interior west

A Vision Of Trout — And An Orvis Partnership

May 9, 2015 by The Noisy Plume

I cannot believe my ears and mind were able to isolate the sound in the first place. It’s a miracle that I heard it. I was running on a single track, my footsteps driving me forward through the woods in rhythmic, soft thumps. The wind was in the scrub maple and aspen, the dogs were crashing through underbrush on the hunt for voles, chipmunks and grouse. In the swirling ocean of sound around me, I heard a still, small noise — the soft licking tone of a trout nose breaking the surface of water. I stopped as soon as I heard it, my upper body and knees objecting to inertia, and I slowly turned my head to the right, to look down into the clear, cold waters of City Creek. My eyes adjusted to the play of shadow and light on the surface of the water and there, in the rapidly moving translucence strewn with twigs and last summers leaves, I saw the speckled back of a native cutthroat trout, busy with the calm and stabilizing flutter of fins and tail; treading space and time.

I gasped aloud to myself! It was a nice little fish, I estimate it was eight inches in length which sounds like nothing to write home about, I know, but allow me to tell you about City Creek. City Creek is a spring creek that flows, year round, off the West Bench of the Portneuf Valley. It runs cold, clear and bright, as spring creeks do. At its widest, it might measure four feet in width. While there are some deeper pools on it’s course, it is, for the most part, roughly three inches deep. It is precious to me because Robert and I are the sole owners of water rights to this creek and its waters have fed and grown our property here in Pocatello since it was first established as a fruit orchard 117 years ago. Our water rights are historic and deeded to our property. Water rights in the West are a holy thing, people use to kill each other over water here and there’s still a lot of fighting that goes on regarding every drop that comes out of the sky and off the mountains in the interior West. The water is our lifeblood, our livelihood, the thing that dictates the quality of our existence in many ways; it’s also the stuff we stalk in search of some of the most beautiful critters on God’s green earth: trout.

Beyond the actual implications of basically owning the water in City Creek, I view this water as one of the crown jewels of our home. The West bench rises up from our property here in Pocatello and I view the mountains I see out the front windows of my home as my front yard — a space I play in every single day and take great delight in exploring. To have seen, for the first time in my seven years of life in this valley, a native trout in what I consider to be my creek, was nothing short of a miracle. A miracle!

Furthermore, just past our home, City Creek plunges off a nine foot tall cement wall that was installed in 1965 to help control flooding in the heart of Oldtown. This is the other reason why seeing this fish shocked me out of my skin — it’s old stock. I consider it impossible for any fish to have recently made its way up City Creek from the Portneuf River!

As I stood there on the bank of my creek and looked down into the water at my miracle trout, I heard him rise to kiss the air a few more times and marveled at the music of the sound that plucks at the heartstrings of fly fishermen and fisherwomen around the world. Is there any music quite like trout rising up against the thinness of the sky to simply touch the air with a blunt nose or slurp a bug off the seam that stitches the heavens to the waters? I think not. It’s a sound I live for, it’s a sound that drives me mad, it’s a sound that calms the senses. I crouched down and stayed there, watching my fish skitter about the shallows, until he hit a splashy pocket of water beside a large stone and was carried away by the current, down the mountain, closer to the sea. I sighed aloud, stayed there a while longer, in the absence of time, in the shade of the woods, on the edge of a trout home, on the narrow and rippling shoreline of a speckled life lesson.

Eventually, I picked myself up off the creek bank and kept on running up the trail, passing in and out of light and shadows, feeling my skin warm in the sunshine as the wind combed my hair. I was thinking hard about that trout and pulling forth the life lessons and truths from his appearance in my life that afternoon. I thought about how steadily that fish approached life no matter the strength of the current or the depth of the water. He simply navigated, to the very best of his abilities, the waters he found himself in. I thought about persistence, longevity, survival, simplicity, legacy and as always, the notion of home.

