Samuel D. Ehrhart, Puck’s greeting to the new year, 1898, from Puck, v. 42, no. 1087, Keppler & Schwarzmann, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
We fished a bunch this year. We fished for cutthroat in Idaho and pike in New Hampshire. In Mississippi I caught my largest fish ever, a black drum, and after fishing for tiny brook trout spent an hour in a peculiarly pleasant Vermont laundromat (which still sends me friendly emails–how did it get my email address?). In the Catskills Joan Wulff told me to relax my shoulder, I jumped a tarpon in the Everglades, and we floated past suburban golf courses near Chicago. I spooked bonefish just outside the fence of the Honolulu airport, while military and commercial jets alternated use of the runway. We stood on ladders in Nevada. It was a good year for for fishing.
Honolulu with Jake Brooks. That’s Kris in the picture, not Jake.
This will start the third year for this blog. Before I kept a blog I kept journals, but a blog is harder. Someone might read it, so the writing needs to be better. My journal now consists mostly of baseball scores and random notes. The last journal entry was during the World Series, October 30. Nationals won. Dammit.
One of the blog’s sideshows is the statistics page. I can keep up with how many people are reading stuff and what country they’re from. I had more than twice the number of lookers this year than last, and I figure not all of those were me reading myself. There’s not a lot of specifics in the statistics. I can tell if someone goes onto the blog on a particular day, what they looked at, and what country they’re from, and there are daily, monthly, and yearly totals. Most visitors are from the States, with Canada a distant second. China is third, but I suspect that most visits from China have more to do with bots than reading. Namibia? Bangladesh? Jordan? I think my kids stopped reading, but I can’t really tell that from the scorecard, so they still got Christmas presents. Where is Moldova?
New Hampshire with Chuck DeGray.
It’s gratifying when someone reads several items, and it’s always fun to see something that I wrote for purely personal reasons, that has nothing to do with fly fishing, get read. Why did that South African read my post from last year about True Grit, and who in England is reading that post about Zurbarán’s Crucifixion? The most popular post for the year was about Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which is a wonderful place and a place I’d encourage anyone to go. My April Fool’s post about buying Pyramid Lake ladders got plenty of traffic.
Early in 2018 I posted a blog that included a lie a guide had told me, about his background as a Navy seal. He wasn’t. He apparently wasn’t any kind of military. In 2019 somebody who knew the guide found the post and it started to circulate. I suppose the guide told the story to work a larger tip, or maybe to justify his wacko right-wing politics. He wasn’t a bad guide, and he told a good story, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to fish with him again. I did leave him a good tip though.
With Richard Schmidt, Pass Christian, Mississippi.
Of all the places we fished last year, the place that surprised me most was the Talapoosa River in Alabama, and the fish that surprised me most was its redeye bass. I had never been on a pretty Southeastern river, so that was some of the surprise, but the fish fit the river. Redeye weren’t the river’s only fish: we caught Alabama bass, bluegill and long-ear sunfish, but it was the redeye that charmed.
They’re a small fish: they rarely weigh more than a pound, but they need clean water and, one supposes, pretty places, because they themselves are so clean-lined and pretty. They have a fine shape, well proportioned scales, fins, and jaws, and a bright iridescent turquoise belly and lower jaw balanced by smallmouth bands of warpaint on the face and olive green horizontal lines rising to their back’s dark mass. Lovely.
Tallapoosa River with East Alabama Fly Fishing
Mathew Lewis is an Auburn-PhD candidate geneticist who studies redeye and has written an excellent small book on fly fishing for Redeye Bass, titled, appropriately, Fly Fishing for Redeye Bass. I’ve fished for river bass before, smallmouth in Virginia and Illinois, Guadalupe and largemouth in Texas, and there’s a commonality to it. Cast to the banks. Cast the slackwater next to current, cast to faster current for smallmouths and slackwater for largemouth. Matthew and I traded some emails, and I meant to come back and write specifically about the redeye, but I never got around to it. I think about those fish and that river though, and it’s a place I would go again.
Catching the five subspecies of redeye should be a thing.
In addition to Matthew’s book there are good things on the web that discuss the redeye:
We spent a great two days fishing with Chuck DeGray as far north as we’ve ever been, and Silver Creek lived up to its hype, but my favorite place to fish–and I suspect Kris’s–was Everglades National Park. It is so alive, so beautiful and isolated, and I promise it wasn’t just because I jumped a decent tarpon. I did jump a decent tarpon though.
