Those of us who grew up in the 1950s & 1960s in the U.S. have some definite mental images associated with the history of the western states: the wild west of Gunsmoke & Bonanza & Rawhide, not to mention the countless Western films, both those starring John Wayne & those that didn’t.
But as we know, the history of the western U.S. was different than that—more complex & in many (perhaps evenb most) cases bearing precious little resemblance to the stereotypical screen portrayals—both those from the big & little screens alike. For instance, some years ago, the nearby town of Council, Idaho received quite a bit of money for a downtown renovation. The town has been plagued with economic hard times pretty much since its founding in the early 20th century, having suffered from the boom & bust cycle that’s so familiar to much of the U.S. west. First there was mining; then the railroad; then the sawmill; all of these industries are gone. Anyway, it was decided that the renovation should have a historic theme, & the local politicos were quite excited about log columns that could be installed along the sidewalk on the town’s main street—a sidewalk populated with shops of various sorts, most of which are even in business at any given time. The consultants pointed out that such a log cabin-like look in actuality wasn’t historical at all—in the early 20th century, the town had a distinctly Victorian look. Undaunted by fact, the politicos prevailed & the log posts went up.
I tell this story because of the photo at the top of the post, which was generously given to me by our friend Gayle, who’s one of the local historians. The photo was taken in the early 20th century in Warren, Idaho, a mining town that was founded in the late 19th century & that still exists today. Warren is only accessible on a circuitous, washboard dirt road, & its population is listed at between 12 to 16. It was a gold mining boom town in the past, however, & look at the musical instruments you could find there: a trombone, a neopolitan mandolin (okay, possibly called a “tater bug” mandolin), a cornet, a clarinet, a harp guitar (!) & two violins! There's even a fancy autoharp on the wall. Wild west indeed!
Thanks again to Gayle for this wonderful photo. If you’re interested in western history, please check back next Wednesday & every other Wednesday following for Eberle’s fine series, Adams County Makes the News.
On a completely unrelated note, please tune in tomorrow for Writers Talk with Mairi Graham, an excellent poet. You won’t want to miss it!
Summers in Indian Valley get hot; right now (12:30 p.m. on Monday) it’s 95 degree Fahrenheit on our porch, & some days in July & August that would feel pretty mild. Right now, it just feels hot. Throw in plenty of dust & smoke & practically no rain & you have a landscape that gets increasingly surreal as the summer progresses.
Or at least it seems that way. Because at a certain point, I think, you just enter another form of consciousness in the Dog Days of summer (which officially begin this Friday). Things seem slow & dreamy, & reality often has a summer haze about it.
This was even more true when we lived in our old farmhouse, in which the only cooling system was a decrepit swamp cooler—probably some of you haven’t experienced the joys of swamp cooler cooling, so that probably should be a separate post. But here’s a typical scene on a summer’s evening: the house is holding heat like some unworldy presence; Eberle & I are sitting in bed, on top of the covers, in our nightclothes, just having finished watching an old Perry Mason episode on TV. It’s really too hot to do anything, including sleep.
Then we hear a big whomp against the side of the house—now this scene takes place in the early years of the millenium, back when Eberle & I were raising guinea hens; & there were guinea hens sitting on various nest scattered across the property, because no matter how fast we took their eggs away (guinea hen eggs are quite good—just a bit smaller than chicken eggs) there were invariably more, with both hens & roosters sitting on &/or guarding nests—in essence, “sitting ducks” for any predator that might happen by.
So still in our nightclothes, we traipsed out to the front lawn to see what had happened; we knew there was a nest sequestered there, but didn’t know it’s exact location. We were about halfway across the lawn when Eberle yelled, “Hey” or words to that effect & took off sprinting in her nightclothes in the direction of the draw. Just ahead of her was a coyote (pronounced as a two-syllable word locally) carrying off a live guinea hen.
