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Death of the Forest Cabin

Posted on by Clell G. Ballard / Leave a comment

I’ve lived my whole life in Camas County, which is almost exactly the size of Rhode Island but has long had a population of around one thousand. The county’s single east-west valley has an elevation of about five thousand feet above sea level, while to the south are low mountains, and to the north are peaks that reach higher than ten thousand feet. Extremely cold winter temperatures (1990 saw an official low of fifty-two degrees below zero) and deep snow discourage everyone except the hardiest individuals from living here.

The farmers and ranchers who settled this area in the 1880s scratched out a living. Mining was a major effort and the remains of dozens of small operations—gold and silver mines, although lead and other trace minerals were present—can be found in all parts of the county. No major strikes were made, but some wealth was taken out of the earth. Many “prove-up” shacks were built as farming homesteads, and even in the highest mountains, every mine had some kind of shelter. A hard rock mining claim I own at 9,400 feet has a typical shack that housed miners early last century. Decades ago, the weight of ten or more feet of snow caused its collapse. Continue reading →

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Stalking the River

Posted on by Mike Medberry / Leave a comment

“We like this place,” the man said as he and his son fished for bass and catfish at the confluence of the Boise and Snake Rivers, northwest of Parma near the Oregon border. Perhaps more than ever before on this river, anglers and wildlife, farmers and duck hunters thrive in relative peace.

Cinnamon teal and snowy egrets, osprey and black double-crested cormorants, turkey vultures and pelicans are nearly as common as mosquitoes along the lower Boise River. Deer, coyotes, and foxes creep through the thick brush, making a network of trails. Monarch, mourning cloak, and tiger swallowtail butterflies add color and elegance as they float through the cottonwood forest and big fish made a commotion in the river beside the fishermen. The region is alive.

But one small monument nearby marked a death. Fort Boise may have stood tall in 1834 when it was built, but floods have erased any hint of its presence and, in 1854, it was abandoned. It must have been swept away by high water, but that fury comes no more. It happened before dams and irrigation canals and flood-control practices were in place on the new and improved Boise River. Yet floods loom again as a possibility in the age of climate change.

Agriculture dominates the current landscape west of Boise. Canals, ditches, drains, laterals, and creeks dissect the landscape, bringing water to desiccated farmlands. I found it impossible to cross an obscure ditch in mid-May, not to mention all the named and larger canals that I traced and retraced along the river on my upstream walk. The many canals and sub-canals and mini- sub-canals blocked movement for anyone walking along the river. Numerous “No Trespassing!” signs gave the impression that no one should ever stroll alongside this charming river.

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The Green Flash

Posted on by Susanna Danner / Leave a comment

For the past seven years, I’ve been writing conservation agreements for salmon in the Lemhi River, working from my faraway desk here in Idaho’s capital city. I’ve fallen in love with the upper Salmon River watershed.

I’ve backpacked in the Lemhi Mountains, fished the Lemhi River, and even visited Sacajawea’s birthplace. But being in the Lemhi at the moment when Chinook salmon return home is like seeing the famous “green flash” atmospheric phenomenon over the ocean. The timing, location, and conditions have to be just right. I’ve squinted at ocean sunsets until my retinas feel like moth-eaten blankets, but I’ve only seen the green flash twice.

Seeing wild Chinook salmon in Idaho is like that, because to me they’re creatures out of myth, as elusive as sea serpents. In the seven years I’ve worked for the Nature Conservancy, I’ve never seen one. I read the data, so I believe in them, and I work on their conservation as an act of hope. It’s worth it even if I never see the living result of my efforts.

Late last August I had a meeting near the town of Salmon. On the way home, I asked my colleagues if we could detour to a nearby cattle ranch where our organization holds a conservation easement. We telephoned the rancher for permission to visit his ranch to look for spawning Chinook. He gave us the OK, and we bumped down his dirt road to the Lemhi. I got out of the truck and heard splashes in the river. Big splashes. My eyes filled with tears. Continue reading →

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House of Straw

Posted on by Mark Lung / Leave a comment

I still remember the look on the face of the hard-working farmer when I told him I wanted to buy four hundred straw bales. Holding a check for twelve hundred dollars in his hand, he told me he had been worried about what he was going to do with all that straw (the waste left over from harvesting grains), and then got around to asking what I planned on doing with the bales. I told him I was building a home for my wife Janice and me. He squinted, not because it was sunny, and eventually he smiled. “I guess it makes sense,” he said.