Happy New Years! I hope your 2020 is as good as our 2019!
Did you know that if you took any song written about Mexico, and changed it to Idaho, the meter still worked? That’s why Canadians sing “South of the border/Down Idaho way.“
What We Took
We took gear for trout. We took a 3-weight rod, a 4-weight rod, and two 5-weights, and we never took the 4-weight out of the luggage. I liked the flimsy 3-weight just fine until it got windy, but it got windy a lot so I finally gave it up for the 5-weight. Both rods I took were Winstons, a new Pure 5-weight that Trout Unlimited sent me because I won their annual spelling bee, and a Boron IIIX that I picked up at a Gordy & Son’s remainder sale because Winston came out with the Pure. Kris took her Helios 3D 5 weight. I fished it for just a bit. I’m used to big booming saltwater rods. I’m not used to big booming trout rods. That rod is a big booming trout rod.
We took floating lines and some 5x and 6x leaders I’d tied. We didn’t use the 6x, and I think the guides laughed at me for owning 6x tippet. We took some reels, a couple of Abels, a Ross, a Hardy, but I caught exactly one fish on the reel, and then I was reeling in my line for a pause in fishing when for some unfathomable reason a fish hit the skating fly.
We took waders and boots for Silver Creek, but didn’t take them on the Middle Fork. The guides strongly discouraged waders in the boats, something about getting thrown out, waders filling with water, and drowning. All things being equal I’d just as soon not.
Our gear was limited by the weight we could take on the bush plane, 30 pounds apiece, and I was already taking 11 pounds of guitar and case. I paired down and then paired down again. Instead of taking all ten foam hoppers that I’d tied, I only took five. Really. I’m stupid.
We took a bottle of Four Roses bourbon in honor of William Faulkner’s birthday, and poured the contents into a plastic water bottle to save weight. Happy birthday William!
I gave myself a new guitar case for my birthday, a Visesnut, maybe the best guitar case made (though they make a carbon fiber model for about $800 more). For years I’ve traveled with a cheap 3/4 size classical that I would stow in the overhead bin. Coming through Chicago Midway on Labor Day I talked to a guy who always checked his guitar with his luggage, and when I asked Kris if I should get a better case and check my guitars she immediately said yes please. Apparently with a guitar case on a plane I’m a nuisance.
We took too many clothes, but that’s probably because we had great weather. I discovered that I really liked wearing a fishing shirt on the water, the kind with lots of pockets, because, well, pockets. When I just wore a knit pullover I wanted pockets.
I bought a new pair of shoes for the trip, Simms Riprap wet wading shoe. They worked great, except that I didn’t wear socks until the final day on the water. I should have worn socks. They’re better with socks.
What We Lost. Where We Didn’t Go.
Kris destroyed her IPhone on Silver Creek by dunking it. I destroyed my Nikon Coolpix W300 waterproof camera on Silver Creek by ignoring the warnings about cleaning the seals and then dunking it. If you ignore the warnings it’s not waterproof. I had to take pictures the rest of the trip with my GoPro, which was better for stills than I thought it would be. Kris had to use my phone. She takes most of the photos I post, and is better at it than I am.
We didn’t go to McCall or Couer d’Alene, both of which my parents loved 60 years ago. I’m sure they haven’t changed. We didn’t fish the Henry’s Fork.
What We Ate.
On the way out of Boise we stopped by the Basque Block and bought a baguette and cheese, which got us to Ketchum. Ketchum is a strange mix of college town sans college and affluent resort, but I enjoyed the Pioneer Saloon, where I had a long conversation with an older south Idaho rancher and his daughter about barrel racing, how I could never break 20 seconds as a kid, and why I don’t much like horses. Some of us just aren’t really horse whisperers.
The guides kept us fed on the river, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In order of dinner entrees: fried chicken, pork chops, fajitas, salmon, steak. It was always excellent, though Idahoans could use some advice on how to serve tortillas. I got two deserts on my birthday, though one may have been for William Faulkner.
Books
I’ve already written about Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which stands alone as a peculiarly great book about Idaho. Hemingway famously died there, but he didn’t really write anything important in Idaho except maybe A Moveable Feast, and that’s about Paris. But did you know that Hemingway’s buddy Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho?
Ezra Pound is at the heart of American literature, he really is. I like some of his poems very much, and there is still no writing more beautiful to me than Pound’s The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.
At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling, I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever, and forever. Why should I climb the look out?
