmented, simultaneously, into a series of rugged spines that eventually fall into the lowest point in all of Idaho — Hells Canyon. It’s hard to believe this is the low country of this state, the land is twisted, rugged and vertical but the peaks here top out at a wimpy 4500ft. I am hiking directly up a mountain so steep in some sections that I can reach my hand out in front of my body to touch the face of the slope and steady myself. I am not out of breath, I am not panting from exertion though this is hard work. At home, in Pocatello, I run, hike and ski between 5000 and 9000ft. The air here seems luxurious and thick.

It takes us less than an hour to hike less than a mile with a vertical gain of roughly 2500ft. When we reach the top of our ridgeline I am hungry and I have sweat through my four top layers: sports bra/tank top, wool baselayer, hooded sweatshirt and light down jacket. When I remove my pack to grab my camera and my sandwich, the wind viciously slaps at the sweat stain on my back and I am instantly chilled. I eat my sandwich as quickly as I can, snap a few photographs and dive back into my pack to put a layer of something between my wet jacket and the wind.

Gosh. The wind.

The accordion of ridgelines lays brisk and bellowing in all directions. This country is steep and unforgiving, rugged as a lanky cowboy leaning on a split rail fence, bristling like a coyote with raised hackles in a swaggering breeze that serves to test and refine. The ridges cut the sky before plunging steeply into deep drainages. There is no story here of glacial onslaught and retreat, no hanging valleys or truncated mountain slopes. The land here has been carved away by wind and water over the years. It’s cracked and creaking, like a thing that has only ever known opposites: dry and wet, hot and cold, light and dark. It’s no country for old men.

We are here because this is a dry, inhospitable place littered with basalt. We are here because this is where the chukar live. We are here because our dogs live to hunt birds. We are here because we are hungry and believe in getting our own meat. We are here because the beauty of Idaho begs us to come. We are here because each time we stop and look around at the world we feel our souls sing hymns of praise to the Creator.

How lucky we are to be alive and well. How privileged we are to hunt for our own food. How blessed we are to have dogs that will work for us like our dogs do. I look at Rob and say, “This place is only for you and me.” There is no one else around. I reach up and wrap my arms around the sky and acknowledge a sense of homecoming.

I like to come hunting with Rob because I like to be responsible for the getting of my meat. I eat meat. I think it tastes better if I go out and get it myself, from a wild place. It’s hard work. Using a gun doesn’t make it easy, it just makes my arms tired when I’m hiking up a crazy mountain slope. I like knowing that if something happened to Rob, I could go out and get my own food from a wild place. I don’t want to depend on him that way, I want to be capable. Hunting the way we hunt is a skill. Sometimes we are successful because of our skills, sometimes we are lucky. That said, I am learning this skill from my husband who is a patient teacher and a talented woodsman. I am grateful for his lessons, even when I sass him or inform him that I cannot feel my hands or I ask to stop so I can pee in the sagebrush for the seventeenth time since we started out, I am learning how to hunt and I’m getting better at it. I am also getting better at shooting. Shooting and hunting are two different things, though they sometimes happen in the same place at the same time.

It’s also important to note that I go hunting because I sincerely like it. It challenges me physically and mentally. Sometimes it’s tremendously unpleasant and I want nothing more than to go home, take a hot bath and wear fuzzy slippers. If I feel this way it is because I am cold, hungry and tired and I can barely get my hands to hold on to my shotgun because the steel plates are slowly freezing my fingers despite the fact I have on gloves and mittens and it’s nearly dark and I’m walking down a steep slope and praying I won’t trip and fall to my death. I try not to complain because Robert never complains. I complain only if death is imminent. This is an unwritten law in our household: COMPLAIN ONLY IF DEATH IS IMMINENT. I am the only family member to ever break this law which isn’t saying much because our family consists of two people (if you discount all the livestock). Most of the time, I love every moment of hunting. Robert says I do fine if I have lots of snacks, wool long johns and a good set of mittens. He genuinely loves it when I come hunting with him. He is very pure and does not tell lies. But, to my own credit, I am physically capable of things the average human isn’t capable of. This I know and this is why I make a good hunting partner for my husband.

Today, the ground is frozen, my boots fail to sink into the dirt and anchor my steps. It’s hard walking. Every other stride my foot scuttles off a frozen chunk of mud, a clump of gritty snow or a pocket of elk poop. If those things fail to unsettle my gait, I stumble on loose chunks of basalt rock that, once kicked loose, tumble eternally down a steep mountain face until they disappear from sight. Each time I kick a rock free, I think to myself, ” I could fall down this mountain just like that, gaining momentum with each roll and bounce.” I keep moving as fast and carefully as I can.

Hunting chukar is a total body workout. I walk uphill until I feel my quadriceps screaming. When I hike downhill, my brakes in my legs start to give out, I think I can hear them squealing, smell them burning, I get wishy washy noodle legs, sturdy as whips, wobbling like hospital jello. When we take a break, it’s short. It’s too cold to stop for very long and it’s hard to get the dogs to stand still with us. We don’t ever truly stop to rest, resting is an inconvenience. This is a sun up to sun down affair. It’s quite exhausting. If the dogs can’t find birds, or if we fail to get them one of the birds they have found, it’s utterly disheartening.

