Impressions of the Idaho Panhandle

Where the gleaming sun torches marshy lakes of emerald grasses before pine studded mountains, here is the glory of the Panhandle, this complex terrain of flooded glacial valley and constantly rising land, the majesty of the Ponderosa and white pines, Douglas firs and grand firs, tamaracks and cedars, filtering the mighty sun.

We had lunch in St. Marie's, a lumber town with a 1950's Main St. that rises to its Woodlawn cemetery where men who fell fighting the 1910 fires are honored at its dignified summit, where a robin led us among the tranquil spirits. Across the street is the John Mullan Park where the mighty trees are honored, the lifeblood of this town, the Creators of this World.

In St. Marie's

Another day we drove north, the horizons woolly with forests and blue mountain ridges with cradles of glacier, past Sandpoint where a huge moose ran through a meadow by the highway. These were some of the billboards:

Bonner's Ferry Auto: Confidence is What You Have Before You Understand the Problem

Ron Paul 2008

Ron Paul 2012

Choose Freedom, Stop Obamacare

From a rusted cab of a trailer, a doll waved out the window

North of little Naples, Idaho, close to the Ruby Ridge shootout that galvanized the Patriot movement which Idaho became, to its dismay, best known for, is the broad Kootenai River valley where Anheuser Busch grows hops. The river snakes in a slow green furrow, past a number of wildlife preserves of marshes and ponds, high grasses, red grasses, tall woolly cottonwoods and forests of larch, Ponderosa, white pine, cedar and juniper whose fragrance turns now sweeter, now more pungent, and birds call in distinct voices. I whistled to a high hidden songbird, and he whistled back so we kept up this call and response, a small interval slow trill, over the Moyie River. The falls were well hidden and beautiful, thundering down over an immense boulder into white foam and mist.

We drove on up to Canada, fields of gold spread along the glacier-sculpted plain, while ahead black green mountains stood both round and square. But we didn't want to dally in the heat, so we made a many pointed turn just before customs and headed back down to gravel roads along the west side of the valley, where Anheuser Busch has paved nice road with names like Budweiser into their fields. The Nature Conservancy had bought a stretch of marsh before the Kootenai Wildlife Refuge where I saw only a redwinged blackbird (not since childhood) and a long legged broad winged heron fly off. A deer bounded in a meadow--we had seen several throughout the day. We took a hike at a US Fish and Wildlife Station after talking with a sweet faced Scarlet Johansen look-alike volunteer, with a whispering voice like honey. I wondered if she would join the US Fish and Wildlife service in poisoning, trapping and slaughtering millions of animals. We hiked up into the western forest where many trails penetrate the Selkirk Mountain range on a well-prepared path with an elegant wooden bridge over Myrtle Creek which runs cool and clear down rocks between coniferous trees high and strong, or fallen into peat, sending up mists of cool air. Then we drove back down the Panhandle past emerald marshes with acres of lily pads before pine studded buttes and craggy mountains.

Signs on the road said:

Eyes on Road, Hands on Wheel, Mind on Driving

Pack it in. Pack it out.

In Kellogg, Idaho there are huge American flags every 10 feet along Main St.--maybe 30 of them. At the Mining Museum the curator told us how her father had died in a mining disaster. "He wasn't sposed to work that day," she began. Kellogg's Historic Center is peopled with playful mannequins, as a homemade St. George and the Dragon and soldiers.