Ezra Pound circa 1913, doing his best Bob Dylan, from the Paris Review.
That said, I suspect I wouldn’t have much liked Pound in the flesh. Since college, whenever I’ve thought of Idaho, I’ve wondered how Pound could have been bred and born in Hailey? I finally looked it up. Turns out he was born there because his broke father took a political appointment in Hailey’s general land office. He was born and then a month later Mom left one of the most beautiful places on earth for New York City because she wouldn’t raise her son in such a God-forsaken wilderness. Dad soon followed. It explains a lot.
Baseball
When we left Ketchum and civilization, the Astros had clinched the American League West. When we got back to Salmon they had clinched home field advantage over the Yankees and the Dodgers. It was a good way to return to WiFi. That whole Ukraine thing happened with the President too.
Birds
Kris birds, seriously birds, as in she’s permanently attached to a pair of binoculars and a birding guide, and she spent as much time in Idaho looking at her copy of Peterson’s New Birder’s Guide as I spent playing the guitar. There are birds, eagles and ospreys, that fish for a living, and we saw ospreys but we never saw an eagle. She was thrilled with the osprey skull found at a campsite.
There is a small bird on the river, called an ouzel by the guides but the American dipper by the guidebooks. It lives in the rocks by the river and is a delight and joy. They’re the only aquatic songbird in America, and one dusk when we heard a bird song I said to Kris that sounds like a mockingbird. Of course I always tell Kris every pretty bird song is a mockingbird, even when in Idaho where there are no mockingbirds, but for once I was sort of right; it was an ouzel. The New Birder’s Guide said its strong sweet tones sound like a mockingbird. And they do.
After Kris got tired of my collection of Josh Ritter (which is surprisingly extensive, and his Wolves is a great favorite), she found a bunch of songs with Idaho in the name or the lyrics and an internet comment that said there are a lot of songs with Idaho in the name or the lyrics, none of which have much to do with Idaho. Like I said, you can substitute Idaho for Mexico anytime you want, and it looks like lots of songwriters do.
Victor Wooten, a well-known jazz bassist and the bassist for Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, was born in Idaho. His parents were military, and he apparently stayed about as long as Ezra Pound.
b-52s, Private Idaho. I could do without ever hearing this song again.
Riders in the Sky, Idaho (Where I’m From). Ranger Doug is a great Western Swing guitarist, and Too Slim is responsible for the Paul is Dead Hoax.
Bryan Lanning, Idaho. It is stunning that there are so many songs called Idaho. This may be the only pop anthem called Idaho.
IDAHO, To Be the One. And this may be the only band called Idaho. I’d change my name, just because it’s so hard to google.
Gregory Alan Isakov. Idaho.
Gorillaz, Idaho. Bon Iver meets Harry Nilsson, and I’m not sure it works,.
BoDeans, Idaho. I’m just a BoDeans kinda guy. They’re from Wisconsin.
Jeffrey Foucault, Idaho. I liked this. Foucault is also from Wisconsin, and this song would have worked if sung about Mexico.
Y La Bamba. Idaho’s Genius. A Spanish lament out of Portland that mentions Idaho. I should have had these people on our Portland playlist.
Hot Buttered Rum, Idaho Pines. Bluegrass. Tennessee mountain music about Idaho.
Caitlin Canty, Idaho. Clean voices, clean guitars. Good Nashville.
Down Like Silver, Idaho. This is also Caitlin Canty, with Peter Bradley Adams. She must have a thing for Idaho.
Ron Pope, Twin Falls Idaho. Road song. More ok Nashville, but it’s kind of the problem with songs about Idaho: they don’t have to be about Idaho. It’s convenient. It’s exotic. It’s a place to yearn for in a sadly yearning sort of way.
Rick Pickren, Here We Have Idaho. This is the state song. It’s kind of a polka song.
Jeremy McComb, Bury Me in Idaho. McComb was born in Idaho. McComb sounds like he’s from Nashville. What is it with Nashville and Idaho?
Old Bear Mountain, Idaho. More Idaho Bluegrass.
Ronee Blakly, Idaho Home. This was from Robert Altman’s Nashivlle. Inauthentic old-time Nashville meets Idaho, and Blakly is still authentically great.
Clare Burson, Take Good Care. I don’t know what this song has to do with Idaho.
Cori Connors, Idaho Wind. I don’t know what this song has to do with Idaho.
Rosalie Sorrels, Way Out In Idaho. Sorrels was part of the 50s-60s folk movement, and recorded a number of Idaho timber and mining songs. They’re very earnest.
