Coming into New Boise (Part II)

The 52% of distressed properties in Boise did not provide a sustainable community by any stretch of the imagination, and people were beginning to move around based upon their income, obligatory payments, and preferences.  The Art Deco style Banner Bank Building in downtown Boise is an architectural beauty that stands at 11 stories and stretches to meet your imagination.  

 It was built in 2006 and was judged as a Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy Environmental Design) rated energy efficient building by the US Green Building Council.  What that means is that the water efficiency, energy efficiency, and occupant well-being in this sustainable building, are rated far above the average.  The US Bank and Boise Plaza buildings were also rated as Gold LEED buildings, in the category of Silver, Gold, and Platinum ratings.  Every building that is proposed around Boise now aims for a similar rating.  Each is, or will be, a highly rated “green,” or energy efficient building. 

The Banner Building will cost less in the long run to operate, will last longer, provide healthier places to work, are closer to a variety of activities in downtown Boise, and directly to the point, they are making money for their owners.  Gary Christensen, Developer and President of the Christensen Corporation, acknowledges that “Green buildings have a shakeout period in which we have to figure out the controls, sensors, and relays and get them working properly.”  It turns out that these parts of the building are fairly complicated but they result in an overall cost of 15 -30% less per square foot than other buildings.

The Banner Building rents for $18 – $21 per square foot.  When asked whether the building was full in the tough 2012 season, Christensen responded that “when it was initially leased, the businesses were committed to supporting the energy efficiency of the building and now it is 100% full.”  It’s hard to define the total cost of a sustainable building because they are complicated to build and operate in the first few years, but in the long run they are less expensive to run than other buildings.  Regardless, the Banner Building is full today and the current rate of return is 32%.  The upshot is that the amortized cost makes cents for tenants, investors, and building operators.  

And it is the kind of place that, I realized in walking through it, I might like to work in.  And indeed I do need a job.  Moreover, workers in the Banner Building are spoiled with all of the amenities that are provided to them: it is heated by geothermal water, outdoor air is let in for roughly 200 days per year, paints have no Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) content, stormwater is used to water outdoor vegetation and flush toilets, the light is produced by energy efficient fluorescent lights or Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and is dimmed when the environment is naturally lit.  Due to some of these innovations, the electricity use is reduced by more than 60% and ventilation by 44%.   The building provides a healthy habitat in which to work—imagine riding your bicycle to work and getting a workout in a non-toxic environment.  The offices are also simple to reconfigure when businesses change—a big advantage for investors.  The Banner Bank Building has a stunning design that may provide a blueprint for the future; air inside the building is decisively clean and the space feels like a good place to work.

Rachael Winer, Executive Director of Idaho Smart Growth in Boise, said that in an office building, employees like a healthy convenient place with lots of daylight where they can get out to lunch, to go for a run in the foothills and have a shower; they want to ride their bikes and have some extra activity…. Things like the Saturday Market add to the downtown experience, I mean, there’s a lot of life here in Boise!”   Winer added that most builders want to do the right thing, but they need to make money too. She adds that transportation is also a big concern for most Boiseans. “We need to get a bus system that works for people, busses that come frequently and get people where they need to get,” she said.  “That’s what makes a bus system work for people: to be closer to jobs, shops, and schools so that whatever you need is closer to you.”  As gas prices continue to rise and people need to travel between jobs, home, and school, more and more people will take the bus.

All of these concerns, the price of houses, the need to provide jobs for people, the need to provide transportation to and from work to home, building better houses and nicer business places to work, and finding amenities close to our hearts are all in the complicated mix that will make Boise a more perfect place to live.   As natural gas, gasoline, oil, heat, food, and electricity prices increase, and surely they will, the more that we’ll be forced together to negotiate, collaborate, and cooperate to create a sense of place that all can accept.  We might create hamlets within the City of Boise, like Hyde Park, where like-minded people can congregate.  Another possibility that is being planned at the former downtown Macy’s building is to transform the 2^nd to 5^th floors of the building into apartments for the general workforce.  That sounded good to me!  Regardless, nothing will last long if we don’t come to tentative understandings about the fundamental things in life—our income, warmth, shelter, food for our family, and caring–that all of us require.

Yesterday I took a hard bike ride up to the top of Tablerock Mesa and as I looked out on the city of Boise that spread out below me.  I wondered exactly what had happened over the past 30 years.  Has this world become a better place to live?  It is a pretty place, with all of the trees, with bike paths crisscrossing below, the river running through the city, and the Owyhee Mountains standing out in the distance.  There are more options now and just about every time I pick up a magazine I read about the beauties of Boise.  My life is good here and after thirty years of rambling around I’ve finally got a place that I call home.

Coming in to Urban Boise Part I

Coming Into Urban Boise

When I first came to Boise in the early 1980s, the north end of the city was run down and desperately wanted attention; nothing seemed like it was going to last long. A small Coop had been opened and sold the usual flour, rutabagas, and radishes; the Hyde Park post office provided commerce and conversation; the local auto garage became Lucky 13, a corner hangout and beer parlor; and Vince’s barber shop, well, Vince’s barber shop was still there, but Vince was younger. Right about then Hulls Gulch was going to be ripped-up in preparation for a beautiful new crop of homes-beside-the-creek. There was a sense of entropy back then and these seemed to be the only businesses with a heartbeat.

