So much ash in the air. It settles on the black of my bike seat, finds its way through my screen and covers my sheets with grit. My eyes sting, I wake up congested every morning. I sleep in because the red haze seems like dawn. The Northwest is burning. The rain doesn’t help because itContinue reading “Idaho burning”
Tag Archives: Sandpoint
The Bear and the Maiden Fair
I live in a place where there are still wild things. I live in the kind of place where men still hunt bears. Where men accidentally kill a mother, and then rescue the cubs from the tree they’d climbed, yowling. Where people still raise bear cubs, letting them roam in the woods outside their cabin,Continue reading “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”
Of goats and men
Scotchman’s Peak is the tallest in the Idaho portion of the Cabinet Mountains, and yesterday I trekked up it for the first time ever, with my boyfriend Cole and his two daughters, Ada (age 15) and Lina (age 10). Note: their actual names have been changed for reasons that may soon become apparent. It isContinue reading “Of goats and men”
Diary of a snowstorm, part two
Day 7, January 10 The day is off to a bad start when I still haven’t fallen asleep at 1 a.m. because my lungs have decided that it’s a great time to protest how hard I’ve been going. Or maybe it’s the dry air up here. I’m wheezing and coughing to the point I’m worriedContinue reading “Diary of a snowstorm, part two”
Diary of a snowstorm, part one
Day 5 on the mountain, January 8 The snow coverage has been relatively awful this year, so I haven’t been up much, despite the fact that I purchased a season pass at Schweitzer. But now there are three inches of fresh powder over a sheet of ice and woodland debris — the first signs ofContinue reading “Diary of a snowstorm, part one”
Back to Sandpoint
I arrived home to yellow and red leaves on the trees, and brown, crisp ones on the sidewalk. The air was cold; 40 degrees colder than it had been that morning in Newport Beach. I had been thinking on the airplane, as I tend to do to pass the hours in that buzzing, monotonous in-between,Continue reading “Back to Sandpoint”
Testing Lake Pend Oreille
Kelsey asked if I wanted to be her water-testing buddy today for Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper, and I said sure. So we took a boat out to Bottle Bay, where she tested the murkiness of the water and took samples from the depth at which her line disappeared (6.4 meters today, averaged out overContinue reading “Testing Lake Pend Oreille”
Lake Pend Oreille
There are two spots I particularly love on lake Pend Oreille. One is just past the Montana border as you drive west on Highway 200, and the lake opens before your eyes, stretching past marshes and open expanses to the mountains. The second is Mineral Point, where the water is clear and the beaches rocky.Continue reading “Lake Pend Oreille”
