Mining Camp Band

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!

From the Mississippi River to the Badlands

Minnesota’s barns are trim, no question about that—red & white & green & brick with shingled gambrel roofs—morning along the Mississippi River near Dakota, Minnesota—the train tracks winding north to the big river’s source—ice on the Mississippi—grandiose waters even here in the North Country—ice formations on the rock cliffs beside Route 90—later Canada Geese marching across a frozen pond in a tiptoe waddle—the birches from Wisconsin thru Minnesota—the redwinged blackbirds pecking for grit along the road shoulder—

South Dakota: the beginnings of the unkempt west—standing water & round hay bales & signs stating The Wages of Sin is Death—the endless signs for Wall Drug & the Petrified Gardens—the latter closed for the season—dinosaur sculptures & teepee sculptures in the rest area—totems of extinction—a 20 ounce cuppa Joe from a Cenex in Chamberlain—looking at the prairie dog postcards & Mt Rushmore t-shirts—

Wall, South Dakota: a shabby western Disneyland near a Minuteman missle range—the Badlands—serious atavism & I do mean serious—the history of the world told thru severe erosion—wild west jungle—ancient ocean—the mule deer grazing placidly—the rabbits furtive & freezing in the dead yellow grass—the meadowlarks soaring above prairie—the story of Chief Big Foot & the winter passage thru the Badlands into history at Wounded Knee—stark history amongst the jagged rocks & the exposed strata—

Today: the Crazy Horse Memorial—then on to Wyoming & Montana

Thunder Mountain Battle Monument

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.

A Fine Day Out #1 - Council, ID

(Pic Caption: An old fire truck for the Council Rural Fire Department, an all-volunteer force. )

Hey, we’re starting yet another series here on Robert Frost’s Banjo. In the better months of the years, Eberle & I love to go on weekend jaunts, & we thought it would be fun to combine these jaunts with photos & stories for the blog. The Fine Day Out series won’t necessarily be appearing at fixed intervals, but it should be appearing often over the next several months.

Of course, to say that the weather in our area right now falls under the aegis of “better weather” is just plain wrong. The winter has been hanging on longer than usual (tho one thing I’ve learned in 11 winters in Indian Valley—there is no “usual” winter here); the mud is often as prominent in the landscape as the snow by late February, & sometimes there’s much more newly bare ground than snow by this time of year. Not in 2009, however. A combination of big snowstorms in late December thru early January & consistently cold weather since has left us with several inches still on the ground except on the steepest south & east-facing slopes.

With this lingering winter, Eberle & I were both suffering a bit of cabin fever yesterday, & we decided we needed a bit of a jaunt, even if just a short one. So with camera in hand, we headed up U.S. Highway 95 to Council, the next town up the road, & the county seat of Adams County, Idaho. At a population of just over 800, Council is the “big town” in Adams County. It was founded in 1873 by the Moser family. The Moser raised cows & hogs, & sold meat & butter to the miners working in the nearby Seven Devils Mountain range. The town got its name because local Native American tribes—the Nez Perce, the Umatillas & the Shoshone—used the area as a meeting place.















(Pic caption: The historic Adams County Courthouse—this building is on the National Register of Historic Places, & a group of tireless volunteers are working to restore the building for use as a community center. The group has received grant money from HUD & from the Idaho Department of Commerce, & things are looking quite hopeful for this old building. The building once contained both the courthouse & the jail, as well as all the County offices. Eberle & I have been involved in a couple of performances in the old courtroom, one of which was a screening of Nell Shipman’s Back to God’s Country, with the two of us playing our score live. This was very well-attended & received.)

Council is not an affluent town; it’s a place that has depended on various resource-based industries for an economy, & these industries have all pretty much “gone bust.” When the town was founded, its economy was based on the Seven Devils mining operations, but this industry died out many years ago. There was also the Pacific & Northern rail line (you can read more about the PIN line here), but that also has ceased operations; & the timber industry has seen a marked drop-off over the last 20-30 years. Council was especially hard-hit when Boise-Cascade closed its mill there in the 90s.