But a few things have changed since then—everything runs more quickly, more smoothly, more happily–and today homes in all of Boise wear a nicer patina of greatness. They’ve been revitalized, remodeled and born again, like brand new Christians. House prices are ratcheting up again, after the Great Recession sent home values spinning down the drain. Small businesses are booming now, Hulls Gulch is protected from development, and the Treasure Valley Land Trust is purchasing more land to maintain the virtues of the fabulous foothills. Bikers in brilliant tights and logoed shirts sit in restaurants sipping local brews and checking their email before going out to conquer the Hard Guy trail. Life is growing and green and good here, but can this sweet lifestyle be sustained or are we headed back into the 80s?

I met with Jill Giese, a young realtor and Idaho native with Keller Williams Reality Boise, to ask her what’s up with home prices in Boise. She said that in 1998 one house sold for $100,000, that it had appreciated to $275,000 in 2007, and right now it was worth about $175,000. She said that the older neighborhoods in Boise, one in which this house was built, had maintained their prices more effectively than some parts of the city. In other neighborhoods, the prices had fallen even more and the “distressed properties,” ones that are owned by banks or have to be sold as “short sales,” averaged a whopping 56% of homes at the end of last year and remain at 52% in February. In the North End it was 32% and in the East End 17%.

That did not provide a sustainable community by any stretch of the imagination, as people moved in response to prices of houses and their newfound poverty. When gasoline prices went up significantly in 2007, putting more pressure on people living in towns like Meridian, Star, Nampa, and Kuna, people who had been forced out of their “distressed properties” started looking at other Boise neighborhoods or simply paid rent for awhile. Some looked for places closer to their jobs–if they still had them–and were beginning to move around based upon their income, obligatory payments, and preferences.

Selling the Real Estate

Selling the real estate

Fifteen Canada geese are flying south from near McCall, Idaho and honking like an unwarranted traffic jam. Ospreys have already gone, silently, flown to the coastal states in the same pattern they took last year: along the rivers. Gone too is the lurid beauty of mountain bluebirds, scarlet tanagers, and goldfinch, flown over mountains in hops. I haven’t seen black bear or grey wolves on my property for two years, but I know they’re there.

The apple trees haven’t been raided this year and the golden green apples lie rotting on the ground or are saved in the bowl inside my shabin. They were raided two years ago by a bear; it had camped out there beside the apple tree for two days and tore down three big branches. A pack of wolves apparently got a little too close to a band of domestic sheep two summers ago. You could hear the helicopter all night, near my property. I heard wolf howls the night before and none since. As for the domestic sheep, they were herded along the Farm-to-Market Road two days after the wolves were dealt with and I followed slowly behind the massive herd in my car for at least a mile cursing the sheep for being in the way of wolves. A small herd of elk will soon pass through my land, taking the same route they’ve travelled for as long as I’ve been here, on their route to a higher, safer landscape, away from bullet riddled hunting grounds.

These are the circumstances as I pack my shabin, getting ready to move out for a place in the valley and the city below. A wintering place and possibly more. It has become too expensive to live in McCall, at least for a writer in the harsh winter of Valley County. You might ask what is a shabin? Part shack, part cabin is a shabin; a place that a developer simply calls a “teardown palace.” Reporters call it a ramshackle, ticky-tacky hut, a place uninhabitable for any sane person. But that depends on your perspective of sanity. It has sheltered me for five years, as developers have deserted their nice homes and lives, bailing out of heavy loans or mortgages for the obvious threat. For what it’s worth, I have none of the crushing debts, but still I have some that I can’t afford to pay without a consistent job. Jobs in Mccall haven’t been consistent and selling this land would get me out of the hock I’ve been in for all of the years that I’ve lived here.

Granted my shabin is a one room building that was permitted by the county for a five dollar storage unit permit. It isn’t quite legal to live here in my storage unit but I have built a composting toilet, installed solar panels power lights, music, and a well pump. The well was drilled easily 50 years ago and had stood capped since then. I opened it four years ago and tapped its pure water. I built the shabin for about $5,000 after living for a year in a wall tent.
Any carpenter could make the shabin into a more kindly cabin by putting siding on top of the hardboard plywood and covering the inside insulation with more aestheticly pleasing boards. It was built by my friends and me with muscle, beer, and kindness: putting piers under the floor, tilting-up the walls, lifting rafters and attaching them to the walls, roofing the top, putting in a front door, windows to the eastern view, a loft, a counter, furniture, a wood stove—and that friendship and labor convey much unpaid value. The shabin became a writing retreat, with my girlfriend living a few miles away that was home about half of the time. The land upon which it stood, however, has been much more that a place to stay. The land has taught me more than my traditional work has and the view was spectacular. Or I should say is spectacular.

I’ve been an environmentalist since 1984 and have worked with a number of organizations at a number of levels. For 24 years I’ve transformed this land from an overgrazed horse and cattle lot to a place of tall grasses and encroaching forests. This land is transitioning from one where 85 foot tall Ponderosa pines grew, into one where 85 foot Ponderosas will again grow. In between, the big trees were cut down and shade intolerant lodgepole pines grew for twenty-five years. It was these trees which provided the shade in which Ponderosas could again grow. Now the lodgepole pines have experienced an infestation of bark beetles and many of them are dying, allowing the Ponderosa pines–now that they’re reestablished–to reassert their dominance and grow again.