People are usually unsure but fascinated by the idea of building with straw bales. But after visiting our home, they are pleasantly surprised to find that it bears little resemblance to the home of the three little pigs. Our place has a different feel from a typical house and it performs differently, but it’s solid, safe, affordable, and comfortable. It even won Boise City’s Excellence in Building Award in 2010.

For Janice and me, only a straw bale home makes sense. It’s healthier than traditionally built houses, supports local farmers, saves money, and is thoughtful about the environment. The last part is particularly important to me as an environmental scientist who explores sustainable development in Kenya. I need to practice what I teach. Continue reading →

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Tumbleweed Tinder

Posted on by Dean Worbois / Leave a comment

As a male, my first inclination was to bust right through that quarter mile of brittle little twigs and emerge triumphant on the other end, beating my chest at the might of my hundred-and-seventy horses.

But I thought of all those broken bits of tumbleweed sticking in every bearing of the drive train and every joint of the suspension, and decided to go around.

Going around was not as easy as you’d think. Continue reading →

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Here Comes the Night

Posted on by Jon Mills / Leave a comment

My interest in Idaho’s night skies is a passion born of necessity. Landscape photography rather famously has a very short amount of time in the morning and evening when the light is most favorable for pictures.

I am most often at work during the day, which usually limits my available time for photos, and one such evening I found myself arriving at a location a bit too late for a good picture. I decided to just sit and watch the stars for a while before loading up my gear and heading home. After night fell and some time had passed, I noticed that I could easily make out the faint Milky Way and decided to adjust my camera and take a shot anyway. Mecca! An Idaho treasure previously unknown to me had suddenly been discovered. I could hardly believe the amount of light and detail I was able to capture from the very little light I could see. What had begun as an unfortunate circumstance for landscape photography wound up being just the push I needed to find a new passion for what I call “Nightscapes.”

More research revealed why I was able to capture the amazing night sky of southern Idaho. The combination here of high altitude, low light pollution, and a landscape covered in dark rock offers a view of our night sky many people throughout the world will never have the opportunity to see—and for a photographer, this fortunate combination allows the light of billions of stars to come shining down with brilliant clarity. That was the reason I could make these images with only the stars as my light. Continue reading →

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Driveway on Fire

Posted on by Ray Brooks / Leave a comment

Many of us in Idaho are used to the annual cottonwood event, during which the cottony stuff can pile up like snow. Not everyone is aware of its flammability.

Unfortunately, I used to be one of the ignorant. My awakening came in early summer of 1997, when my older brother, my wife, and I were engaged in the doleful task of preparing the contents of my mother’s house in Ketchum for auction. Mom had recently suffered a grave illness and was now in a nursing home. The house had been sold to pay for her future expenses, and we were picking up the pieces. I felt a real sadness at parting with my mom’s dream home. When she retired from the family business, she had fulfilled a fantasy by moving to what had at one time been called “Millionaires Row” up Warm Springs Creek in Ketchum. Although her place had only been a party-house and garage for the millionaire who built it in the early 1950s, it had fit my mother’s lifestyle perfectly. The house was surrounded by cottonwood, and on that fateful day, cotton from the trees covered the lawn, piling four inches deep in places.

For a break at lunchtime, we decided to drive our mother’s powder blue Wayne’s World sedan to a restaurant in town. But a window had been left down in the car, and first we had to empty two inches of cotton out of it. During lunch, my brother mentioned that the cotton was highly flammable. He recounted the story of a bus from the Sun Valley Resort that had filled with cottonwood cotton after windows were left open. The punch line of the story was that the driver had cleared the cotton by tossing a match in the bus. Although the cotton vanished, the subsequent fire and minor explosion were not good for the bus.