Tony Rees, John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman, 1978, Norwich Folk Festival.
John Renbourn, Idaho Potato. For guitarists of a certain type and age, Renbourn is a hero. This is classic Renbourn. If I were picking out a road trip playlist, this would be my Idaho song.
Drew Barefoot, Idaho. Instrumental that would fit just fine on an Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western soundtrack.
David Robert King, Bad Thing. This guy listened to too much Tom Waits as a child. This is off his album “Idaho.”
The Eisenhauers, Idaho. Every time this came on I had to pick up the phone to see who sounded so great. They’re Canadian. I think they thought they were writing about Mexico.
Amy Annelle, Idaho. Annelle is from Austin, and has a troubled medical history and a lovely voice. Apparently writing about Idaho in Austin isn’t quite the thing that it is in Nashville. She’s the only Austin musician on the list.
All those songs called “Idaho?” You may not believe it but every one is a different song. If I ever write a song I think I’ll call it Idaho, and it will never mention Idaho once.
Reckless Kelly is from Idaho. I think of them as an Austin band. My fail.
One song named Idaho stood out: Idaho by Afroman. “Idaho, Idaho, Idaho baby/potatoes ain’t the only thing they grow.” Then the song gets obscene. Really really party rap obscene. Don’t listen to this with your children. Don’t listen to this if you’re squeamish. I’m squeamish, but it was funny to listen to once or twice.
We fished Silver Creek because it’s required, like going to Wrigley Field if you like baseball. Going to Wrigley doesn’t mean that you like the Cubs: Who likes the Cubs? It doesn’t even mean you like Wrigley. It’s a dump full of drunk Cubs fans, hard tiny seats, obstructed views, cold cold wind off Lake Michigan, and was once the home of the Federal League Chicago Whales. The Whales. The Chicago Whales. Still, it is a baseball shrine, and later I always find ways to work into conversations that I went to Wrigley last time I was in Chicago.
It’s a burden to place on a small river, and it’s a slip of a river, only 12 miles long from the originating springs. It’s a mineral and bug-rich high desert river that supports populations of wild browns and rainbows and 150 species of birds. It’s not quite clear as glass and not quite smooth as glass, but it’s clear and smooth enough for the description to work, even when it’s overworked.
We fished the Silver Creek Preserve in the morning, owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy, and later in the day fished private Silver Creek water accessed by our guides, Picabo Angler. Where we fished in the Preserve the river wasn’t much more than 100 feet across. Deeper portions are fished with float tubes, but it was late September and for us Houstonians the weather was cold beyond imagining. We stayed shallow and waded until the arctic wind drove us off the creek for lunch. I swear it was colder than 60°. Brutal.
By my lights Silver Creek is bigger than a creek, smaller than a river, honestly more like a bayou, a really clear bayou without alligators and mud, and with lots of trout and lots of bugs. Silver Bayou just doesn’t have the ring of Silver Creek, though just about every state seems to have a Silver Creek this or a Silver Creek that: Silver Creek Apartments, Ranch at Silver Creek subdivision, Silver Creek Industries, or just plain ol’ Silver Creek with some water in it. There are two, count ’em two, Silver Creeks in Idaho. There’s still only one Silver Creek. Even in Idaho.
DCIM\101GOPRO\G0031307.JPG
Our particular Picabo Angler guide was Rob Curran, who also practices law in Ketchum, about 45 miles from Silver Creek. We didn’t discuss legal nuances much, just enough to get a notion of Rob’s practice. We talked more about Rob’s avocations: paragliding, mountaineering, fly fishing, ultra-marathon running, going to Baja for a month to chase rooster fish, all the usual stuff that one does. Sometimes Rob runs races where he runs up a mountain then jumps off on a paraglider, then does it again. Go figure.
There seem to be plenty of young, attractive, fit folk like Rob in Idaho, male and female, who have traded the muggle life back home for the wizarding Northwest outdoors life. Rob in fact seemed more grounded than most, balancing a law practice with all that other stuff, but they mostly scrabble together a life that makes me feel soft and paunchy and hidebound, which I guess I am, and old, which I guess I also am. But I’m also happy that way, and I doubt that at this late date anyone would hire me to guide fly fishers or work on their ski lift. If I tried paragliding I’d likely do injury to myself and others, not to mention giving my cardiologist a heart attack. And I like running my three miles every other day on the flat track around Rice, where there isn’t a single incline, unless you count the curb.