Aspen trees are expanding into the forest and beginning to cover the open land that had been used for grazing. They grow in several groves of identical clones and each individual stand has a different “time-clock” turning the leaves classic autumnal colors: from green to gold, orange, and scarlet. The aspen groves turn colors at different times and make the shifting colors last for several weeks. They are growing together and mixing colors on a palete unique in McCall.

Grasses on the neighbors land, which has been grazed for many years, run along the fence enclosing the cattle-free land on my side of the fence. Here the difference is stark, as the grazed land has many small patches of bare soil and shorter grasses than the vegetation on my side of the fence. However, the conclusion that I’ve reached is that vegetation on the ranchers side is more diverse than that on my side. On my side the grasses haven’t been chewed down and the roots have established themselves in thick mats, which means that other plants have little opportunity to grow. On the other side, trampling and eating of the grasses by livestock gives other flowering plants–buckwheat, yarrow, aster, pentstemmon, sego lily, and chickory- the opportunity to grow on the bare ground. That has increased the number and diversity of different plants that can survive in the spring when the ground is still damp. My land needs to be grazed by elk, deer or, heaven forbid, domestic cows, and it should be burned occasionally, so that other flowering plants can live there. This is not what I would have thought when I fought grazing as an environmentalist! But time has mellowed me.

A little. Not a lot, actually. But time also tells me to move on from this land and tackle other challenges. The dreams move so slowly! As slowly as the recovery of land and nature and my heart.

A Tale of Craters of the Moon          (short version)

The Land 

          Craters of the Moon is fabulous place for a heap of black rock.  It’s a big piece of land, make no mistake, with 3/4 of a million acres of this odd lava formation that exists by Ketchum in southeast Idaho.  Craters is a uniquely weird and seemingly impaired landscape.  You may want to speed up when your goal is to drive to Yellowstone National Park north of Craters, because it is hot, damned hot–roll up your windows and hit the air conditioning hot–and it looks like nothing more than a patch of gray vomit out there on the countryside.  However, if you stop, you’re in for a treat. 

            We went there—four of us all professional environmentalists Doug Schnitzspahn, Katie Fite, Miquel Fredes, and I—to support protection for the national monument.  It is a very dry, desolate place that is full of broken lava and walking over the land sounds like someone walking on a clattering batch of broken teacups and saucers.  We advocated protecting Craters as an enlarged national monument (from 50,000 to about 775,000 acres) to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and President Clinton.  Now the four of us were out there to look around and get to know the landscape better.  I had been there several times before and I had seen the beautiful Laidlaw Park Kipuka–it was 50 thousand acres of grassland surrounded by lava.  There were cinder cones and shield volcanoes, spindle bombs and the Blue Dragon lava, caves running through the landscape and the Crystal Ice Cave that once held vast stalactites, and natural arches formed of lava. 

            We were ambitious and wanted to protect Craters of the Moon for all time.  This was the seed we had planted with the aim that we could win everything if only we tried. These were the salad days, as Shakespeare said, when we were green in soul and cold at heart.  And what we wanted we deserved to get, by God!  In those days I was full of piss and vinegar, ego and good wine; I was one tough cookie, one tough cabajero, a don’t-mess-with-me kinda guy.

My stroke

            But then I had a stroke out in the wilderness of Craters of the Moon; it was as unexpected as a sneeze.  As we hiked over the teacups and saucers of lava we got a little separated—it was cold and the rain came mixed with snow and sleet and everyone had their hoods over their heads. I was wandering a bit and just like that, I stumbled and fell.  But it really wasn’t merely a stumble because immediately I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t think straight.  My friends had passed on ahead of me. So I lay there, going nowhere.  Thinking and not thinking.  For an hour, for two, for three, for awhile anyway; but after only a minute I knew I was in terrible, terrible trouble.   I cried and cried within an hour because I didn’t know what had happened to me.  I thought about dying, because who would find me in this trailless, wicked place?  I thought about my father who had died from brain cancer and the stroke that came from it, and I realized that maybe my father’s fate would also be mine as evening closed in on daylight.

            However, my friends found me in a few hours by walking in a line and going over and over the path where we had gone before.  Katie ran some miles back to the car and drove for an hour or more to find a home where some people were able to call and arrange for a helicopter to land in the rugged terrain of Craters of the Moon and get me flown to the hospital 80 miles away.  Miguel and Doug watched me while Katie left and talked with me until the group of rescuers came with flashlights to save my sorry ass as a helicopter landed in a grassy place nearby.  I was taken to the hospital in Pocatello.

Recovering the Land and myself

            When I woke up the next morning a doctor whispered in my face: “Mike, Mike can you hear me?”  I nodded, thinking, duh, of course I do.  “You’ve had a stroke and you’re paralyzed.”  No, I’m not; don’t be silly, doctor.  At least that was what I was thinking but I couldn’t respond in words.  I nodded, understood nothing.  And the doctor disappeared in a poof of smoke.

            Now I have to tell you that the most powerful thing in the world is laughter, the support of friends, and a place to go to find yourself when you’re lost.  So I would like to tell you a couple of funny and somewhat ironic stories.