(Pic caption: Sadly, a lot of businesses have closed on the main street. Buckshot Mary’s was a marvelous curiosity shop, but the store went out of business a few years back & has yet to find anyone to purchase the property.)

Eberle & I hope you enjoy this short tour of Council; we had a blast wandering around town (especially before the rather raw wind came up) & taking pictures. As the weather improves, our Fine Days Out will of course venture much further afield.

The Ace Saloon—one of the few businesses open on a Sunday afternoon. The Ace is a popular watering hole, & also a karaoke hotspot. The building also houses the Branding Iron steakhouse, & has apartments upstairs.



Another building for sale. Two good businesses tried their hand at making a go of it in this fine old building—a combination café/used bookstore (with quite a nice selection—also a piano & a guitar available for use) & a pizza restaurant that served pretty good pies with interesting ingredients. Even our Bay Area friends spoke highly of the pizzas here. Neither business could make a go of it in the long run, however, & this building also has been on the market for some time.


The wonderful old Zenith sign at Sam’s TV & Electric. Sam's is a going concern, & has been a mainstay for years.
















The vet’s office. Of course large animal vets are in demand in any ranching town (tho a lot of ranchers do a good bit of the veterinary work themselves). In our case, the vet is also the mayor of Council; in fact, he performed the marriage ceremony for Eberle & me right in our garden one fine September day.

The People’s Theater was the town movie house, but its doors have been closed for a number of years; at this point, it appears that the building can’t be salvaged—a shame, because the People’s Theater dates back to the silent movie era. The daughter of the local newspaper editor used to play piano for the silents when they played there.

A local outbuilding, in better repair than many, & more decorated than most.















An alleyway running behind the defunct pizza place, past Buckshot Mary’s, & finally into the parking lot of the local supermarket.

Western Legends #5

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.

Things Seen Driving Home from Ontario, OR on a Foggy Afternoon

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Wednesday found me in Ontario, OR (& later Payette, ID & Weiser, ID) for a large portion of the day—left at 6:40 a.m. & beat my 5:00 p.m. guitar student to the house by about five minutes.

Yesterday almost all the land between here & Ontario was under an inversion: “warm air aloft,” & frozen fog down below. It’s pretty to look at, but it’s hard to drive thru, & it’s hard to breathe, especially if you’ve got a pulmonary system that’s been somewhat battered by genetics & a youth spent smoking cigarettes. The frozen fog occurs quite often in winter in the western valleys; it’s also referred to as “pogonip,” a Native American word. But the landscape between here & Ontario has a sort of stark & dilapidated beauty, somehow enhanced by the gray air, & I hope this list conjures some pictures.

• A water tower adverting “Spanish Onions” displaying a cartoon dancing onion
• Gray ice & dirty snow surrounding pressure-treated fence posts
• 3 horses (2 roans & a dappled white horse) & 2 burros in a muddy corral right next to Oregon State Road 201
• A home in “Rialto Ranches” sub-division with plywood cutout Christmas decorations on the front yard's cyclone fence (Mickey Mouse & Santa Claus) & a steer grazing in the backyard
• A bend in the placid & partially frozen Snake River
• An old, faded black-&-white painted sign advertising “Starfall Farms”
• A dormant, skeletal cherry orchard
• A slack barbed wire fence held together with a number of splices, & also draped with orange baling twine, leading to a mailbox topped with a Santa Claus figure
• A yellow sign on a lawn showing tablets listing the 10 Commandments
• A nautically themed house (complete with miniature lighthouse & seagull figurine in the front yard) on the banks of the Snake River
• “Oregon Thanks You – Please Come Again”
• The Snake River, revisited
• “Idaho is Too Great to Litter”
• A snowman wearing a red cap & with stick arms open widce standing on the lawn of a trailer house in Payette, ID
• An old brick building banded across the top with white lettering against a black background: “Rinelli Fruit Co.”
• A fireman weathervane atop the Payette firehouse
• An old white wooden building with a tin roof & the painted sign: “Christian Feed Mill”
• A snow-covered soccer field with no nets in the goals standing next to an Idaho Power construction site
• Goats grazing underneath an old-style metal windmill
• Various large stacks of hay bales, both exposed to the elements & tarped
• Train tracks
• A lavender doublewide with lavender outbuildings
• 1 black faced sheep grazing; 1 all white sheep lying down
• A kestrel swooping into the tall grass emerging from snow beside the train tracks
• York metal silos
• Stacks & stacks of pallets beside the corrugated metal buildings of For Rivers Packing
• An old brick schoolhouse with a bell tower: now Weiser WICAP & Head Start
• A wooden sign reading “Rocks, Fossils, Art Gallery” next to a large orange Tyrannosaurus Rex fashioned from an unknown material
• The Weiser River runnig under a concrete bridge
  