As luck or prudence would have it, we had a flashlight—it was after 10:00 p.m. as I recall, which puts it a little ways into the summer, since there’s a good deal of light in the sky now at 10:00 o’clock. Actually, I had the flashlight, & I took off after Eberle—for her sake really, since the guinea hen was clearly a lost cause. Of course, even back then my lungs kept me from running for any distance, so I used a little common sense & kept to a brisk walk, always keeping Eberle & her prey in my flashlight: thru the vegetable garden, thru the pasture, up the ridge & into the wide open pasture on top, then diagonally across the pasture heading straight for the big hill that leads to US Highway 95. Eberle was still in pursuit; the coyote had actually stopped a couple of times, apparently trying to “shake her,” but she was determined.
The hill didn’t prove much of an obstacle for the coyote (& guinea hen), or for Eberle, either. On the other hand, it slowed me down considerably.
The rest of the story—after crossing the highway, the coyote turned toward Eberle, apparently thinking that a bit of an aggressive posture might get this pesky human off his trail & let him enjoy his hard-won supper. Eberle, however, walked straight toward the coyote, who it seems had had enough of this, dropped the no-doubt shaken but otherwise intact guinea hen & took off up the slope of Mesa Hill.
I rejoined Eberle & the guinea hen on the far side of Highway 95, & we began the long walk home—in nightclothes & in the lights of the semis barrelling down the south slope of the mesa. The guinea hen went home on her own—I don’t recall if it ran or flew or both—& was bustling around on the front lawn when we got back.
What was the whomp you ask? Our best guess is that the coyote flushed the guinea hen off her nest & she took flight. However, while guinea hens are better at flying than chickens, it certainly isn’t their strong suit, & we believe she didn’t get enough elevation, hit the side of the house, & fell down stunned where she was—as the coyote believed, not figuring on Eberle’s relentlessness—easy pickings.
A summer occurrence. As the great poet César Vallejo said, Es una historia!
The pix are self-explanatory, except for the top pic, which shows two of our guinea hens atop the old swamp cooler!
Both Eberle & I have traveled Interstate 80 West a fair number of times, especially from Winnemucca on to San Francisco or at least to the turn off for U.S. 95 South to Hawthorne, NV (our favorite route to SoCal). In the course of those trips we’d always been struck by a singular & compelling edifice off to the left as you’re heading west near Imlay, NV. Last March, Eberle & I made two trips to California—wonderful getaways to lands redolent with blossoms & sunshine while Indian Valley was still mired in a somber March gray. The second of the two trips was to SoCal, where we performed our score for Nell Shipman’s Grub Stake at Claremont-McKenna College (many thanks to our dear pal Audrey, & also to Jim Morrison of Claremont-McKenna film department & the most redoubtable Tom Trusky of the Idaho Film Collection). The first trip was more complicated, & not altogether a “pleasure” trip, tho we did have some great times in Occidental, CA visiting Dani Leone, & later in Baghdad by the Bay with Chris Leone & Earl Butter & Kim.
But the main point of this story is that as we headed west early last March, we decided we were going to stop at this place on the way back; & so, a week later as we were headed back to Idaho, we took the Imlay exit on I-80 East, & drove up a small secondary road to Thunder Mountain Battle Monument.
Thunder Mountain was the home & the creation of Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder (AKA Frank Van Zant) a Native American man who left Oklahoma to settle in the high Nevada desert. The home is a masterpiece of “found art” & concrete sculpture; in terms of the former, there are windows made of car windshields & glass bottles, & fences made of junk automobiles; in terms of the latter, there are any number of images formed in concrete—these are statues of Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder’s family, as well as Native Americans from history (for instance, a statue of Sarah Winnemucca appears there) & legend or mythology. Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder was a remarkable man, who lived a difficult & ultimately tragic life, but was able to create this site of strange beauty in the midst of a forbidding desert landscape. Walking around the monument (which is currently being restored by the state of Nevada) you do get the sense of being in a consecrated space, a space that has been made “other” by the passion of a human being’s creativity & spirituality—by his love & his faith, his despair & his rage. It's probably the most powerful monument against injustice I’ve ever seen.
If you ever happen to be on I-80 west of Winnemucca, I’d strongly recommend that you set aside an hour or so to visit the Thunder Mountain Battle Monument (there’s no admission, tho there is a donation box). If that’s not feasible, I’d recommend the documentary Visions of Paradise. This film tells the story of five US folk artists, including Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder, & is available thru Light-Saraf Films (I expect to post more about this dvd in the future). The segment on Thunder Mountain includes footage shot inside the house, which currently is closed to the public during restoration efforts.