On the next ridgeline over, we see a herd of elk, I hoped we would. They have come out of the mountains to lower ground where the snow is shallow and the forage is still in reach. I’ve seen their sign as we have hiked, their hoof prints, their droppings like chocolate covered almonds coated in a thin, twinkling layer of frost. They are standing broadside to us, heads up, testing wind with flaring nostrils, chewing their wild hay serenely. Elk are beautiful. Elk are big.

I say to Rob as we walk, “We are working as hard as elk for our food right now. We might be working even harder, even with our swanky down jackets, gloves, shotguns, woollies and ridiculously talented bird dogs.“

Rob says, “Yes, we are.” He can be a man of few words when he is hunting.

My mouth is partly frozen by the wind and I reiterate clumsily, “No, really! Look at them over there. They get a bite of food for every step they take, maybe more. How much energy will we spend today, you and I and the dogs, to get a few birds to take home for dinner? The energy exchange here is horribly imbalanced! We will never earn back what we have burned in calories today, hiking and shivering, stumbling and stuttering. This is the hardest we could ever work for a chicken dinner!“

Robert’s reply is simple and distracted, “Yup. True. Jillian, Tater Tot just hit scent. Can you see the direction he is pointing? Head over there and be ready, those birds are holding on the back side of that rock pile and they’ll go fast when they go. Hurry up.“

Apparently, hunting is not for the conversationalists.

When it’s all said and done, I hunt with Robert for three days and I outshoot him for the first time ever! While I try not to feel too proud of that fact, I am, just a little bit, and the sweet thing is that Rob is proud too. He drops me in Boise where we have staged our other truck at a friend’s house so I can head home and get back to work in the studio. I am lonesome for him as soon as he leaves and Boise feels too big and full and loud. The sky is far away from me in the city, the distances between streets and buildings are too measured, too organized. The sidewalks are hard beneath my boots, every step on concrete feels like a small shock. I get in the truck and start driving, country music on the radio, one dog keeping me company on the bench seat as the Snake River Plain rushes past. I feel my heart beating in my chest and know that my pulse resembles the land I just spent three days knowing and walking — ascending and descending in tempo rubato, rugged, rough and ready, cut by a thousand rivers run dry, sun warmed and wild, seamlessly pressed to the sky.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: a good man, eating wild, hunting, idaho, love

A Sunday Spent

November 18, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

This isn’t where I meant to be today. I meant to be on the mountain in the background of this photograph, Scout Mountain, but the lower snow gates on the forest service roads were already shut and I remember that I felt annoyed by that. I turned the truck around, muttered something impatient to Tater Tot who was leaning his head over the back seat and yipping excitedly in my ear. I drove up a different road, parked at a snow gate, leapt from the truck while swinging my backpack on, released my wolves and set out walking. I naturally shortened my stride, just slightly, to make up for the work of walking in snow. My legs turned hot as I made my way upward, unused to the resistance of white. I was all alone. For a while, I followed what looked like a lady wearing size nine Sorel boots. I veered off that trail when I opted to follow a set of deer prints instead. Later I left the deer prints for rabbit tracks. Later still, I strode out into unblemished snow, heavy with the warmth of the day, clumping and clinging to the tops of my boots and jean cuffs. Above me a raven was swirling, singing out a throaty song, leading me on deeper into dreams and beyond.

The sky was heavy, the high places open and ripped by a sharp wind, there were coves of untouched douglas fir, still dressed in delicate blankets of snow. The lichens on exposed rock blazed orange, crimson, chartreuse and mint. I saw mule deer sailing through sagebrush like kites. I crossed a spring, two, four, eight springs — feeling my heart lighten with the easy sound of mountain water flowing towards an important destiny. I talked to myself. I talked to the dogs. I talked to the wind. I fell into silence and simply walked and looked and breathed. When I reached the highest place on my jaunt, I stood and looked out, turned myself in a tight circle and absorbed the full, panoramic scope of Idaho laid out beneath my feet, a wild blanket for walking on, a map of natural history, a skin scoured by sun and storm. My Idaho. The wind beat itself against the smallness of my body. My hair flew out behind me like a yellow cape. I thought I would be lifted up and carried off on the strength of the gusts. I felt my feet turning cold, my hands numbing, my face stained pink in the royal shout of breezy decree. Once I could stand it no longer, I left the peak, settled just below it, with my back to an ancient and twisted juniper, poured a little cup of peppermint tea and warmed myself. The dogs ran loops through the timber, checking in with me, from time to time. Tater barked at blue grouse, high and safe in the fir trees. I sat deeper on my perch and savored the warm herbs of my tea. I noticed the sky sailing past, littered with merry postage stamp patches of blue. I noticed the distance growing between mountain tops and sky roots. I wondered if I’d receive a sunset while walking back to the truck.

