Mountain-Climbing with the Master By Elijah Weber As we ascended the mountain, we swung our ice axes into the snow and listened for sharp reports, hoping to get solid purchase in the ice hidden beneath. Reassuring thumps radiated
Long before the south side of the Henry’s Fork Greenway in St. Anthony was named, we skied along the route every snowy winter. Continue reading
I don’t know how many times I’ve fallen. Two? Twenty? But this time I’m lying face down in Victor Creek. Groping for the far bank, I stumble to my feet and find myself smiling, strangely amused at my own plight. This is what I signed up for, the adventure . . . living life. Continue reading
One evening in Los Angeles, Walter Weymouth took my mother for a walk and asked her, “If you could lie on your back in the grass and look at the stars in the heavens and make a wish that could fulfill a dream you had dreamed more than once, what would it be?” Continue reading
I’d accidentally explored the Wilson Creek area three years ago, at the hands of a GPS-less driver who’d mis-understood directions to Reynolds Creek Cemetery (see IDAHO magazine, February 2012, “Good and Lost”). Although the driver strenuously denies it, we were essentially lost amongst the area’s mountains and valleys for a couple of hours. Continue reading
The memories ebb and flow, from crystal clarity to blurry amalgam. Some things do not dim: the sight of the night sky full of brilliant stars, the smell of pine and smoke sticking to one’s clothes, the bend of the rod and pull on the line, and the sparkling flash of a fish as it breaches the water’s surface. These do not fade. Continue reading
When I hear my college roommates talk about Idaho, they usually don’t give it the respect it deserves. They think it’s all desolate flatlands consisting mostly of potato fields mixed with sagebrush and perhaps an occasional small town. I laugh to myself. It’s best they think that way. But I have a vision of my home state that is something quite different.
I was born and raised in the Boise area, a city boy and an only child, but I have a large extended family filled with outdoorsy people, and my parents quickly made me aware of the small towns, farmland, mountains, and desert within our state. Now that I’m a twenty-one-year-old sophomore at Utah State University, whenever I’m not in class, I’m usually skiing or hiking in the nearby mountains.
Last summer, I came home intent on working, but instead of flipping hamburgers, sitting in a cubicle, or answering inbound telephone calls like most other students, I ended up with the world’s best summer job. There were pristine lakes, dazzling rivers, and mountains filled with pine trees as far as my eyes could see. I was in a place where the sunshine strained to touch ground that was dominated by bushes with leaves big enough to almost cover my laptop. There were huckleberries, millions of pine needles, and some of the sweetest smells ever. Continue reading
Under a Thunderhead By Stefano Carini Since childhood, I’ve had a fascination with clouds, but when I went to Pebble Creek, near Inkom, for a sunset photo-shoot on a beautiful night in August 2011, I didn’t expect a
Along the Boise River Greenbelt near Eagle, a man and his daughter had caught three little crayfish in a big ol’ bucket, but there was promise for more, and they ran from hole to hot spot in search of the tasty, miniature lobsters. Two other fishers were clearly in love as they showed off their puny catch, and a couple celebrating their sixteenth anniversary posed for a picture along the Bethine Church River Trail. A woman surfed with grace at the well-known recreational wave. All of them seemed to be enjoying the present.
The twenty-mile greenbelt from Eagle Island State Park to Lucky Peak Reservoir includes six parks, wildlife sanctuaries, a municipal golf course, land “donated” as a consequence of bridges built across the river, the Idaho Fish and Game Nature Center, and a stretch along Boise State University, among other acreages. There’s also the 36,000-acre Boise River Wildlife Management Area, which skirts Lucky Peak Reservoir, to support deer and elk wintering range. This seems entirely the “people’s stretch” of the river, although it also supports a wide variety of wildlife. Continue reading