• The Beehive Family Restaurant displaying a wood cut-out of an Angus steer
  
• A tarot & tattoo shop next to the Weiser Christian Church
• The orange corrugated buildings of Western Timber across the street from the cemetery
• A 40s vintage bright yellow pick-up with a sign in its bed stating: “States Produce Closed for the Season”
• Painted statues of a grizzly & an elk on opposite sides of a driveway
• Bitterbrush & sagebrush rising out of the snow
• Trees, shrubs & grass frosted white with frozen fog
• Cattle grazing on frosted white grass
• A crow gliding thru the gray air above Mann Creek
• Sunlight starting to burn thru as I head up the south face of Midvale Hill
• Bright sun on brilliant white snow at the summit: 3,338 feet
• Fog like an endless blue-gray cloudbank in the rearview mirror
• Descending into an endless blue-gray sea of fog halfway down the northern slope
• Wild turkeys scratching for grit beside US highway 95
• Tall trees completely frosted white along the Weiser River Trail as it cuts thru the Midvale, ID town park
• The Weiser River frozen & gray below dark, snow-dappled cliffs as the highway winds thru the Weiser River canyon south of Cambridge, ID
  
• The Frontier Motel’s sign proclaims they have served “1 happy guest & 0 grouches since Jan 1”
• An electrical sign in the shape of Santa Claus driving a tractor attached to the side of the Farmer’s Supply Co-Op; the sign isn’t illuminated at this hour
• Two RVs parked in a Quonset style building
• Large hay shelters holding big square hay bales
  
• A lot of junk autos & old farm equipment next to a tumbledown barn near the Washington County/Adams County line
• Sunshine emerging & Council Mountain becoming brilliant white to the east
• The old schoolhouse behind the closed Alpine Store
• The trailer house where we got a bantam hen & rooster almost 10 years ago
• Our llama Penelope kneeling down, camel style, inside our corrugated loafing shed; Mo the alpaca standing nearby
• The willow beside our house sparkling white with fog crystals catching the late afternoon sun

Top pic: Downtown Ontario, OR with water tower in the distance
Bottom pic: Frosted trees along the Weiser River Trail in Midvale, ID

Gonna Move Up to the Country #5

It was just 11 years ago this date that yours truly made the trek from Baghdad by the Bay to Indian Valley, ID, riding in a Toyota Van with Dani Leone, a bunch of cassette tapes, a cat (in cat carrier) & all my earthly belongings that could be crammed into said van. It was a sunny morning when we left San Francisco, & a mild one at that; 750 miles later (give or take) it was cold & snowy.

I don’t recall what hour we pulled in—it wasn’t outrageously late—but I remember my dear Eberle greeted us with a nice meal: possibly her delicious baked beans & cornbread. & that was the beginning of my return to country living, going smack from San Francisco’s Western Addition, a couple of blocks from the Panhandle, to a little town in Idaho where there are (a lot) more cattle & horses than there are people.

Now moving here in the winter presented certain challenges. For one thing, I hadn’t wintered in a northern climate since 83-84, when I was still in Vermont; & in all honesty, I hadn’t missed winters very much in the intervening years (understatement). For another thing, my new home was a very old Idaho farmhouse, & as such had some remarkable eccentricities that weren’t entirely conducive to comfortable winter living. The outlet pipe for the washing machine froze every winter; the room we were using for our bedroom could get so cold that plants would be bitten by frost; there was also a leak in the roof directly above the foot of the bed. Because Eberle’s a bit shorter than I am, this was less of a problem for her, but the leak discharged right onto my feet. The main heat source was a wood stove, which is admittedly cozy in some ways, but is also a lot of work; & the southwestern corner of the house was sliding (the house didn’t have any real foundation, & also lacked insulation), so the window in that corner was cracking. The electrical & plumbing systems? Don’t get me started….