I began to make my way down, step by step, slipping and tripping on hidden stones and brush. I walked side slope until I thought my ankles might break. Tater busted a covey of partridge and chased them as they flew, like he had a heart full of Christmas. Suddenly, the sky broke and the land was lit with glorious light and warmth. Around me, the sage was glowing, the aspen like a thousand shy, slim brides. It was heaven. The light was heaven. I made my way slowly through the glory of it all, reveling in the sudden warmth of unobstructed light and the details of the world around me.

I crossed a creek. Then one more. I pretended to be water and felt myself adore the glorious, magical pull of gravity. I met a road, snowy and tracked with skis. I rambled down it until I reached “nest alley”, a place I visit often, where every step along the creek reveals a new bird nest to be reveled in. I found one I liked, pushed past thorny brambles, suffered a scratch on my cheek, and collected it for myself — delicate and neat. I walked on, and on. I passed two small butterflies cruising low in the cold of a steeply walled canyon. I thought to myself, “I’m a different person now then when I first arrived here. Something in me, something that anchored itself meanly in the corner of my heart, has been released. The chains have been dissolved into mist with every step I’ve taken. I can’t remember who I was a few hours ago. I only know who I am now, now that I’ve been in the high places, smoothed by wind, purified by snow and cloud drift, cradled by the hand of God.“

On days like this, the entire world seems underwing. I suppose it is. As if I needed to be blessed again by creation, by the healing of it and the beauty of it, already brimming, as I was, with joy and peace and fullness of spirit, the sunset and alpenglow on the drive home was wonderful and rosy and lovely as ever and as pretty as anywhere.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, winter

The Shepherd

November 4, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

He spoke sparse and terribly broken English, I speak sparse and terribly broken Spanish, but we still managed to have a twenty minute long conversation while standing on the edge of the flock he was tending with the help of his three dogs. This will be his tenth year shepherding in Idaho. He’ll travel home to Chile in the new year. I fell in love, just a little, with his Great Pyrenees who has a sweet heart and a proud, hard working spirit. Shepherds have one of the oldest occupations in the world and I was glad to meet this one personally. I hope he’s warm in his shepherd caravan tonight, out there in the cold hills above the South Fork of the Snake River where the the grip of the wind can rip steel. And I hope the coyotes keep their distance while they sing their feral lullabies to all the gentle lambs.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, shepherd

To Jackson And Back Again

November 3, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

[please click on this image to see it larger so you can fully gaze upon the texture of snowflakes falling on horses…beautiful]

Oh man.

The world is such a beautiful place. The people I love are extraordinary, in every way. The animals I keep are true lovebugs. The mountains I know, the plains I adore, are pure, wild, ancient gifts from the Father Of Lights.

I am home from Jackson. Rob is home from elk hunting. We are cooking pizza and then we are going to lay on the couch together in the crackling warmth of candlelight, snuggle and tell each other the stories from the past few days of our lives that we spent apart.

I have a broad heart that reaches high and deep, eyes full of snowflakes, and arms that were made for hugging.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, travel, wyoming

Idaho Crush

October 23, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

Oh man. I’m crushing so hard on Idaho right now. I feel myself tightening my heart tethers even more, double knotting my soul strings to the land here, the sky, the wind, the spring creeks, the rivers wild, the timber (pungent douglas fir, subalpine fir, pondi pine, aspen, scrub maple), the sage. Bless it all. It is sweet tincture against the shadows of this world.

We went out yesterday afternoon, hunting grouse for our dinner table, of course, but also to walk up into a high place and survey our beautiful little pocket of the world. To place the delicate, wild wafer of nature on our tongues and drink the breeze in holy communion. There was Idaho, unfurling like a banner beneath our feet, rolling out like a royal rug in hues of tawny gold and silver sage. I am not sure there’s a place more rumpled, more eaten by wind, mule deer and river water. I think, time and time again, that the very hands of God reached out and crumpled the skin of the earth here into a ball, as one would a sheet of pure white paper, before unfolding it loosely and draping it over the bones of our planet. I see stone spines rising up as far as my eyes can see, and then beyond, out across the Snake River Plain and the Buttes into the wide crowns of the Lemhi and Beaverhead Ranges that lay pulsing with wilderness North of our little town.

I forgot about the wind here. We’ve reacquainted. It has cold claws. I missed the savage nature of the air here, as though it too has to survive by tooth and nail in order to scrub the high places clean and devour the dust between the sagebrush. It has a big job, exfoliating the interior West. Someone has to keep it clean, I suppose.

When the sun began to set and the golden hour dawned I stopped breathing. It was surreal, almost like a summer sunset polluted by wildfire smoke — bright orange and pink lighting up the forest floors between strands of timber on the mountain slopes. I fell far behind the boys, stopping to point my camera at every little detail that rose up to meet me, breathing in the scent of the wild spaces here and pausing, every other step, to sniff the sage.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bird hunting, idaho