The Mountainside Was Ours

By Barbara Morgan

People say we Boomers enabled our Millennials to excess, buying them chemistry sets and computers. Encouraging worm dissection on the back porch Science and Nature Club. Enthusing about their thespian productions. Providing seed capital for Lemonade Enterprises. We had our careers, our juggling, our guilt. The babysitters, T-Ball, ballet, soccer. Cursed when we did. Cursed when we didn’t. They got drivers’ licenses. Got off to college. Moved out. Came back.

Maybe we Boomers did give shelter from the storm once or twice. Would a mother fox banish her kits from the den to the ragged tooth and claw of . . . of . . . ? Now there’s a sentence this mother fox cannot finish. Yes, it was a busy life—until one morning not so long ago (about last Tuesday) when I awoke at my home in Boise, came downstairs, made coffee, and noticed the house had become quiet. And it stayed really, really quiet.

Naturally I was pleased to receive a text from Charlie late in May, announcing successful completion of his first year of teaching English at Weiser High. He was ready to cast off parts of speech and Julius Caesar in exchange for a direct dive into the buzzing blooming confusion of nature in central Idaho.