Blog Archives

The Ice Pond

Posted on by Dean Clark / Leave a comment

I was forbidden to climb on our first house in Idaho, a tarpaper shack across the meadow from where Dad worked at Clearwater Timber Protective Association (CTPA) near Headquarters. The house consisted of a framework much like a large, garden shed with a low, flat, board roof sloping nearly to the ground in back and covered with tarpaper for waterproofing. The board siding was also covered with tarpaper secured by thin wooden strips. There was one layer of unsealed boards on the floor, and even with throw rugs it could be drafty at times.

We had two small bedrooms, one for my sister Ardath Jean and one for my parents. I slept on a studio couch in the combination living room/kitchen. There was no inside plumbing and no electricity. Water was carried in a bucket from a spring about three hundred feet away for drinking or poured into the reservoir of the wood burning kitchen range used for cooking and other household needs. The outhouse was a two-holer about fifty feet from the kitchen door, our only door. Lighting was by kerosene lanterns. Of course, there was no refrigeration. Any perishable food was put in a submerged, covered box out at the spring, appropriately called a spring box.

A dirt road led to the tarpaper shack during the summer, but in the winter we waded through an average six feet of snow across the meadow on foot, climbed over Reeds Creek on a perilous, abandoned railroad bridgework, and then waded in snow for another two hundred yards to our car parked near the public road. I never had to wonder why my mother was less than thrilled with our new house. We lived in the tarpaper shack for two winters and three summers. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

Catastrophe, High and Wide

Posted on by Robert Jenkins / Leave a comment

This was in the spring of 2011, when a very large and extremely heavy electrical transformer was being moved by road and rail to an Idaho Power sub-station near Shoshone. Weighing in at 450 tons, the transformer was forty feet long, fourteen feet wide and about eighteen feet tall. Built by a South Korean company, it had been shipped through the Panama Canal to a seaport in Texas. From there it was loaded onto one of the largest railroad cars in North America for a long and slow journey to its rail destination near Gooding. Known by railroaders as a “high-and-wide” load, the transformer and the railcar had their own crew of attendants, who made sure the load remained steady and stable throughout its journey.
From the beginnings of railroads in America, they were the “go to” form of transportation if you had a large piece of machinery or something very heavy to move. The railroads reached their zenith during World War II, when they had the greatest amount of track, which meant very large loads were moved just about anytime, anywhere. Even today, when a company needs to transport an especially large or heavy load, railroads still will get the nod if their tracks are anywhere close to the pick-up point or destination.

I became aware of this high-and-wide load as it was nearing Idaho by rail. On a nice Saturday morning in April 2011, I first caught sight of it near Dietrich, and followed it through Shoshone to its rail destination at a grain facility near Gooding. The transformer would be removed from its railcar and loaded onto a highway heavy-lift transport rig. It then would proceed from Gooding through Shoshone and down Highway 93 to the Idaho Power sub-station. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

Cowgirl Up

Posted on by Kaitlyn Farrington / Leave a comment

My love for Idaho is long and varied. I had so many wonderful experiences growing up on my family’s ranch south of Bellevue that I can hardly imagine growing up any other way. My parents got a divorce when I was in third grade, but my dad moved just down the road, to the other side of our hundred acres. It was great, because I could either hop on my horse bareback and ride down to the other house, or hop on my four-wheeler. I suspect there are not many other places you can do that.

I used to go on really long four-wheeling rides to this place we called “Up Top.” It was our other piece of land, a little more than 250 acres. All over Up Top were natural springs, where I would swim during the summer. Up Top was my getaway. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

Missing Gene

Posted on by Angela D'Ambrosio / Leave a comment

My husband Rick says my side of the family is missing a self-preservation gene. I hadn’t really considered it until my mother and father decided to build their dream house at the top of maybe one of the most dangerous roads in America.

Admittedly, reaching the summit is like breaching the gates of heaven, but it’s six miles of sheer rock cliffs and narrow thoroughfares just big enough for a single vehicle. And that’s the improved road.

The suspect road is an old logging trail that branches off Highway 95 in the mountains near Council. My dad, Jim Warren, had to dynamite parts of that road, which my kids lovingly call “the scary cliff.” We’ve actually convinced the kids that we installed a parachute on the mini-van just in case we fall off the cliff. It is always a life-affirming journey to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

Pariah

Posted on by Melissa Whiteley / Leave a comment

In 2005 I married into a family of hillbillies, cowboys, and ranchers whose earlier generations began somewhere in Arkansas. In Idaho, they make their living raising cattle. They consist of five or six families living in the middle of nowhere, amid rugged mountaintops or in the wide-open desert. These communities are sometimes so small and so isolated that the bar is in the back of the convenience store and the bartender is also the Sunday school teacher. Some of the family, though—like my in-laws (thankfully)—live in a more pleasant manner, in manufactured homes perched on hundreds of acres. These homes are surrounded by flat brown plains, horse corrals, and looming haystacks. At times, the smell of manure and rotting carcasses fills the air—a smell that I have yet to grow comfortable with. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

With Bat Man and Snake Lady

Posted on by Kris Millgate / Leave a comment

Don’t look down now, but there’s a snake slithering between your feet.” That’s what I hear as I balance my body across two boulders while trying to shoot video.

The creepy factor is off the charts, but I don’t look down, even though I know the warning is not an idle threat. There really is a snake at my feet, plus a few hundred more on the rocks around me and several dozen bats over my head. It’s too much to take in all at once, so I focus on finishing the shot before the sun goes down, knowing it will only get worse in this desert cave on the Snake River Plain east of Arco.

Bill Doering is the bat expert. He’s married to Sara. She’s the snake expert. Despite their unusual wildlife preferences, they are the delightful couple I’m meeting in the desert between Idaho Falls and Arco. I throw in “delightful” for my own benefit. It keeps me from turning around halfway across the desert. I can’t even use lost as my excuse for not showing up, because that unmarked dirt road on the right is hard to miss when the Doerings and their big, burly truck are waiting for me at the turnoff. The only truck around is also the only truck with an abandoned cat in the cab. The Doerings found the hungry kitty on the side of the road. They have all night to care for it so they bring it along. Like I said, delightful. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

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 →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only

Firth–Spotlight

Posted on by Wallace J. Swenson / Leave a comment

An Insider Finds This Old Town Still Reluctant to Make Noise

By Wallace Swenson

Straddling the rail line that angled through the Upper Snake River Valley southeast to northwest, and bisected by the two-lane track that eventually became US Highway 91, the sleepy hamlet of Firth didn’t amount to much in 1900. But as was often the case while the West was settled, the railroad put the namesake of a pioneer, Lorenzo Firth, on the map. In 1903, the Oregon Short Line, a narrow gauge connection to the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad, decided to move the existing siding at Basalt, along with its water tower and maintenance sheds, one mile south. Exactly why this move was made has been lost in history; but back then, when railroad owners spoke, sparks flew and wheels turned. As was the fashion, the Pocatello Tribune reported laconically:

“As far as the Oregon Short Line affairs are concerned, Basalt is a matter of history. The new siding, called Firth, is three thousand feet long. A loading track has also been put in.”

And that was that. Continue reading →

This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options.
Register & Purchase  Purchase Only
JOIN US ON THE JOURNEY

QUESTION? (208) 941.3715