            The first came when a therapist came to work with me; her beauty was a gift.  I was in a hospital room recovering and she set a bag of cosmetics on the bathroom sink and asked me to pick up an item and use it.  So I picked up one and began to brush my teeth with it.  It was a basic thing to do, you know I was in the bathroom and at the sink and it was a pretty mundane action. 

            “No,” she said, “that’s for your hair.  It’s a comb.”

            “Oh.”

            She motioned for me to scrape it across my head and I did.  “You were thinking about a toothbrush.  That’s this other item.”

            “Oh, yeh, a toot brush for my toots.”

            “Right, its for your teeth.”  I was very embarrassed and I had to learn all of life again, it seemed.

            Another time, after less than a month after I returned to Boise, I had a meeting with a neurologist and I went with a friend and my mother.  The neurologist asked me to tell me about myself and my family.  “How many siblings do you have?” he said.

            “I’ve got three kids and I’m married to a very nice woman.”  Keep in mind that I couldn’t speak quite as clearly as that—I spoke in broken words—but that is what I was trying to say. 

            “How about the rest of your family, your mother and father?” he said. 

            “They’re fine.”  I pointed to my mother.

            My mother broke in, agast.  “Mike, you have no children and no wife, unless you’re holding out on me.  And your father died many years ago.”

            “Oh yeh, that’s true isn’t it?”

            “Yes.”

            “I’ll remember dat.  No kids, no wife, and no father, got that.  Doctor, will I ever get better?”

            “Yes you will,” he said “but it will all be up to you.”

            A third time when a woman brought me cookies to my home in Boise.  There was a lull in our conversation.  “Mike,” she said.  “Can you, uhm. Can you get a stiffy?”

            I was stunned.  “Huh?”

            “You know, can you still get a, a uh, you know, a stiffy?”

            I coughed and tried to regain a little composure to tell her the truth.  But I really didn’t know what it was.  “Yeth, of course I can.” 

            “Oh, I was just, uhm, wondering a little bit,” she said.

            “Yeth.  It’s natural question.” But now I was wondering whether I could get a stiffy.  And naturally, I went to the internet, after performing a little experiment on myself that went surprisingly well.  The internet suggested that just about all stroke victims can have sex as long as they aren’t terribly depressed about doing so.  So I learned not to be depressed….

            I found a need to go back to Craters of the Moon to understand the condition of the land that I had loved and to recover from my stroke.   I hiked on the route of Robert Limbert the man who, in 1924, had lobbied in Washington DC for the protection of the original 54,000 acre Craters of the Moon National Monument and that President Clinton had expanded to 737,000 acres.  I was speaking, thinking, walking, and thriving just as the larger national monument was beginning to recover.  Rare species were becoming more common and I found some of the secrets in Craters: the caves and arches and beautiful lava formations, animals and plant communities that are thriving there.  I’ve learned to love the silence of the land and to be a bit less egotistical in my endeavors.  But no less ardent for protecting the wildness of the land.  This is the tale of wilderness and the lesson of earning my own wellness from its absence.

Running Along the American River

Thoughts Upon A Run
As I went running along the American River in Folsom, California the licorice smell of anise mixed with the fragrance of ripe blackberries made me remember the river of my youth. I had contacted my friend, Doug, in passing through Sacramento and when he asked if I needed a place to stay, I looked at my watch—6:00 pm on Saturday—and decided to take him up on his offer. Otherwise I would have to crash on another friend whom I wasn’t yet able to contact, or find a random piece of land somewhere to throw my sleeping bag. Doug planned to go to his workout at a nearby gym and he had a few chores to accomplish, but if I didn’t mind, his place was mine.

The home is subtle and spectacular: a large, old rambling house with four bedrooms, beside a perfect garden. The garden includes pear and apple trees, conically cut junipers, a carefully trimmed 100 foot long laurel shrub, a maze of short bushes with azaleas and rhododendrons beside the front door. A nicely shaped swimming pool lay in the side yard. On the north side, the house overlooks the swift American River, and in evening, with a full moon, light provides a dimensioned view of sprawling valley oaks contrasting with the eerie shapes of over-tall cottonwoods and weepy willows. Inside the house is spare, the floors wood, the kitchen roomy.

I dressed for a run in 90 degree heat and headed out, dropping down to the American River along a subdivision road. The American River Parkway follows the river and runs through gravel pits left by an excavation company that had been purchased to protect the river’s values. In the first mile I saw figs growing under hand-shaped leaves, quail scurrying through the brush, a walnut tree growing beside the trail, vultures soaring through the trees, more blackberries, and a river otter diving and swooshing its slim body through eddy lines in the river. This area isn’t really wild but it is protected to assure that the riparian area and wildlife continue to live there in health. As they do.

A valley oak spreads across a parking lot, forming a one-hundred foot circle of shade in this otherwise overheated area, creating a one-tree-oasis in the graveled expanse, begging for a picnic. Its branches droop to the height of a person standing; just right. Beyond the tree, I ran on a dirt trail that snakes through the riverside vegetation in the coolness of the growing evening. In a couple of miles I come to Lake Natoma.