This isn’t to say we didn’t have fantastic times in that house, because we did. But the house was a lot of work, & it would often have fits at rather inconvenient times. So let’s flash back to my first weekend at the house. It was a Sunday, I believe. Early in the afternoon it became clear that the wood stove was smoking—it became “clear” because smoke was pouring into the room both from the stove & the stovepipe. The good news: we did have an electric furnace so we wouldn’t freeze after we let the fire go out; the bad news: we had to carry burning logs out to the driveway. Even wearing very heavy stove gloves, there are aspects to this procedure that just aren’t fun.

But as an aside, I’ll say we were intrepid souls in those days. As a result, Eberle & I became pretty experienced chimney sweeps. She’d tackle the messy job of disassembling the stove pipes & cleaning them out (with a rubber mallet in the driveway), & I go clambering up on the roof with a chimney brush in hand. You can see Eberle & said stove in the pic above. I must also say that after we moved into our new house in the spring of 05, I have never missed sweeping the chimney for one moment.

So we’d dealt with the wood stove, & the electric furnace was humming & rattling & roaring, & we were somewhat frazzled—dare I say we were even a tad snippy perhaps. At some point just a little bit later in the day, I decided I should wash a load of laundry. Now I was actually pretty jazzed by the idea of having a washing machine in the space where I lived, since in San Francisco I’d always walked a block to the corner laundromat. I filled the washer & started a load of clothes. However, when the washer began to drain, water came gushing out of the pipe onto the floor. The outlet pipe for the washer was frozen…. & actually, you really have to picture an outlet pipe that consists of a smaller diameter pipe thrust sort of randomly into a larger diameter pipe (this is nothing—some of the “piping” for the bathtub was garden hose). The real quirk of the washing machine tho was that some previous owner of our beloved old cottage had gotten the clever idea to run this pipe into the small basement, where it simply discharged onto a concrete floor. In rather typically misplaced ingenuity, they then placed a sump pump in the basement to pump the water—either from the washing machine or from the remarkable spring run-off from Mesa Hill that saturates our property—into the pasture. When we decided sometime later to try various schemes to prevent this pipe from freezing (which included running a plumber’s snake down the pipe & leaving it there on the misguided theory that this would leave some channel open—it only helped marginally), we knew we couldn’t use anti-freeze in the pipe. But we did try vodka. Even tho neither Eberle nor I drink at all, I’d go to the local supermarket & buy a half gallon of the cheapest vodka they stocked & “feed” that outlet pipe this rotgut vodka periodically. Sad to say, this only had slightly better results than the snake. So eventually we cut our losses & would drive to the laundromat in Council, 12 miles down the road, for our winter time laundry day. One of the buring questions of winter would be whether the pipe would thaw in February or March….

But back to that January day in 98. I shut off the washing machine rather abruptly, & there I was, hauling laundry out of the lukewarm water. I was not in the best of moods; in fact, my mood had darkened considerably. Poor Eberle, who dearly loved the old farmhouse, was trying to put a cheerful spin on things, perhaps wondering if I was about to pack my bags for Frisco once more. She said from the kitchen, “At least nothing else can go wrong.” No sooner had she said that than there was a complete power failure. It was late afternoon on a cloudy say—everything was practically dark. As I was to learn, (aside from the frightening electrical issues in the old house itself), our property was connected to a rather antique & unreliable power grid out of Cambridge, ID, a quaint little town about 12 miles in the opposite direction, & when the power went out, it usually was out for a good while. Idaho Power, in its infinite wisdom, has recently upgraded this, to our great comfort & joy, tho it did involve lots of new power pools intruding on the landscape….