I hope you enjoy the slideshow—I believe it tells the story of Thunder Mountain better than any words I might add. The pictures were taken on our two trips thru Nevada in March of 2008; the background music is a solo piano piece by Eberle called “Dream Train.” She originally wrote it for our soundtrack to Rootabaga Stories.
I still clearly remember the first time I experienced the after-effects of “pogonip,” the frozen fog that descends regularly into Indian Valley (& other valleys in the Wild West) throughout the winter. It was in ’98, my first winter here, & it was a morning the fog burned off very early. Once the fog has dissipated, the landscape is stunningly beautiful, with hoarfrost crystals decorating almost everything—from the boughs of trees to barbed wire fences. I trudged thru the snow all the way down to the south pasture, camera in hand, so I could get a shot of the big cottonwood by our old house—the tree was white with the crystals.
I later came to learn that the frozen fog brings difficulties that are about equal to its beauty. As someone with chronic breathing problems, I learned that the pogonip makes the air impossibly cold to breath; the Old Farmer’s Almanac always offers the phrase, "Beware the Pogonip,” while noting that the Shoshone Native Americans believed this fog was harmful to the lungs. There seems to be a bit of debate on the etymology of the word “pogonip” on the internet; some sites link the word to the Paiute, (also stating that the frozen fog is a phenomenon found mostly in Nevada, a fact I beg to differ with on experiential grounds), while others link it to a Shoshone word meaning “white death.” This appellation is explained not only by breathing problems brought on by pogonip, but also because this fog can be very thick, & it would be very easy to lose one’s way in it—even on a paved highway you feel disoriented, so I can imagine it could be frightening if one were blazing a trail thru unknown parts. Still others link it to a Shoshone word for “cloud.”
A while back I posted a couple of pictures from a trip I took to Ontario, OR on a day when the pogonip was thick & fierce. That day the fog really never lifted in many places along the 60 mile stretch between Indian Valley & Ontario. We’ve had some protracted spells of pogonip this winter—Eberle sometimes compares it to living underwater, & it does get a bit dreary when the sun refuses to shine for several days at a time—of course, our friends in the Pacific Northwest know about this, too. The fog also seems to carry the bitter cold indoors, even in a well-insulated & heated home like our new house; I shudder (literally) remembering what these days felt like in our old farmhouse.
Sunday morning saw February come in under a shroud of frozen fog. When the fog burned off in mid-morning leaving the resplendent crystals, Eberle & I took the pix that I’m posting here; she took the lovely close-ups. Hope you enjoy seeing the effects of this strange western phenomenon.
Water coursing across a large western state—heading north from its source in the harsh chill of the Sawtooth Mountains & thence winding westward thru a wilderness of moose & mountain goat & mule deer, & black bears & bighorn sheep & badger, & wolves & wolverine—forking both west & south in the midst of a wilderness—the “river of no return”—& the fabled middle fork cascading southward into wilds & the main branch flowing northwest toward the rafts & barrooms of Riggins & the long winding blacktop of US 95 as the highway flows north to Canada & south to Mexico—& crossing under the Time Bridge between the motor lodges of Riggins & the trailer houses of Lucille in the midst of beautiful chaparral hills & fruit stands & swooping 60-mile per hour corners, there splitting the state into two time zones—then following US 95 north past the expanse of White Bird Hill & into northern Idaho’s prairies leading to Grangeville— & curling west to its mouth at the Snake River, at Oregon’s watery fringe—
This is a mythic landscape, a mythic river: the Salmon, the “river of no return,” so called because the powerful current that draws whitewater rafters these days seemed impossible to turn back into up river—a river known by the name of the salmon, a fish that’s itself nearly legendary both in a good & bad sense of the word: in a bad sense, because the species, stymied by dams on all the Columbia Basin rivers except the Salmon is swimming upstream into extinction—ancestral home to the Nez Perce & other Native American tribes, briefly named “Louis River” by the Corps of Discovery in honor of Merriweather Lewis—home to gold deposits as well as to Chinooks & Sockeyes & Steelheads—I only know a relatively small stretch of the Salmon River, tho it does hold a “mythic” place in my imagination; Eberle & I, usually in the company of other friends, have explored the River Road out of Riggins, crossing the bridge over the treacherous & flood-prone Little Salmon near its confluence with the Salmon itself (the Little Salmon caused widespread destruction in the 100-year-flood of January ’97, wiping out homes recklessly built in the canyon flood plain between New Meadows & Riggins)—
The River Road is as scenic a drive as I’ve ever been on—it’s also probably the most dangerous. A dirt road without a hint of guardrail, a sheer slope rising to the east in many places, & a very large & powerful river below a sheer slope to the west. It’s not a road for careless or hurried driving—in many locations the cars traveling north need to pull over so the cars traveling south (on the perilous river side) can creep by safely. Cars do go into the river every so often, with an assurance of tragic results….