On the flight from Houston to Boise I finished Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which when published in 1980 won the Pen/Faulkner award and was a Pulitzer finalist. I had first heard of Robinson when she published her second novel, Gilead, in 2004, twenty-four years after Housekeeping. Gilead won the Pulitzer, and is brilliant, but Housekeeping is even better. There isn’t a long list of Idaho writers, but any state should be proud to call Robinson their child, and Housekeeping must be the only great novel set in Idaho. Spoiler alert: it’s also the perfect Idaho novel. Ruthie, the child-narrator, gives up her attempts at common domesticity to become a fishing guide. Ok, not really, but close enough.
As for Silver Creek, it’s become a test of fly fishing prowess. Its clarity makes it difficult and its ties to Ernest Hemingway make it legendary–it’s Ernest’s last fishing ground and son Jack is generally credited with its preservation by the Nature Conservancy. It’s a delicate dry fly kingdom too, and in these decadent days of euro-nymphing and bobbers and droppers and whatnot that makes it special. We were there for the fall baetis and calibaetis hatch, tiny blue wing green olive mayflies and slightly less tiny blue wing green olive mayflies, but Silver Creek is most famous for early-June brown drakes, when anglers line the creek for combat fishing. We pretty much had the creek to ourselves.
Once you get off the bank and into the creek, it’s easy to wade. There are heavy river bottom weeds, but open paths of hard sand and small gravel snake through. There always seemed to be a path to where I wanted to go. I fished a 3 wt., which Rob said was about right, and Kris fished her Helios III 5 wt. We had 5X leaders, tied from a formula I cadged off of Troutbitten, though I think Kris traded hers for something less cranky. My leaders ended up closer to ten feet than nine, but when I was paying attention they turned over well enough for me, and the brown Maxima leader in the butt made them easy to watch on the water.
Was I good enough angler to fish Silver Creek? Well of course I was. Sort of. I caught fish. Lots of fish, probably 20 fish. All of them but the one rainbow I foul-hooked were circa five inches. I am the master of Silver Creek tiny browns, bright and perfect as bluegills and just as gullible. I couldn’t keep them off my baetis. Kris probably caught bigger and more fish than me. I know she caught plenty. I know she was happy.
But what the heck. I watched a lot of fish, many bigger fish, and I believed in the creek as a special place, a shrine. Clear and smooth as glass, rich with bugs, rich with fish, it’s a place that you could happily fish a season or two or ten and still learn, and that you could still happily or greedily or maybe just obsessively return to. It’s better than Wrigley, and I’m guessing there aren’t any Cubs fans. It’s just that close to perfect.
This morning in Salmon, Idaho, the low was 52°, but the high today is 89°. When we get to Salmon next Saturday the forecasted low is 43° and the high 63°. In Houston today the low was 78° and the high 96°. I’ll dress for the arctic.
This will be our third trip to Idaho. The first was in 1992, to Stanley, a tiny crossroads jump off for Frank Church Wilderness raft trips. We weren’t there for rafting, and I’ve never really understood how we picked it. I swear it was Kris’s idea, but she denies it. We fished the Big Wood River near Ketchum, and I caught fish in the Salmon. We didn’t fish Silver Creek, or raft so this is a bit of a makeup trip.
Three years later we visited Yellowstone and fished the Box Canyon of the Henry’s Fork. We were in Idaho for about eight hours. We watched an osprey catch a fish, and caught a fish that had been punctured by an osprey’s claw. We didn’t fish the more difficult Harriman State Park. We won’t fish it this time either, and that’s ok because it’s famous for its insect hatches, and I don’t believe in hatches.
We’ll fish for rainbows and cutthroat, though there are other things to fish for in Idaho, including salmon and steelhead. Idaho seems to be one of those rare places where both cutthroat and rainbows are native. So are steelhead and salmon coming across Washington and Oregon from the Pacific. There are 39 species of fish native to Idaho, plus another 60 or so introduced species. There are six different subspecies of cutthroat trout.
That we’ve been to Idaho twice before is both a bit extraordinary and not remarkable at all: Idaho has four industries: Agriculture, mining, timber, and tourism. Out of 53.5 million total acres in Idaho, 35 million acres are public land. That means 65% of the land in Idaho belongs to me! And we’re tourists! It’s out of the way, but in Idaho we’re a major industry!