So what do you do at a moment such as I described? Eberle's in the dark kitchen; I'm in the dark laundry alcove holding an armful of cold wet clothes. Well, of course: we both started laughing. I only remember now that the rest of the day was sweet; don’t recall how long the power was out, but we made do. We did a lot of that between 98 & the fall of 04 when we moved out of the old house….

More joys of country living….

The bottom pic shows the old house on a January morning in 98.

If You Pave It, They Will Come

One problem with writing “newsy” posts a bit ahead of time: sometimes the news changes. I originally wrote this piece about the U.S. Forest Service allowing developers to pave old Forest Service timber roads yesterday evening; this morning when I opened The Washington Post in my gmail inbox I saw the following headline: “Timber Firm Drops Road-Use Request - Deal With Forest Service Raised Concern.” As you’ll see from my revised post, I really welcome this change.

A couple of days ago, I saw another item in The Post—the headline read: “U.S. Forest Policy Is Set to Change, Aiding Developer - Shift Would Let Firm Pave Logging Roads.” Anyone who’s interested in development, especially in the West, should be following this story, because the sop thrown to a very large development firm by current USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources & the Environment Mark Rey (himself an ex-timber lobbyist & a Bush appointee) would have a lot of ramifications. Even tho the development firm, Plum Creek Timber, has now rejected this (which I applaud), the issues raised are worth examining.

I covered the Adams County Commissioners for our local paper (The Adams County Record) for several years; Eberle had covered them before me (she then moved on to the “city” beat); & I generally liked the four Commissioners I got to know, tho with one exception their politics were very far to the right of mine. But covering these meetings made me more aware of economic issues in a sparsely populated rural county—one that built its economy on timber & the railroad until about 20 years ago, & now has very little economy at all.

& it made me aware of a huge issue connected to this—and also connected to this action by Rey. Because however much the pro-timber folks might have welcomed this, I saw it as potentially placing another unfunded mandate on poorer counties. Interestingly, The Post's earlier article mentioned that Montana county governments were against Rey's action, but didn’t explain why. I believe I can shed some light on this.

Roadwork—paving, snowplowing, & maintenance—typically is paid for in large part by property taxes. Schools also receive a lot of their funding from this. However, in many rural Western counties, the biggest landowner is the federal government, & all the federal lands—whether U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management—are exempt from property tax. Adams County, covers 1,370 square miles & has a population of around 3,500 people. The per capita income is around $15,000 per year, so you can see that the majority of folks in these parts aren’t wealthy—as of the 06 census the median value of an Adams County home was $88,000.

All of this is a long way of saying that the amount of property tax provided by the population doesn’t cover the bills for roads & schools. Historically, road and school funding in such counties, particularly in the rural west, was provided by 25% of the timber receipts from public lands. The 25% of timber receipts program was set up by the federal government in 1908, because it recognized that counties with large public lands holdings would be at a disadvantage in terms of property taxes. While the timber industry was active, this program worked effectively, but with the decline in timber harvest over the past 20 years the receipts in many areas haven’t been sufficient to adequately fund programs.

The Craig-Wyden bill (AKA "Secure Rural School and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000") was originally passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000. The bill, sponsored by Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig (yes, that Larry Craig) and Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, was intended to address shortfalls in road and school funding to counties with large holdings of public lands. The Craig-Wyden Act provided that funding would be set by the average of a State's three highest 25 % payments for the years from 1986 -1999.

Although counties had the option under this program to choose between 25% of current, actual timber receipts or the funding based on historical payments, most chose the latter. In 2006 funding for the Adams County’s road & bridge program would have been about $80,000 per year based on timber receipts, while the Craig-Wyden act provided approximately $400,000. Seventy percent of Craig-Wyden money went to fund county schools, while 30% went to county road programs.

Craig-Wyden wasn’t re-authorized in 2008, however, which leaves rural counties holding the bag—& now we get back to one of the many problems involved in Rey’s action, & one that should have even the pro-timber industry folks in local governments angry & worried.