My feet carried me higher up the mountain, into the arms of the wind and the warm spice of the juniper stands. I felt my mind relax as I fell into the space and calm that comes to me when I run big distances — the place where the world around me seems to pause and pulse with delicate details and infinite opportunity, the place I physically, emotionally and mentally break free of my shackles. I covered many miles, pushed up and over switchbacks built of mafic rubble, entered deeper into the sunshine and bluebird sky, and somewhere along the way I felt my true, free-self, gently press up against the smooth surface of the world around me and I know I made that same music the trout makes when it reaches up to touch the sky.

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I’m pairing up with Orvis for the next while to help them celebrate women and men who love the outdoors. They are currently holding a photo contest with plenty of great, quality prizes. You can enter images in the contest with your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts using the hashtags #orvis and #findyourpause .

The photo contest is for USA-icans only and is open until May 20th — so hurry up, submit a few photos and get inspired for the summer months and that good old outdoor living.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: contest, fishing, idaho, interior west, orvis, trout

Pow Wow

August 12, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

The Fort Hall indian Reservation has the most beautiful dancing ring I have ever seen — it is covered in a lovely, architecturally sweeping structure, strung with shade cloths and planted with thick, lush grass. Around the edge of the dancing area sit fifteen to twenty drumming circles that take turns playing through out the day, dance by dance, spelling history into thin air with soaring voices and rawhide strung tight. I always sit within the circumference of the drum line at this pow wow because I don’t own a lawn chair, for starters, but also because I like to feel it in my chest, you know? Each drum strike. My heart electrically stumbles at first and then rearranges itself rhythmically so that my blood keeps tempo with the swirl of sound, texture and color around me. At times I have to plug my ears, but I can still feel the jolt of the past wearing on my bones, as though it’s me being struck surely and deftly, skin tight and thrumming, two black braids hanging over me and a wide mouth singing the sky down to earth.

Pow wow is transporting.

The best women dancers move with a stoic, controlled face; neither frowning or smiling, mouth and cheeks firm despite the steady movement of feet through green grass. It is grace, refinement, dignity, and power — the way they move. Surefooted as any doe, tied up securely with the sweep of fringe and the jangle of jingles. I can only imagine what it feels like to carry pounds of exquisite hand beading across a pair of narrow shoulders. Would I stumble? Would I fall? Or would I move like the mountain water, too?

The men dance to the drums dynamically, athletically, with strength and virtue. I see it in their mouths; a history of place, a ribbon of leadership, an understanding of seasons, the quiet knowing that comes with bones built of wildflowers and bison heart. Swirling with color, streamers, fringe, feathers; eyes masked in paint, ankles heavy with bells. They are a true marvel. I openly stare.

These are ancient dances that span generations and time. There’s a funny mix of old and new, a pairing of neon synthetics and deer hide, the combination of dancing from the heart and dancing to win. The announcer with the microphone addresses the junior fancy dancers before giving awards and quotes an Iggy Azalea song. Those in the crowd who know the lyrics sing along a little and laugh.

There are the questions that continually hang in my mind after a lifetime of living beside or ON reservations in Canada and the USA:

Where has this culture come from and where is it headed? How does it remain intact and alive under the raw and terrible pressure of the world? What does the future hold for the newest generation? Which of them will be scientists, doctors, farmers, lawyers, artists, musicians? Which of them will spend a decade dealing cards for the blackjack table at the casino down the road? Which of them will lead AA meetings for friends and family? Which of them will have the next beautiful little girl who will learn, slowly and seriously, the steps to the fancy dance to carry herself into a sure future that holds hands with a complicated past?

And what is my part in it all, a white girl, a white artist, who at times wishes she had the right to wear a jingle dress with slim wrists wrapped in petit point turquoise while moving with a stoic face across green grass in the heart of summer.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: american indian, fort hall indian reservation, interior west, pow wow, questions, res life, usa

The Office Above My House

July 23, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

Above my house there is an office space that operates on a first come first serve basis. Which is to say, if you get there first, you get to use it for as long as you like to, and everyone who swings by (and no one ever swings by) can find a space of their own, elsewhere, on a different mountain peak.