Lake Natoma is a regulating reservoir for Folsom Reservoir and when the volume of Folsom is quickly released to provide power, Natoma gives the river a steadier flow. Below Natoma the salmon run halts and a nearby hatchery provides spawning facilities. Cormorants sit and watch, 18 of them stand motionless across a line from bank to bank above the river. Number 19 flies low on the river with its wings barely missing the surface until it approaches its compatriots; then it sweeps up twenty feet without a wingbeat, soars up to the line of its comrades, stalls, and ever so gently glides, lites, and with a folding of wings, sets beside them, disturbing none.

Fishermen fish silently. One has a large fish, maybe 12 pounds, on his stringer and it floats upside down, twirling in the current; he is the only lucky one in all the creatures trying to catch a fish who has succeeded.
“Is that a steelhead?” I ask.
“No, it’s a salmon.”
“Nice!”
I’ve passed a number of fishermen on my route and asked: “Catch any?”
The inevitable answer has been: “Nope.”
One man asked, “Where are the fish?”
“Who knows?” I said. “In the river I guess.” What more can a fisherman say?

As I run along the American River it occurs to me that I love it here among star thistles and dollar-sized sunflowers, the blinking lights of Folsom, the poorly defined ridge between here and the Sierra, all of the vultures, hawks, and cormorants, heat among dead white trees and smells of the river. It’s a perfect place to run here along this river, in synch with nature and time. It was a perfect place to grow up here years ago.

But what I realize is that my mother is the one whom I ought to thank. Why? Because she brought me here after my father died in 1969. She thought that a boy ought to have room to play outside of a city; he ought to be able to breathe the fresh air and live like a Tom Sawyer. Los Angeles was no place to grow up and Galt, south of here, is where she grew up through the Great Depression. When I had a stroke, she came to Boise, a place she disdains, to help me. I have recovered and it seems that now is my time to return a favor to her while it is still possible, while she yet retains her memory of the majestic oaks and she grows older in this place that she loves.

American River essay

Thoughts Upon A Run
As I went running along the American River in Folsom, California the licorice smell of anise mixed with the fragrance of ripe blackberries made me remember the river of my youth. I had contacted my friend, Doug, in passing through Sacramento and when he asked if I needed a place to stay, I looked at my watch—6:00 pm on Saturday—and decided to take him up on his offer. Otherwise I would have to crash on another friend whom I wasn’t yet able to contact, or find a random piece of land somewhere to throw my sleeping bag. Doug planned to go to his workout at a nearby gym and he had a few chores to accomplish, but if I didn’t mind, his place was mine.

The home is subtle and spectacular: a large, old rambling house with four bedrooms, beside a perfect garden. The garden includes pear and apple trees, conically cut junipers, a carefully trimmed 100 foot long laurel shrub, a maze of short bushes with azaleas and rhododendrons beside the front door. A nicely shaped swimming pool lay in the side yard. On the north side, the house overlooks the swift American River, and in evening, with a full moon, light provides a dimensioned view of sprawling valley oaks contrasting with the eerie shapes of over-tall cottonwoods and weepy willows. Inside the house is spare, the floors wood, the kitchen roomy.

I dressed for a run in 90 degree heat and headed out, dropping down to the American River along a subdivision road. The American River Parkway follows the river and runs through gravel pits left by an excavation company that had been purchased to protect the river’s values. In the first mile I saw figs growing under hand-shaped leaves, quail scurrying through the brush, a walnut tree growing beside the trail, vultures soaring through the trees, more blackberries, and a river otter diving and swooshing its slim body through eddy lines in the river. This area isn’t really wild but it is protected to assure that the riparian area and wildlife continue to live there in health. As they do.

A valley oak spreads across a parking lot, forming a one-hundred foot circle of shade in this otherwise overheated area, creating a one-tree-oasis in the graveled expanse, begging for a picnic. Its branches droop to the height of a person standing; just right. Beyond the tree, I ran on a dirt trail that snakes through the riverside vegetation in the coolness of the growing evening. In a couple of miles I come to Lake Natoma.

Lake Natoma is a regulating reservoir for Folsom Reservoir and when the volume of Folsom is quickly released to provide power, Natoma gives the river a steadier flow. Below Natoma the salmon run halts and a nearby hatchery provides spawning facilities. Cormorants sit and watch, 18 of them stand motionless across a line from bank to bank above the river. Number 19 flies low on the river with its wings barely missing the surface until it approaches its compatriots; then it sweeps up twenty feet without a wingbeat, soars up to the line of its comrades, stalls, and ever so gently glides, lites, and with a folding of wings, sets beside them, disturbing none.

Fishermen fish silently. One has a large fish, maybe 12 pounds, on his stringer and it floats upside down, twirling in the current; he is the only lucky one in all the creatures trying to catch a fish who has succeeded.
“Is that a steelhead?” I ask.
“No, it’s a salmon.”
“Nice!”
I’ve passed a number of fishermen on my route and asked: “Catch any?”
The inevitable answer has been: “Nope.”
One man asked, “Where are the fish?”
“Who knows?” I said. “In the river I guess.” What more can a fisherman say?

As I run along the American River it occurs to me that I love it here among star thistles and dollar-sized sunflowers, the blinking lights of Folsom, the poorly defined ridge between here and the Sierra, all of the vultures, hawks, and cormorants, heat among dead white trees and smells of the river. It’s a perfect place to run here along this river, in synch with nature and time. It was a perfect place to grow up here years ago.