If timber roads are converted into “real” roads—because make no mistake, the roads we’re talking about don’t resemble a "residential" dirt road like the one Eberle & I live on: ours is a smooth, two-lane route that can be traveled in relative ease. The roads being discussed in this Montana action are timber roads—they’re narrow & rough, & they’re not built for automotive traffic—usually they’re one-lane routes that a timber truck can navigate. So, there would be a lot of logging done to make them into actual roadways that could carry passenger cars & could also accommodate emergency vehicles, etc. & while that logging would bring short-term economy, it would bring habitat destruction, as well as ultimately compromising the access of long-time residents, who aren’t likely to enjoy the luxury sub-divisions that will no doubt rise from the sawdust.

But here’s the further catch: someone’s going to have to maintain those roads, & even if these roads would be private, someone's going have to do more maintenance on the county roads that lead to these roads (due to increased traffic). Who does that? County governments. I know from my days as a reporter on Adams County politics that the increase in property tax from some high-falutin’ second homes wouldn’t make up for the increased costs, especially with Craig-Wyden funding defunct. I also am aware that developers expect concessions from counties—they aren’t necessarily willing to pay for paving & road improvements out-of-pocket, even in the initial phase, & they certainly aren’t willing to pay for ongoing maintenance on county roads that would service their sub-division once everything’s been developed. I do see that Plum Creek Timber had agreed to kick in for affordable housing for residents who would have been affected by increased costs of living—Rey characterized this as a “concession” that’s now “lost” because the road paving scheme fell apart. Is this an important consideration? Yes: McCall, ID, some 50 miles north of us, saw a lot of this until the real estate bust, because that area was really booming. Two of our comrade musicians in the Alice in Wonder Band were forced to leave McCall simply because they couldn’t afford to live there anymore.

In addition, these sorts of luxury sub-divisions tend to cause sprawling, not clustered, development. This isn't just a problem in the rural west—our country from coast to coast has been negatively affected by sprawl. Among the many problems created by sprawl is one simple, bottom line fact: it costs more. Local governments have to fund services covering a wider area.

So these are the costs of development. & now you needn’t wonder why the commissioners in Montana were upset—it’s not because they’re all bleeing heart liberal conservationists like me—it’s because they see the impact on the county's money & are trying to figure out how to mitigate this without adequate funding. It’s also because even conservative county commissioners—at least based on my experience in Adams County—recognize that unfettered development in the West is dismantling a way of life

I’ve long thought that if the rural west would once in awhile vote for a Democrat, then maybe the political parties wouldn’t take the area for granted & some positive things might actually happen. It does seem clear to me that attention gets focused on states whose votes are up for grabs, & since this region is so solidly “red” the national political parties don’t seem to see the need of paying attention to the regional issues (tho on the positive side, Obama opposed this particular action—the big reason Rey tried to push it thru at the 11th hour). Also, let’s face it: this section of the country has natural resources, & those resources thru history have always meant money in some fat cat’s pocket. Still a lot of folks around here see the Republicans as guardians of the life they love—even tho the GOP is perfectly willing to sell them out to monied interests, as evidenced by Rey’s actions.


The pic at the top of the post shows the green gate where North Gray's Creek Road enters the Payette National Forest & becomes a Forest Service road.

Western Legends #4

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—

Mile-High Oregon Sunrise

I’m back from the wilds of Sonoma County, & other than being a trifle road-weary, am none the worse for the wear. Had a wonderful time—lots of good eats, some music, thrift-store shopping, a bunch of catching up with old pals. I’ll be posting one or two stories about the trip within the next couple of days—hope to get something more substantial onto the blog either later today or early tomorrow morning.