Wallace, Idaho has a Bordello Museum. It is a well preserved and nearly ghost town that had been a red light stop till the 80's, when the FBI came after its sheriff (for gambling, drug dealing, prostitution, etc.). Till then, easy payments to the cops, donations for high school uniforms, and all round accommodation had left the oldest profession alone. In 1988 Ginger and her girls had received a warning call and left with the clothes on their backs, never to return. Shrewd Ginger had been socking away half a million a year, her girls a cool 100 grand a year, so they were not in need. The claustrophobic little rooms, the windows boarded up, with stuffy John Cheever furniture and flimsy wood paneled walls, the one bathroom for five girls who serviced 40 men a night (sometimes in the bath tub) the sad little beds with their glittering drabs and frilly bed lamps, a closet full of shag rugs to throw over their beds when the miners wouldn't take their boots off (these girls slept in those beds), the 1950's kitchen timer used to time the sessions offered on the menu --8 minutes for a quickie, etc. -- what a life for girls my age. At the time I'd been facing the loneliness of the long distance runner, while these girls had been on their backs, 2pm-6am, no leaving the brothel except to sun on the roof adjoining another brothel. They were college kids, single moms desperate for money, and professionals. And rich Ginger had only a little room with a shag coverlet, her lipsticks on a cheap mirror, a glamorous old sepia photo that looked to be from the 1940's. Neon colored wigs made of feathers.

We took a quick trip up the vertiginous mountain pass of mighty pines, folds of green and shadow around us as we climbed, through the mining towns of Yellow Dog, Black Bear and Burke, where houses made of collapsing siding crowded into the Canyon, and nice prefabs faced lush creek. The sad country had been carved up for its bounty, tainted and despoiled--still the mining goes on.

Driving north, meadows are fewer and fewer among young pine and fir forests and blue mountains roll up behind the green hills with their basalt walls. A young deer crumpled, head twisted back, by the roadside.

Monument to Miners who died in a major accident

Then we drove the far side of Lake Pend Oreille with its history of immense glaciers that carved out these states. On the lavishly watered marshes of azure and chartreuse a few Western Grebes sailed in elegant formation, eagles and osprey soared, a gorgeous nubile deer stood by the edge of the forest--these are far healthier than Yellowstone's. The mixed glories of Avistas's dams with their aerial views of massive rockface, basalt columns lining the water's procession. Then we drove up switchbacks to Thompson's pass, past knife edged fir borders, unfurling, climbing vertically, deep shade and blinding golden sun, and then we flew by Murray where Jacques was seeking the memory of Molly B Damned, a colorful character from those parts, but the only sign was for a famous Scrapdoodle Restaurant.

We drove down into the aluminum siding mining towns and the perfectly idyllic RV sites lying flat along the swift clear Coeur d'Alene River, with its immaculate pebble beaches and sleek horses grazing. The golden evening sun, more brilliant than mornings, more pervasive than midday, blinded us as always as we drove past satin waters and then onto the tedious highway.

Teal colored St. Joe River is like a watery canvas painted with mountains and sky. Lumber trucks, throwing up screens of dust, are visible for miles around. Waters stretched grassily to mountains, osprey and eagles and a flock of pelicans preened under our binocolars' gaze. And on into the emerald and azure beauty of the St. Joe, deep and satiny.

Calder, Idaho restaurant

Hungry, we stopped at Calder, a "tiny little drinking village with a fishing problem" and in the piney café with its taxidermy and bright murals and jokes, where neon suited construction workers were just finishing up lunch, we ordered fish n chips and a Reuben from the enormous cook/proprietor. The fish, beneath its fried crust, was white and fresh and the fries were a revelation. Real tasty taters. But our hearty lunch sabotaged us in the heat and we staggered drowsily on.

A memorial site to loggers told us about the bad old days, greed and adventure, homesteading tricks and cheating and frontier justice, how the local bully scared people off their land at the behest of the timber barons and ended up filled with bullets, along with his horse and his dog. The sheriff had to bury him alone, justice left to the victors. That was enough storytelling for me, I hate the timber and mining stories. The sun was blazing and it was hard to find refuge that was not downwind from the latrine. 

We drove on along the St. Joe, now rapid and shallow, between canyon walls of mighty pines and dead trees and secret forest pathways, bulky basalt rock face, where the fragrance of cedars and pines and firs filled the corridor with cold air and campsites leveled off perfectly at the water's edge.