A trip up the River Road checking out 19th century mining sites with a dipsomaniac Forest Service archeologist & Eberle & her old Idaho pal Roberta was my first exposure to the real Idaho wilds, way back in October of 97; since, we’ve taken drives up the river in the blue-gray November mist, & outings on the beautiful white sand beaches in the spring; & of course I’ve watched the Salmon power its way northward parallel to US 95 as Eberle & I traveled into the lovely farmlands of Northern Idaho—all these images are part of the Salmon River’s mythos….
But none of these images, powerful & evocative as they may be, are the main story of the Salmon River to me, at least not as I’m writing this—because just as we can never step into the same Heraclitean river twice, we can’t ever imagine the same river twice—& most importantly, I con’t tell myself the same story about that river as my loved ones & friends tell…. & specifically, I know the story my wife Eberle tells herself about the Salmon is very different than the story I know—
I came to Idaho in my middle age—true, I came here with a passion for the western landscape, but my imagination regarding place was formed by close to 30 years in Vermont. There’s always something exotic to me in the vast & monumental western space compared sub-consciously with the enclosed horizons of New England. Eberle, however, has known Idaho since she was young, tho again, it was an imaginative contrast—in her case, with a Frank Lloyd Wright house & an affluent upbringing in a Chicago suburb—in her case, these wild spaces have always offered some haven, & her dream has always been a cabin on the Salmon River—not the sort of majestic pseudo-rustic log palace with green tin roof that despoiled the wild in Idaho’s recent boom days, but a ramshackle folly she could build with her own hands, where she could commune in solitude with… the Divine? Her creative core? This is where it becomes her story, a story to which I have only a partial access, but which seems to include the hermits of Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert, the secret code of Beatrix Potter’s journal, Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own,” & Nell Shipman’s wild west independent artistry—
Do lives intersect like roads or flow together like rivers? Perhaps, as quantum physics teaches, they do both simultaneously, or either, depending on your perspective. Perhaps the courses taken by our life & the life of even our dearest companions pursue various courses in relation to each other—tangential, parallel, intersecting, unified, divergent—& even the most contrary can occur with virtual simultaneity—Eberle’s dream of a Salmon River cabin—solitude in a life stripped to its basics—one bowl, one pot for cooking—my own working class roots placing a value on comfort & a certain amount of materialism—& Vermont in my experience was rustic, not wild—the real wilderness, the stretches on the Middle Fork where Eberle & her family hiked & camped with pack llamas in tow are alien to me….