In the meantime: I got on the road very early last Friday morning, & was somewhere around 220 miles from home at daybreak—pulled out of Indian Valley under overcast skies—NPR evaporated at some point as I was making the long, steep climb out of Idaho into the high Owyhee desert in Oregon—the fog was a thick veil when I came out on top—hit Jordan Valley, OR in the dark: the JV diner wasn’t open yet—probably the only time I’ve made a trip to California without stopping there—headed south into a clear, starry sky & nothing but white reflectors, & a few semi’s, & some ghostly sagebrush in the headlights—U.S. 95 in Oregon is the wide open spaces—every so many miles the sodium light from an isolated ranch—you know there are cattle & coyotes & crows & deer & antelope out there in that dark rangeland, but you don’t see anything—constellations & a broken yellow line—U.S. 95 is the road Eberle & I take everywhere, so somehow it connects us to everyone, & I think about that as I try to keep the speed down on those long lonely straightaways—the distance between the stars—the constellations—& then I’m headed down the long descent to Rome, OR, which is one diner & a couple of ranches, & I think of a January night over ten years ago Dani was driving her van up that winding climb between the red rock cliffs, & I was moving to Idaho to be with Eberle—Dani & I driving under a buffalo nickel moon & stars strewn every which way, & singing along to a tape: “Spanish is the Loving Tongue.” But this early & dark morning the fog’s settled in on room & I drive south with no sound except my thoughts & the swoosh of air moving past the car as it travels south, & the fog is a veil & the stars are gone—then 20 miles down the road I start to see the cattle emerge, already moving & grazing the sagebrush & dry grass, grey in the first light—& the Owyhee crows I’ve always wanted to write a song about swooping & bobbing in a sky that’s washed out except for a smeared line across the eastern horizon—not sky-blue-pink, but almost copper—& I drive on & the light spreads westward, & a few miles north of the height of land sign at Blue Mountain Pass, I pull off into an Oregon Department of Transportation turn-out & snap the pic you see above—California’s still another world, another world where my friends are mostly dreaming just then, & the wind’s whipping dust & chill across the rangeland—& there’s still the tumbleweed treeless expanse of Nevada where I’m a stranger amongst strangers waiting all morning long….

Western Legends #2

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

Mandocellos & Helicopters

It’s about a year ago—a bit less—we’re enjoying a brief, impromptu visit from our friend Bernie Jungle (his real name), woodworker/message therapist/musician extraordinaire, passing thru on his way back from a wedding in New York state—a truly epic affair where we could have seen everyone we’ve known from a certain crucial part of our lives but for various reasons can’t make—so we catch the folks as they head back west.

Anyhoo—it’s August & we’re just back from Portland, OR ourselves & it’s hot of course & there are dry thunderstorms & about half of Idaho has burned up already what with a humungous range fire down in the southeast that lasts most of the summer & all sorts of fires threatening to burn down all the old mining spots like Warren & Burgdorf to the northeast of us, & all the smoke from said fires being pumped every dawn into Indian Valley because Indian Valley draws all the smoke in the summer as if it were a chain smoker inhaling hard (it also draws in the frozen fog in the winter, but the metaphor kinda falls apart there), which isn’t so great for someone like yours truly with bad lungs...

Anyway, I’m showing Bernie this new instrument I have—what looks like a guitar (or slightly larger) & has eight-strings arranged in four courses (i.e., four pairs) like a mandolin? A mandocello, of course—though few of us in the states have ever been lucky enough to get our hands on this weird machine. Of course, Bernie is playing it like he’s played it for years within minutes of picking it up….

Mandocellos aren’t used much in the States—more so in the British Isles—at least so I’ve been told (in the email sense) by Mike Soares' y of Soares' y guitars in Queens, from whom I purchased my mandocello. But back at the turn of the 20th century & a bit earlier, there was a big craze in the U.S. for “mandolin orchestras.” The mandolins (however many they could recruit) would play the melodic lines, like a violin section(s) (mandolins & violins, as you may or may not know, being tuned to the same notes), then there were instruments called mandolas that would take the viola part— & you guessed it—the mandocellos played the cello part. The orchestras also would have a bass & usually a guitar or two for the chords—& sometimes another remarkable device called a harp guitar, which is sorta like a guitar that sprouted several bass strings with no fret board. The orchestras played popular stuff of the day, & popular classics—a genre that died out about 100 years ago.

