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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 →

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On the Beach

Posted on by Michael Stubbs / Leave a comment

I spent many summer days of childhood on the beaches of Redfish Lake, but never camped so close to its waters as Point Campground.

My family always stopped at the lake on our way to a scout camp near Alturas or a friendly neighbor’s cabin on a winding mountain creek. My wife Wendy, who grew up in Oregon, selects our campsite there in blind hope, after listening to my vague childhood memories. We aren’t too sure what to expect. We pay our fee, and a couple weeks later, we make the three-and-a-half-hour drive to Stanley.

The truth is, June is probably too early for a camping trip to the Sawtooth Range. These peaks often hold their snow through August, and campers can expect temperatures to reach freezing in any month, should the weather so decide. Nevertheless, the sights, sounds, and smells of this part of Idaho are hard to resist. I have finished teaching a spring semester at Idaho State University, and we cannot help but look for refreshment in the mountains. Perhaps the empty online calendar on which we reserved our tent site should have been our clue that we were jumping prematurely, but in June, life in Pocatello is already hot and sweaty. The kids are out of school and fill the house with noise and mess. Given that almost all campsites were already reserved through mid-September when we made our selection, June was the time for us to go. Continue reading →

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Riverboat, Ahoy

Posted on by Grove Koger / Leave a comment

It’s one of the ironies of Idaho’s geography that our longest river, the Snake, is navigable for only short distances.

Part of the reason is that over the course of its nearly 1,100 miles, the river drops more than 8,500 feet. The other reason is that until recently our grandest natural wonder, Hells Canyon, proved impassable to any vessel attempting a run upstream. But the lowest reaches of the Snake enjoyed busy traffic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and for a time riverboats even served the mining trade on the middle Snake. At least one made it as far as the mouth of the Bruneau River.

I’m an Idaho native, but I didn’t grow up particularly close to a river. Instead I had to make do with a small drainage canal that ran through our farm outside Meridian. But it was water, and that was enough. In some way that I couldn’t have explained, water was magical. Years later, when I became a reference librarian at Boise Public Library, I discovered the wealth of information in its Idaho Pamphlet File—clippings about canals and rivers and steamboats and much, much more. Since then I’ve supplemented my reading with such books as Fritz Timmen’s Blow for the Landing and Bill Gulick’s Steamboats on Northwest Rivers. And here’s what I’ve learned. 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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Alpine Angling

Posted on by Basil Service / Leave a comment

Idaho’s Loftiest Fly Fishing Text and Photos by Basil Service This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options. Purchase Only

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Auger’s Well

Posted on by Mike Cothern / Leave a comment

A Community Re-seeds Auger Falls Park Story and Photo’s by Mike Cothern This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options. Purchase Only

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Mission Accomplished

Posted on by Mike Kincaid / Leave a comment

Flying Back to Childhood in Northern Idaho Story and Photos by Mike Kincaid Rushing from the woods with the morning sun at our backs, our rescue team discovers we’re being tailed, very closely. As our stalkers move in,
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When the River Was Unbridled

Posted on by Jo Deurbrouck / Comments Off on When the River Was Unbridled

I’m standing in the Museum of Idaho. This is not the new part, which is mirrored on the outside, tall and bright on the inside, and currently hosts an exhibit of carousels. I’m in the original museum, once Idaho Falls’s first public library.

This is where you go in my town to contemplate the significance of small things that were but are not. Things like the fact that one day in 1915, four women in long skirts, two men in bow ties, and a scruffy boy in overalls paused a game of croquet long enough to pose for a camera.

It is silent in this room. From the new wing comes faint calliope music. 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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Pelicans Overhead

Posted on by James Blue / Leave a comment

When the five of us, most of whom were practically strangers, embarked on our backcountry journey deep into Hagerman Valley, little did we know what awaited.

We were headed for Box Canyon Springs Nature Preserve, about twenty miles northwest of Twin Falls, near Wendell.

We all had met by way of an online “hiking interest” group. J.R. (the host of our group) posted the day trip as a chance to witness the eleventh largest spring in North America and the possibility of seeing some unique wildlife. Being somewhat new to Idaho by way of Indiana, I jumped at the opportunity to explore the rugged southern Idaho backcountry. Doug, Lisa and Mindy, the other members of the group, expressed similar excitement at the chance to see what hidden treasures might await at the canyon.

I admit that my first impression of the park, especially the flat stretch of trail leading to the spring from the parking lot, was underwhelming, to say the least. A few of us commented on how unremarkable the surrounding landscape was as we approached the park along county roads, passing large cattle ranches and farms. “So, this is it?” someone said in a rather disappointed tone as we pulled into the parking area. But after a walk of a mile or so along a well-traveled dirt road, everything changed dramatically. Continue reading →

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