But what I realize is that my mother is the one whom I ought to thank. Why? Because she brought me here after my father died in 1969. She thought that a boy ought to have room to play outside of a city; he ought to be able to breathe the fresh air and live like a Tom Sawyer. Los Angeles was no place to grow up and Galt, south of here, is where she grew up through the Great Depression. When I had a stroke, she came to Boise, a place she disdains, to help me. I have recovered and it seems that now is my time to return a favor to her while it is still possible, while she yet retains her memory of the majestic oaks and may grow older in this place that she loved.

In the Sesesh

The Wild Heart of Idaho!

The Secesh (pronounced Sea-sesh like a seashell), Buckhorn, and French Creek wild areas comprise the most scenic, most untamed, geologically and biologically diverse areas in the wild heart of Idaho, near McCall.  The U.S. Forest Service has recommended 225,000 acres of these areas as wilderness; that’s big, but it’s a pittance.  In my 25 years of working to protect Idaho’s 9 million acres of roadless areas as wilderness, it has been these three areas that have inspired the most enthusiasm to continue my advocacy to protect them.  They are stunningly beautiful but accessible, and are surrounded by more roving, wild lands, one mountain range after another.  If this appeals to you, well then, read on!

Each has significant opponents and threats to the wild nature of the land.  In French Creek it is logging projects and road construction, that are now on hold.  In the Buckhorn and Secesh areas there is a slowly renewing ardor for logging and the growth of both motorized and non-motorized vehicle use in this sublime landscape.  On the Payette National Forest, where these wilderness values exist, there is a growing indifference to the loss, as weak conservationists look elsewhere to find support for easier places to protect.

The Secesh Crest of unroaded lands, (including the Secesh, Buckhorn and French Creek wild areas) is surrounded by the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, Caton Creek, Salmon River Breaks, Patrick Butte, and the Seven Devils Wilderness among others.  Taken as a group, all of these areas are the preeminent place in Idaho for providing migration of wildlife from Montana to Oregon along the Salmon River system in this warming world.  The intact landscape supports a remarkable number of animals: wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, lynx, bears, martin, wolverine, fisher, salmon, trout, steelhead, migratory birds ospreys, eagles, bluebirds, and in lesser numbers, people.

The elevation runs from 3,400 feet to above 9,000 feet at Loon peak–from grasses at lower elevation to above treeline. This includes lodgepine pine, Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine, spruce, larch, aspen, and up to whitebark pine near the rocky summit.  This region is extremely rugged and includes Victor Peak, Loon Peaks, and Storm Peak where a number of spectacular lakes occur: Enos, Twenty mile, Storm, Victor, Burnside, Hum, Box, Buckhorn, Cly, Prince, Tsum, Maki lakes and many, many others.  Look at their names and you will learn: Hum is said to be named for the humming of mosquitoes; Storm peak for the violence of the winters in the peak’s vicinity.  The Secesh River and the South Fork Salmon River flow through the Secesh wild area, beside the Buckhorn Creek region, both of which protect critical salmon and steelhead habitat.  

The name “Secesh” comes some of the rich history of the region that was originally settled by secessionists at the end of the American Civil War.  The name recalls the way that the people in central Idaho would like to live and see themselves as being—independent, gun-toting, and free.  That is all illusionary, of course, as everyone living here depends on the largesse of federal subsidies for their very survival, but in nearby towns of Secesh Meadows, Warren, and Yellowpine the concerns of local citizens about access and fire threats have to be heard or a shootout, or more likely, a lawsuit, may ensue.

What is the future of this splendid western land?  I can’t tell you, after 25 years of trying to divine its fate, but these things I can tell you: all of your outspoken opinions will count in both the short and long run.   Your silence will count on the other side.  And by-and-by, it will be decided somewhere in the middle, in due time.  How much time is “due time” will depend upon how much noise we can make in the short time.  If you would like to join us at the Secesh Wildlands Coalition contact me at mikecmedberry@msn.com  There is a poster that I will send you if you ask and we are considering publishing a book on the wild Secesh country within a year.

 End

Solstice 2011 (Part 2)

Solstice 2011 (Part 2)
The sun rose above the horizon at 5:50 on Big Creek Summit along Warm Lake Road on the Solstice. Fifteen minutes and a short drive along the South Fork road, 27 of us were up with our boots tied on, water in our hip bags, lunch stashed in a mule’s packsaddle, and we went off hiking, huffing and puffing, with 40 pounds of saplings to the top of the goddammed world.

After a mile walking along a grown-over skid road, our numbers had stretched out until the hikers in front couldn’t be seen around the next bend and people behind couldn’t be heard talking or tramping. I was in the middle of the group and content to be breathing hard and deep. In a couple of miles we came to a big burn where most of the lodgepole pines were blackened and singed into curlicues.  The rest were burned to the roots and the soil was white and powdery and puffed up with each step. It burned hot a few years ago, but the turf remained devoid of anything but dry ash. Little rivulets ran down this parched slope and soil gathered downhill: a reminder of the character of this batholitic geology. I crossed an unnamed creek, headed uphill seemingly alone.  A man who appeared beside me out of nowhere hooted for his compadres. They hooted ahead and behind as we continued uphill on the next push.

