But Not Spring Sandstorms?

By Steve Carr

On a modest spot overlooking Trail Creek among the trees in Sun Valley sits a memorial to Ernest Hemingway. Etched in stone are words he famously penned. “Best of all he loved the fall, the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods,” it says in part, and perfectly captures the place—if you go in the fall. Hemingway lived in and loved Idaho’s clear crisp autumns. But what did he think of spring?

I’m told he spent a lot of time in Florida, Spain, and Cuba.

Dedicated Idahoans, on the other hand, share a hearty determination to enjoy whatever the state dishes out.  “But I just love the change of seasons,” is a regular refrain. This optimism would surely be lost on the uneducated Idaho-spring neophyte given his welcome greeting of a sandstorm with a snow chaser. Such a visitor wouldn’t have our back story, wouldn’t know how we, after basking in months of blue-white snow as refreshingly cold as Nurse Ratched’s well- meaning heart, are tantalized each March with a handful of calm sunny days and that first green bud on our May tree.

Where would we be if we didn’t have Grandma calling us up from the basement TV to gather outside and wonder over those first sprouts? Hawaii? Where’s the fun in that?