Meanwhile, apropos of nothing at all mandocelloish, my wife Eberle & I see Bernie out to his Toyota van & see a Forest Service fire truck headed down our (dirt) road, & wonder where the hell he’s going, not realizing that probably while Bernie was noodling beautifully on the mandocello, there had been three lightning strikes about five miles due east of here on the far side of a ridge—& a bit later on while doing dishes & looking at the view, I see columns of smoke coming up over the ridge— & then there are tanker planes & all hell breaks loose as the locals claim the Forest Service kept them from getting out with heavy equipment & digging lines that might have contained the whole thing & the Forest Service trying to answer all these accusations & meantime setting up a command post in someone’s pasture a few miles south…

In the evening the fire is running up to the ridge top & threatening the big new house half way down the ridge, & we’re trying to decide which instruments to throw in the back of the pick-up & which to leave behind. I think the mandocello made the final cut… I don’t remember now… but the fire turns northeast & heads for the big Tamarack resort up by Donnelly & coincidentally becomes a number one priority fire nationally. It ends up burning 25,000 acres but, miraculously, only one outbuilding somewhere along the way…

Why Robert Frost? Why the banjo?

So my wife & I are out driving on this yellow & stifling August afternoon coming down 50 miles & more than 2000 feet from the Idaho pines & the temperate lake breezes to the Idaho rangelands where the heat’s rippling off the blacktop & the landscape is all wilted yellow-purple-brown dotted with gnarly bitterroot & pale sagebrush & U.S. flags & where during the last boom formidable homes sprang up on 40 acre McRanches replacing the double-wides, & folks from the big homes would stop by in August & ask “Where’s the water? There was water on my property back in April when I bought it,” & of course the rangeland is emerald green in April, & temperate, & full of blackbird trills… & all the folks at the big houses buy their scotch pines to plant, because this is Idaho of course & you have to have pine trees, not noticing perhaps that there really are no trees in Indian Valley except aspens & cottonwoods—trees whose shallow roots can find some water above the hard-pan—so the pines either wilt in the summer heat & drought or are stunted….

So we’re driving home—but what does this have to do with Robert Frost or the banjo? We’re talking about the farrago of topics that occupy my mind & whether they have any unifying element—because I’m thinking a blog ought to be about something more definite than what I’m thinking about on a given day; & we’re talking about music & the history of musical instruments & all the anecdotes I’ve picked up between Vermont & Virginia & San Francisco & Idaho & various rest stops in between & maybe some sort of America the way it never was vision out of Capra’s “You Can’t Take It With You,” & a postcard collection that takes up three bulletin boards & a rather large drawer in the old sideboard, & an off-&-on obsession with poetry that doesn’t add up in many ways, since it tends to focus on both Elizabeth Bishop & Ted Berrigan, & she says, “Well, it’s sort of come down to Americana—it’s like Robert Frost’s banjo.”

Robert Frost—the avuncular rural Vermont poet who writes about sleighbells in easy to read rhymed pentameter—except he wasn’t from Vermont (or New Hampshire—for which we native Vermonters can be glad at least) at all but from Baghdad by the Bay as it used to be called back when Baghdad stood for sinful glamour & not bombed-out imperialist apocalypse— & his vision of the world encompasses “Desert Places” & a lonely train ride across Utah & various forms of insanity….

& the banjo—so quintessentially American, though actually not American at all but African—a sort of elongated & 4-stringed thumb piano with a drone (because it seems, the string added later in the 19th century wasn’t the drone string); a gourd on a pole, a slave instrument that wouldn’t have much to do with 3-chord music but then later was transformed through minstrel shows & the early 20th century banjo craze to reflect white America’s tastes in popular music—was then pretty much abandoned only to re-surface both in bluegrass through Earl Scruggs’ re-interpretation of old time techniques & with the addition of thumb & fingerpicks, or in the folkie movement under the unremittingly benign vision of Pete Seeger, complete with frailing fingernail & thumb, or with Pete’s own re-vision of the banjo—long-necked & played sort of guitar style with the middle finger plucking up instead of the fingernail striking down….

So anyway, folks, thanks to my wife—also, if she’d ever practice, a far better banjo player than I am—this is “Robert Frost’s banjo,” & after all the talking is over, & the coffee’s drunk & you’ve cleaned up the last crumbs of strawberry rhubarb pie, this is still me just writing about whatever comes to mind. Hope you’d like to come along for the ride….