In Perspective, Outdoors

Story and Photos by Pam Streeby Astley

The sun came up as we crossed the Perrine Bridge.  It would be a beautiful but chilly fall day as my friend Racheal and I headed from Twin Falls to Sun Valley to try out a new hike. I admit I’m a little out of shape, and this would be only the second hike I’d done all year. I hoped it wouldn’t be quite as hard as our roughly nine-mile trek the previous weekend to Pioneer Cabin in the Pioneer Mountains [see “The Higher You Get,” by Jeri Walker, IDAHO magazine, March 2018]. This time, we had chosen the Proctor Mountain Loop Trail, which is fewer than five miles but has an elevation gain of almost a thousand feet.

As we drove upward, the fall colors popped in some places but elsewhere the quaking aspen already were bare. Our timing was great: the parking lot held just two other cars. We grabbed our packs and walking sticks.

We were quiet as we began walking and all we could hear  as we topped a small hill was running water amid a view of peach, rust, and yellow autumn colors and below us, just one hole of a golf course. When we crossed a bridge, a soft babbling from the creek somehow assured me I wouldn’t be disappointed no matter how high we had to climb.