Blog Archives
In Praise of Snip
One day on the ranch where I was raised near Carey, on the banks of the Little Wood River, we were herding a lame steer from the range pastures, but it was not cooperating and continued to duck into willows and clumps of trees.
Dad was riding our horse Snip, with my little brother Brian on behind him. Dad finally decided he needed to rope the steer and pull him to the corrals, where medicine could be administered.
He lifted Brian off Snip, and my brother stood back to watch Dad begin the roping process. When Dad chased the steer out of the thick trees, the animal noticed Brian and began to charge at him. Brian ran and I panicked, thinking he would be overrun by the large steer. Within a few seconds, Dad and Snip were galloping toward Brian, and Snip maneuvered between my brother and the steer. Snip’s body connected with the steer, pushing it away from Brian. I breathed a sigh of relief, extremely grateful for my Dad’s quick action on Snip. Continue reading
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Sticks and Stones
I recently returned from a visit to northern Idaho: Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene, Wallace, and many more in and around. Oh my gosh, talk about pretty. Continue reading
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On Active Ground
It was a dark and stormy day, which it was not supposed to be in August. We huddled under a shelter at Settlers Park in Meridian, determined to have fun at a picnic. Continue reading
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Roseberry–Spotlight
As I thumbed through a high-quality picture book of Idaho atop a rustic coffee table at a Lake Cascade vacation rental home, my eyes fell upon a quaint, white church. Something about it spoke to me, although I didn’t know why. It wasn’t an intricate building. Its lines were clean and simple. Why did I like it so much? My question was answered by the text below the image, which said the building was in Roseberry and had been constructed by Finnish people who settled there. My heart leaped. Strangely enough, I knew a little something about Finland. Continue reading
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They All Got Away
I was raised and worked as a young man in the territory around the North Fork of the Clearwater River. I fished and swam much of the river and its tributaries. Continue reading
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Carry Me No Farther
There cannot be only one point in space that is the edge of the world.
For each soul, whether human or animal, the edge can never be assigned to any specific location. Rather the edge is a moment when we approach a threshold of ruin and peer into a place where our bodies may not go without tempting the grave. Once we have been to the cutting side of the blade, our lives are cleaved, and the moment spans all of space as memory. Deep within the Fran Church–River of No Return Wilderness, at the center of Idaho, there lies such Continue reading
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Hope among Ruins
Story and Photos by Charlene Aycock In summer, when I drove to see the damage of the Elk Complex and Pony Complex fires in Elmore County, I was not completely prepared for the devastation my eyes would behold.
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Framed
As a homesteader on Joseph Plains and Doumeq, south of Cottonwood, my father’s life was very hard, yet it was not nearly as difficult as what was to come. Continue reading
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Trying to Be Here
Even in the final moments of my last evening as a student in Montreal, as I sat in a park down the street from McGill University, where I’d spent most of the past five years studying physics and working on the student newspaper, somewhere very far away was on my mind. “Idaho Falls.”
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