A great gray owl flew out of the woods in a patch of green trees, as silently as the man had, and disappeared. “Hey, did you see that?  A great grey owl!” Jessie nodded and smiled broadly as we headed on to the top of the mountain. “Wow, look at that!” I said. But there was no one there beside me. A forest service employee 50 yards away said, “They’ve gone down the hill, planting.”

“Ain’t that purty,” I said. The ridge of the Needles rose on the northwest after sunrise with snow in their teeth.

“Yep. It’s nice to get paid to hike, eh?”  I nodded, catching my breath, and headed down to plant among the workers before me. I found my place in the line fifteen feet from each man working down the slope, slashing at the ground with my sharp blade, clearing a 2’ by 2’ swatch (well, ok it might have been 1’X 1’ but if anyone asked it was 2’X 2’), making a manly swing of the pick to put a gash in the land to place a tree, putting a sapling into the hole, and covering the roots with a stiff kick of the ground. I moved fifteen feet downhill to the next place. The pouches we carried were full of sapling pines and by the time we travelled 1,000 feet downhill, the 300 saplings that each worker carried were nearly empty.  Mine were nearly full and the man next to me said: “Line.”
“What?”

“Line!” he said again.  It sounded like an order and it sounded despairing. The man on the other side called “Line!” I looked both ways and there were 50 feet on either side before another man was stationed. “Yu follo line!”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. They had each covered for my inattention by planting a couple of trees apiece on my line. Then I lost the line in a big way as it broke in two: three men headed down the mountain and two headed up. I really didn’t know which way to go so I followed the three headed down. I called “Hey, over here!” but no one listened to my English.

Senior Heffe came upon my mistake and took all of my remaining trees and sent me up the mountain to follow three men who were also going up. “This couldn’t be a good sign,” I told one man who just replied “No say.” I climbed up the mountain to where a mule team had deposited another series of boxes of saplings. I watched the two men unload the 50 pound box of trees into their pouches and then they lifted an additional box onto their shoulders.

”You’re kidding!” I said, completely flabbergasted. One man looked at me, shrugged, and headed down the mountain with the box over his shoulders. A third man picked up another box and gestured me to lift it on his shoulders. I laughed and indicated that I wouldn’t do that. He smiled and we headed down each with fifty pounds on our hips. That seemed quite enough on the steep mountainside and we unloaded the saplings when we got down to where the others were working. And we got back to it.

After a short lunch, (we climbed back up the same 600’ for lunch that the four of us had gone to get the additional saplings), we each loaded up our pouches and went back out to plant trees. I was followed by the Forest Service official who checked out our work and by my supervisor to make sure that I was planting the trees properly. Mostly I wasn’t. “Make a wider slash!” “Put the roots in the ground straight!” “Keep moving,” “Stay on the line,” was what I gathered I was being told. Suddenly we were finished and we trudged out about five miles along a ridge to the truck.

I dragged going downhill and felt the blisters on my feet, which had grown into hot coals since last week.  That slowed me down substantially.

I was the last man out to the van and felt lucky to get away from the nagging boss. As I hiked, I had stopped to fill my canteen with the rushing creek water that tasted gritty and roily in my mouth; it was like nectar from the heavens. When I got down we filled the van with our ripe smelling bodies and after one groggy, head bouncing hour, each person piled out into the gas and goodies station on the roadside in Cascade, bought a pint of water, beer or, Gatoraide and had half a chicken to feed himself.

I sat on the curb at the gas station and felt the sunshine on my soot-charred face on this solstice day.  It was the ninth day of my employment, nearly two work weeks. I ached. I limped. I groaned. And when we got to the motel, I slept.

At nine o’clock I was down on the floor for the night on this longest day of the year. My fortune was that the next day was a day off. I’d decided that two weeks was two weeks longer than most of the gringos had lasted doing this crazyassed work, I had made $1,000, and that was enough money to carry me for awhile to find another job. My lament was that on the solstice, I couldn’t stay awake long enough to see the sun set.

Regardless, I had seen the roadless Needles and felt every inch of the rugged mountains on my favorite South Fork of the Salmon River; I’d seen deer, several bears, grouse, eagles, elk, and a great gray owl; had tasted the creek water as a much needed gift in the heat of day; and found the friendship of the men as a great generosity.  However, I was done with this job, absolutely, freaking  finished, but I was a bit richer and a bit wiser about how this work got done.

In the South Fork Salmon River drainage with a Mexican Crew

Planting trees on the South Fork Salmon River with a crew of Mexican men (part 1)

            The men are energetic and talkative, strong and young.  Unfortunately they don’t speak my language, nor I theirs.  Well, they are speaking in broken English, occasionally, and I speak no Spanish, decisively.  The Mexicans have a reputation of doing the taxing job of planting trees efficiently, thoroughly, and quickly.  Senior Heffe, the boss, said I could try this job but that all of the gringos he’s seen over the last 10 years had not lasted because it is very hard work.   He told me that I wouldn’t last two days; I laughed and told him I was 55 and I figured that was young enough to know, old enough to know better.   We both laughed.

            “See you tomorrow” I said.

            “You don’t have to.”