When we finished for the day late that afternoon, we locked the house, my brother got in his car, and began to back out of the driveway. Suddenly, a moment of childhood evil took possession of me (I was forty-nine at the time). I waved at him and made a ceremony of pulling a matchbook from my pocket, lighting a match, and then tossing it toward the cotton in front of his car. He gave me the look unamused parents reserve for especially cretinous children, and drove away. Continue reading →

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Log-Jammed

Posted on by Ray Brooks / Comments Off on Log-Jammed

Stranded on the Middle Fork, a Rafting Party “Self-Rescues”

By Ray Brooks

“There‘s not supposed to be a lake here!” I exclaimed. 

It was midday, July 24, 2006, mile twenty on our eight-day, hundred-mile Middle Fork Salmon float trip. As we rowed farther down this large new lake, we could see other rafts ahead on its western bank. Bequi Martel, our kayaker, sprinted ahead and returned with the news: the lake had been caused by a “blowout” the previous night, and there was also a huge logjam downriver one-half mile, in Pistol Creek Rapid.
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Save Copper Basin

Posted on by Mahlon Kriebel / Leave a comment

“Bandi! Bucx!” Lloyd Warr’s call drifted through a curtain of fog tangled in the sagebrush, shrouding the morning sun. Obviously, his mules had bolted. I had met Lloyd the previous day, when he arrived at Lake Creek Camp. He said he lived in Rupert and he and his companions from Buhl belonged to the Idaho Draft Horse and Mule Association.

I had always thought mules were untrustworthy, but Lloyd explained that breeders select mares and jacks for temperament. Anyway, it was too early to rise, as my four friends and I on this trip into Copper Basin, in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, had talked well past our bedtime. The campfire, which had sealed us in from the cold night, had burned out, and none of my rough-and-tough storytellers had emerged to start the fire. “Bandi, Bucx …” receded as Lloyd made his way along the Copper Basin Loop Road.

“Bandi, Bucx … hay, oats.” Pulling on my boots, I decided to help. Ron had just begun to prepare coffee and Quint was kindling the fire. I called, “Breakfast can wait,” and gunned my off-road vehicle (ORV) towards the voice. To the west, Standhope Peak and Big Black Dome, both rearing nearly 3,500 feet above the basin floor, were pink and red in the morning glow of lifting fog. Driving up alongside Lloyd, I asked, “Can I help?”

Lloyd, about my age, seventy something, replied, “Damn mules, they’ve never bolted.”

I knew we could drive cross-country and, with luck, catch the feckless mules. “Hop on.”

Lloyd hesitated. “I’ve never been on one of these contraptions.”

“Well, this ain’t an ordinary ORV. It’s equipped with a passenger seat.” Continue reading →

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Moonstruck

Posted on by Mike Medberry / Leave a comment

In April 2000, conservationist Mike Medberry and several friends were hiking at Craters of the Moon, gathering information for then-President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, who hoped to expand the approximately 54,000-acre national monument to 750,000 acres. While walking, Mike suffered a stroke that impaired his speech, among other after-effects. His mother moved from California to Boise to help with his recovery. The following excerpt from his book, On the Dark Side of the Moon (Caxton Press, Caldwell, 2012), reprinted with permission, describes Mike’s return visit to Craters a few months after the stroke.

One day in early summer, when she thought I was able and interested, Mom suggested that we take a roadtrip in Idaho. “Where should we go?” she asked.

“Ow bout Craters? I would like that.” I felt like Humpty Dumpty. I had taken a great fall and had to put together the pieces of this broken egg: confidence, communication, love, sanity, work, and memories. And all of it related to Craters of the Moon, where I had fallen and lain out on the lava for many hours. This was a harrowing memory, made more poignant by the time-sensitive ischemic stroke that had permanently damaged my brain. I say that my stroke was time-sensitive because doctors give stroke victims three hours to get the person to a hospital to treat him with a clot-busting medicine, before lack of oxygen kills the afflicted cells. It must have taken me eight hours to get to the hospital in Pocatello. We never spoke of this, but it reminded me just how precious time can be. I wanted to confront this fear and show my mother the beauty of Craters of the Moon, which I had worked to protect over the years. Continue reading →

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