I arrived by 4×4 around sunset the other night, just as a blood red forest fire sun was sinking through the clouds over the Snake River Plain. I had the dogs with me (you can take your dogs to this office no matter how rowdy they are) and they galloped through indian paintbrush and fireweed hunting for marmots as I sat with a stone for a backrest, balanced my sketchbook on my knees and poured black ink over six pages, front and back.

I live, quite literally, on the very edge of one of the biggest cities in Idaho (there are about 50 000 humans in Pocatello) and the only reason I can live in town like this is because this space, THIS SPACE, is directly across and above the street from my house. I can be on a single track trail in thirty seconds if I run out my front door. The West Bench feels like an extension of my property, and in a way, it is, since I pay my taxes to the United States government. Public lands are mine, and they’re yours too if you also render part of your income to the government here. That’s cool to think about, isn’t it? Here in the USA, we are rich in so many ways. I saw Utah Phillips play in a tiny venue in Grass Valley, California once with Robbie. Something he said between songs has stuck with me for ten full years now, it’s something I share with others regularly and I’ll paraphrase the heart of what he said here because the truth of it is sure to resonate with you.

One of the most special things about the American West, the American interior West to be even more specific, is the huge sum of land that is held in trust as wilderness area and public use area. I’m talking about Beaureau of Land Management lands, Forest Service lands, National Parks and National Monuments. By the nature of the fact that your tax paying dollars go towards the care and preservation of those lands, you OWN them. They are yours to explore, to keep, to treasure, to adore. They are yours to escape to, ride your horse on, graze your sheep and cattle on. If you are a meat eater and you believe in eating clean meat and you choose to hunt wild animals in order get that clean meat, public lands are the lands you take your meals from. They are yours to draw your water from, if you own water rights to a spring, creek or river like Robert and I do. They are yours to glean peace, comfort and inspiration from. They are yours to love, cherish and keep clean. They’re yours to fight for, to represent, to speak on behalf of.

One of the reasons I go out, so often, to explore the land around my home and the land directly up from my house here in Pocatello is because I own it as a taxpayer, but I’m also beholden to it. This is the dirt, forest, sagebrush, water and moonrise that informs my work, inspires my pen and claims my heart. I walk, run, ski and hike the mountains here because I need them and because they need me, too. When I write about the land and sky here, I write for myself, but also on behalf of the space I call home, the space that owns me back, the space that has been entrusted to me.

This space outside my front door is entrusted to you, as well, if you are a USA citizen or greencard holding permanent resident (like me). You may not live here, but you still own it. I share it with you through my writing and photographs so you know it exists, so you can believe in it and cherish it, so you can be a part of it when you are on holiday driving cross country in your mini-van with your kids and dog in tow, so you can feel the spaciousness of our wild lands through your computer screen when you sit in your office cubicle and secretly check out my blog between coffee breaks. We humans are going to seek out the wild places more and more often as life and technology begins to overwhelm us to a greater degree. The wild spaces are our redemption from the synthetic, fast paced nature of our culture and lives; they will become increasingly important to humanity in the years to come as they are dissolved and are taken from us, foot by foot, mile by mile.

A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post on a similar topic and I want to take a second to direct you to his blog. I have been a fan of his writing for well over a year now. He is an avid bird hunter and angler and I believe, a passionate, straight shooting advocate for the interior West and her shrinking wild spaces. Plus, to be perfectly honest, he writes like a son of a gun. He’s going to publish a book one fine day in the future and I’m going to buy a hundred copies of it and hand it out on street corners to perfect strangers. I encourage you to head on over to read his most recent post.

Long live the West and may her wild and free spaces remain unchained, unexploited and cherished (though it’s already too late to hope for such a thing, in some places) for years to come because I dearly love an office space at 8000 feet.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, interior west, office, photography, work, writing