North-South Only By Mike Turnlund My wife’s paternal great-grandparents, Frank and Della Dutton, came to northern Idaho around 1900. Among the area’s earliest white settlers, they had migrated west from De Smet, South Dakota (of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Water Mysteries and Other Curiosities By Mary Terra-Berns Coeur d’Alene Lake, which is twenty-five miles long and has a maximum depth of about 220 feet, is inhabited by large and small fish, along with a few “water mysteries.”
By James J. Pizzadili The old cowboy stood along U.S. 95 with his thumb out. He was dressed in clean ostrich-skin cowboy boots, jeans, brown leather jacket, and a large Stetson. He looked a bit weathered and worn,
Lessons from a Legend Story and Photos by Jim Huntsman This was a day I would never forget. It was a cold September morning in 2014, the kind in which you can taste the mountain fog. I was
And a Lot of Idaho Talk Story and Photos by Max Jenkins When we left Idaho in June 1967, the sign at the outskirts of Boise read: “Population, 36,800 something.” Meridian’s population was about twenty-two hundred and mostly
This Time, with a Little Help By Khaliela Wright I sat back in my chair and smiled at Bruce across the top of my wine glass. Outside, a spring squall was whipping up white-capped waves on Lake Coeur
A Far-Flung Family Struck by Floods By Khaliela Wright It rained for forty days and forty nights. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. Some of those days it snowed. The point is there was a lot of water all
Into the Backcountry By Chyrle Bonk Not on my new sleeping bag!” I exclaimed, as my husband Scott helped to change our son’s diaper in our tent in Dworshak State Park in the middle of the night. Anyone
Coastal Forest Thriving in Idaho Story and Photos by Dennis Pence Bob, a forester for one of what I call the alphabet agencies, sat in the passenger seat of the pickup as we drove to the Grandad area
When I arrived in Idaho more than forty years ago, I swore I would not allow myself to fall prey to the allure and blandishments of fly-fishing enthusiasts. I would not yield to the mystique. I felt the whole business was too darned precious, a tad too hoity-toity. Also, fly fishing would doubtless require a pricey set of waders, a costly fly rod, a broad array of feathery insects (not cheap), and exotic volumes of arcana dating back to Sir Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton. If I were to “get involved” with this ostensibly fair maiden, it could prove risky in various ways. Instead of the reliable, stationary, bank-fishing mistress I’d courted over the years, I would find myself incessantly rambling along the banks of rivers and creeks, splashing across snot-slippery rocks in icy mountain streams. I would fall head over heels, and not necessarily in love. I would need to access an entirely different langue d’amour having to do with everything from tippets to matching the hatch, from roll-casting to where-the-hell-did-that-willow-come-from? She seemed out of my league. I could imagine myself whispering regretfully one evening as the mayflies hatched and I tied on a Light Cahill with my newly-mastered clinch knot, “This is getting too complicated.” Continue reading