Sometimes, contemplating Eberle’s story of the Salmon River, I wonder if I’m capable of this type of dream about a landscape—Vermont, with its rocky streams & steely winter sky & frozen ponds & nature poems left far behind in the rearview mirror—Virginia, with its endless nights filled with insects & the fragrance of flowering trees & the obsessions of sestinas: a dream floating away in a blue haze of cigarettes smoked years ago—San Francisco’s painted Victorians & afternoon walks on tree-lined streets & late night strolls thru lights & bustle & poetry echoing between the sidewalk & a moon suspended over the Bay—Idaho, with its looming mountains & guinea hens racing across the lawn & its small-town rodeos & a banjo frailed on the porch—how can I add this all up to equal the coherence of Eberle’s Salmon River story, a story she forsook freely for my sake—
The river—a life—never stepping twice into the same water—
One of the funniest people I know is our Beserkley, CA pal Tami Lipsey. We used to see her a fair amount up in this part of the country—sadly, we haven’t for a while, but I hear she’s doing great with two little Tami’s (in a manner of speaking) around the house in the East Bay. But the reason I mention Tami in this post is she always claimed to be just a wee bit scared to visit here because there are some wild creatures around. Eberle, in particular, found this astounding, because Tami is a city gal & thinks (or used to, anyway) nothing of dashing around at all hours in an urban environment. But she’s a bit less sure about wild animals. In fact, Eberle wrote a very fun calypso song for Tami called “What’s Up with the Animals?”—sadly, it never was recorded, but the first couple of lines were almost a direct quote from Ms Lipsey herself (I’m pretty sure she didn’t use the word “pout,” tho): “What’s up with the animals, you know I don’t want to pout, but they’re always making noise at night—I mean, what’s that all about?”
Of course, in fairness to Tami I think we did tell her the bear stories—which I’m about to tell you. Since both of these stories are about events that happened before I lived in ID, I have to take Eberle’s word for them—she told them to me. Whatever her intent in doing so, I’m glad to say they didn’t dissuade me from moving here.
Anyhoo, it seems one day back in the mid 90’s, Eberle was working in her garden. As she weeded or mulched or did other chores appropriate to gardening, she noticed a lot of cars & trucks (probably mostly the latter) gathering on North Gray’s Creek Rd around our uphill neighbors—at that time, these were the Whitemans, Judge & Mrs. One of the Indian Valley folk who was joining the throng came to get Eberle. It turned out that a bear cub was up one of the Whiteman’s cottonwoods, & a good part of the population of Indian Valley had come by to make an impromptu party out of this event. Eberle notes that the cub made it down eventually, & that everyone—cub included—escaped unscathed.
The other story may have been more alarming to Tami, because she was a member of the Lipsey Mountain Spring Band, which had a habit of camping on our lawn in the summer—Tami played pennywhistle, & sang a couple of numbers: a version of “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” that was overflowing with gusto, & the fastest version I’ve ever heard of “I’m An Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande.” Well, in the second story the bear was never seen, but did “leave his calling card,” as it were in the crotch of our biggest cottonwood. In case anyone missed that expression, they call it “sign” out here (bear “sign,” moose “sign,” coyote “sign,” etc.), but it more commonly goes by the name we all know from grade school, namely, “poop.”
I asked Eberle about this again recently. She was quite informative. She pointed out that bear “sign” looks more or less like what we called “cowpies” in VT, but that it would be unusual for a cow either to have eaten plums (I’ll just say: plum pits) or to be in the crotch of a tree. She also noted that raccoon & skunk “sign” may contain plum pits, but is shaped more like dog…. “sign.” She pointed out that Mountain Lion “sign,” which could be in a tree, was a different shape & invariably contains hair. Now you know almost all you need to know to be a mountain tracker.
A while back, I wrote rather lyrically about Plum Alley; now you know another side of the plum story.Top pic: I’d like to thank our good friend Beartram for helping me recreate the bear in the cottonwood tree.
Bottom Pic: Ms Lipsey on North Gray’s Creek Rd, loaded for bear (or beef, as the case may be).
There probably won’t be many more days this year to drive up Warren Wagon Road from McCall to Burgdorf hot springs. Snow comes early above 6,000 feet, & the road to Burgdorf can be treacherous with snow & ice when autumn’s just beginning to settle down on Indian Valley. Of course, for intrepid folks, there are ways into Burgdorf year round—snow cat, snowmobile, cross country skis; & some folks do winter up there—but more on that later….