            We headed out the next day with a crew of 27 people packed into two vans and travelled an hour or so to the starting point and an immediate climb of 1,000 feet, weighed down with roughly 40 pounds of seedlings.  We started the planting and I really didn’t care much for the work, but I did care for the money—$13.00/per hour–and the views.   I figured we were going on the Cascade District west of the town of Cascade, on a piece of logged land that I didn’t know, nor care much about.  But we went east to a burned and cut-over piece of the South Fork of the Salmon River drainage.  This salvage sale was challenged and lost by The Wilderness Society several years ago.

            This is my home territory—the Needles—which is now adjacent to a 100,000 acre proposed wilderness that I had fought to preserve for more than 25 years: steep land with burned trees now stacked one upon another in a land of full of black bears, spruce grouse, mountain lion, huckleberries, morel mushrooms, gray wolves, tamarack trees,and in the river below steelhead, bull trout, and Chinook salmon.  This is no wasteland, but a stunningly beautiful place, impaired, for a short time, by fire and management.  This parcel was eliminated from wilderness candidacy by logging that the U.S. Forest Service had proposed and managed roughly five years ago.  I was now replanting this land by utter coincidence.

            Let me be the first to say that it ain’t particularly easy work: climbing a thousand or more feet up and down and up and down through a burned canyon with many downed trees, planting seedlings in a straight line of people that were placing trees 15 feet apart.  We lined up 27-people across and swept the land; we came down on this land like a biblical plague of locusts that stomped every inch of the land we crossed.  I was confused by commands that were spoken in Spanish and when the workers moved in formation to meet convolutions of this uneven land; I moved differently. 

            All the animals were chased away as we hacked the ground with our foot-and-a-half long blades, clearing a place where seedlings could grow, and planted small Ponderosa pine, spruce, and Douglas fir.  I saw three bears that ran and at least half a dozen piles of their scat along the route.  There was much ruckus among my amigos when animals were seen, but I didn’t see much beyond the land below my feet.  After the second day, my muscles ached, my hands and feet were blistered, and my air was spent; I slept on the floor of the motel room in Cascade instead of driving 30 miles to and from the work site to make the starting time of 5:30 am, and ate the generous food that was offered me.  I could afford no more.

            The best thing about this job was that it provided an opportunity to get in better shape and get paid for it.  And of course it was a gorgeous stretch of land known by few.  The water tasted sweet out of rivulets that ran down the mountainside and I drank it in quickly in the cup of my hands, quenching the thirst, again and again.  I’d experienced a place that I never saw this closely and I vaguely hoped that the threat of Giardia and disease carrying ticks were going to prove empty ones.  At the moment I didn’t care.  The water in each moment was pure and life giving.  I hadn’t counted upon the aches and pains that arose in the odd crannies that I never knew could give pain.  Aspirin did the job on most of these aches and the rest were only the price of entry to the Mexican ways in this American land.  When the week was over, I gladly took the weekend to heal and came back for another week of this abuse in paradse.

 Part 2 Continued next week

Running Down the Track

Running Down the Tracks

“Rail Runner, the coyote’s after you; Rail Runner, if she catches you you’re through!”

That’s the message from New Mexico Governor, Suzanna Martinez, who has threatened to cut the expense of running the Rail Runner train, to sell the trains, and count coup for her vastly conservative administration.  But it would hurt all who anticipate the future (with vastly increased gasoline prices), the government center in Santa Fe, and the community spirit of this stunningly beautiful, and remarkably liberal town.

It’s a cool run from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, past a prairie dog colony, down by the flat roofs and tiny windows of adobe dwellings, beside the old Santa Fe Brewery, travelling across the chamisa desert, passing rabbitbrush, juniper trees, and arroyos, cows, windmills, and solar panels along the way.  The Rail Runner, the train that was financed by Congress, connects Albuquerque to its richer, more famous neighbor to the north.  The round trip price is eight dollars and it takes roughly an hour to ride each way for the 300 or so people who regularly board; the riders travel in comfort on this train that the former governor supported with zeal.  As a visitor (I used to be a resident of Santa Fe), it is a pleasure to travel by train and to have the luxury of seeing the landscape that I’m visiting.  The train is more than a luxury though, for the riders who take it for transportation to get to their jobs and it runs through the Kewa pueblo, where native Americans can use it for connection to the rest of New Mexico.

The land is dry and windy across this expanse of the state, which accounts for the windmills bringing up water, as it is very, very hot and sunny.  The mountains, the Sandias, are a high dinosaur’s crest immediately out of Albuquerque and the mountains around Galesteo creep to the east, providing a lonesome look of the shadows-and-light, crenulated view of the parched New Mexican landscape.  There are also five locomotives for this short run.  The trains were built in Boise, Idaho, and occasionally run more than 100 miles per hour running on diesel and electric power.  The government is looking into running the trains on biodiesel.  

On the way back to Santa Fe, the sunshine warmed my shoulders in late afternoon, lit the Rio Grande like a coppery snake and the snarled and bent cottonwoods which graced the extended plain.  An arroyo cut through as we lifted beyond the river plain with purple, charcoal, and chalk colored cliffs that led to a juniper dotted mesa.  It was very scenic!  The short trip was full of surprises that ended with the Meep! Meep! call of the roadrunner, a gentle warning to mind the rail. 

I gotta think that the Rail Runner is going to outsmart wily ol’ Governor Martinez with little more than the sweet little Meep! Meep!, like the warning little buzz of a rattlesnake.      

If any are interested I will provide the financial and political analyses for you; just let me know.