Either in spite of the fact or because of the fact that I haven’t spent a lot of time there, Burgdorf occupies a significant place for me in the Idaho landscape—my mental or imaginary Idaho landscape that is. It’s the first trip Eberle & I took together when I was visiting her in Indian Valley from Baghdad by the Bay way back last century—(the picture of Eberle in the pool at Burgdorf was taken on that trip); the stories I hear about it take me back to the Idaho hippie & hipster days, before I ever set foot here; & of course, it’s the first place I ever played the uke….Burgdorf was developed as a resort by a Frank Burgdorf back around 1870—it’s not far in terms of miles from the mining town of Warren (though if you drive from Burgdorf to Warren on the washboard road, you may find it’s a lot longer than the mileage leads you to believe). In fact, the original name for the hotel & collection of cabins was “Resort”—kinda generic if you ask me. The Denver chanteuse Jeanette Foronsard (who was also coincidentally Mrs. Burgdorf) convinced Frank to give his own name to the place back around the turn of the 20th century. You can see the hotel in the pic below, with Eberle & our Cambridge, MA pal Margot Kimball. This pic was taken back in 01, in either late September or possibly very early October—as you can see, winter was on its way, & as a matter of fact, we had quite a time coming up the road that day, even briefly high-centering our Subaru on a patch of icy snow. & speaking of winter, our Oregon pals & also bona fide old hippies JD Smith & Doug & Toby Gunesch spent at least one winter at Burgdorf back in the 70’s. Now, I’m thinking it’d be hard enough on a person’s psyche to undergo a winter lasting from sometime in September to sometime in May even if they were living in a town with some distractions. The idea of spending it in that kind of isolation is mind-boggling to me—no matter how much woodworking you can do with your drawknife, or how many dips you take in the pool, etc., time has to hang kinda heavy at a certain point. But the best story I’ve heard about that winter is as follows (at least as I got it)—some time that winter the Idaho County sheriff came in by some sort of conveyance suitable to the conditions with a “care package” of booze & lettuce. Now this was a hard-partying bunch at the time, I think I’m safe in saying—so it’s testimony to the situation that everyone was far more interested in lettuce than whisky. Sadly, someone (none of the people I mentioned, I hasten to add) snuck off with the lettuce & ate it all himself. Needless to say, there was great consternation about this, though I’m assured that frontier justice was not carried out; whether some form of karmic retribution kicked in (this being the 70’s & all), I can’t say….
The other story involves whisky, too, but not lettuce. At some point in the past, Eberle & our pal Audrey Bilger were spending a weekend up at Burgdorf, & they ran into a group Eberle always describes as “the wild women of Riggins.” Now, for those who don’t know, Riggins, ID is a small Idaho County town on the Salmon River, particularly known as a white water rafting locale & steelhead fishing spot. It’s also a town where the locals are apt to party pretty hard, so calling this crowd the “wild women of Riggins” makes me think they were a serious bunch. Anyhoo, whisky taking its usual effects, the wild women of Riggins began telling Eberle & Audrey some very detailed & graphic stories about the rigors of the childbearing process, something all these gals had experience with, but which neither Eberle nor Audrey knew firsthand. These stories went on well into the night up there amongst the pines as the Jack Daniels or Old Crow or whatever the particular brand of poison was made the rounds. Eberle points out that these stories definitely had an impact, as neither Eberle nor Audrey have firsthand experience of said process to this day (happily so, I believe, in both cases)….
It seems Burgdorf is a bit more peaceful these days. We were up there last month with our Portland pals Sue & Jay, & other than a rather resplendent turkey who was having a stand-off with a rooster about who was in charge of a flock of hens, everything seemed pretty calm. It was a Saturday, & the pool was more full than I’ve ever seen it—probably a sign of the times as the greater McCall area becomes more & more a “destination.”
But Burgdorf is still a lovely spot—“half a ghost town,” to steal a phrase from Utah Phillips—& as such still quite different from what your mental picture of a commercial hot springs might be. The large meadow across the dirt road is still home to elk cows & their calves in season (& as such, off limits to human beans), the rental cabins all seem in good repair & the old abandoned structures are still picturesquely abandoned. If you want to learn a bit more about Burgdorf, check out the site here (the fact that Burgdorf has its own website is also a sign of the times….)
I got historical background on Burgdorf from Cort Conley’s wild & wonderful “Idaho for the Curious,” Backeddy Books 1982