It’s public land in part because most of Idaho land isn’t really good for much except for timber, mining, looking magnificent, and the trout fishing kinds of whatnot, and in the early 1900s the agricultural interests in the southern part of the state realized that to protect water for irrigation, the lumber industry had to be regulated. Enter Gifford Pinchot and the US Forestry Service. Potatoes wouldn’t exist without large-scale irrigation, large-scale irrigation wouldn’t exist without the US Forest Service.
Lee, Russell, Rupert, Idaho (vicinity). Potato field, 1942, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, Library of Congress.
Potatoes are in the eastern part of the state, and Idaho divides east/west. Idaho is where Lewis and Clark left the Missouri River drainage and entered the Columbia River drainage. In Idaho the Lewis and Clark expedition nearly starved crossing the Rockies.
Geographically Southeast Idaho is the northern reach of the Basin and Range Province that extends into Nevada, western Utah, and eastern California. That’s where the potatoes grow. The Rockies extend through 2/3rds of the Panhandle south along the Wyoming border and into British Columbia and Alberta. The Columbia Plateau, sagebrushed and arrid in the south and forested and well-watered in the north, extends west into Washington and Oregon. Salmon follow the Columbia Plateau into the Snake River basin, or at least they would except for the Northwestern dams. Fish don’t pay much attention to state lines, but they do notice dams.
Believe it or not, Idaho’s principal indigenous tribes didn’t stick to state boundaries either, but culturally they divided north/south. In the well-watered north the Kootenai, Kalispel, Coeur d’Alene, and Nez Perce–those are dubbed English names–spread into what is now Washington, Montana, Oregon, and British Columbia. They traded into the Columbia basin for salmon. In the arid south, independent bands of Northern Paiute spread into Southern Oregon and Nevada–when we fished Pyramid Lake in Nevada it was on a Northern Paiute reservation–while independent bands of Shoshone were kindred to and allies with the Plains Comanche.
Skin tepees, Shoshone, 1908, National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress)
At Euro American contact, there were an estimated 20,000 native inhabitants of Idaho. By the mid 1800s the population had fallen to 4,000. It was the usual stuff: displacement, disease, warfare. Out of a total estimated Idaho population in 2018 of 1,754,208, approximately 1.7% or 29, 821 were Native American. I guess that’s a kind of recovery.
Idaho didn’t become a state until 1890. It sits there, way north. It’s land that’s hard to monetize and that really couldn’t be commercialized until the railroads and irrigation came, which was late. It’s pretty, but so are its neighbors, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and British Columbia are all pretty, and Nevada has all those casinos.
Last week I listened to a podcast of a debate among Boise’s mayoral candidates: the president of the city council was running against the current mayor–I’d surely like to know what bit of ambition and local discord set that off. There was also a nice young Hispanic veteran, and a member of a neighborhood association board who had never heard of urban sprawl. Listening to the debate, you’d have thought that the biggest concerns in Boise were (1) global warming, (2) sprawl, (3) global warming, (4) public transportation, (5) global warming, and (6) air pollution.
It was a decidedly progressive and urban list of concerns, except crime or police violence or pensions or fire department salaries or poor-performing schools were never mentioned. They never mentioned flooding or potholes either. They did mention electric rental scooters. At one point someone said that the Boise Valley was approaching one million in population. It’s not, or at least it’s approaching at a slow and mannerly amble.
Dorothea Lange, Basque sheep herder who speaks broken English coming down from summer camp with pack animals. Adams County, Idaho, 1939, Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).
For such a progressive and urban list of concerns, Idaho is a decidedly Republican state, and while Idaho is growing–in 2017 it was the fastest growing state by percentage of population, 2%–the greater Boise area has fewer than 800,000 residents. In 2018 Boise itself had an estimated population of 228,790, and for all its progressive urban mayoral concerns, President Trump carried Boise’s Ada County by nearly 10%. That sounds more like Amarillo than New York City.
Of course President Trump pretty much ran away with all of Idaho, receiving 59.25% of the vote. More than 90% of Idaho’s population is white, 26% is Morman, 21% Evangelical, and those things probably aren’t unconnected. It ranks 41st in wealth per household. One supposes that back in the 80s white separatists chose Idaho as a refuge because it already was both pretty separate and pretty white. Success! Only Blaine County, the richest county that includes Ketchum and Sun Valley, and Latah County, home of the insanely liberal University of Idaho, voted for Hillary Clinton. Idaho is decidedly conservative, thought I expect the gap between the most conservative Idahoans and most progressive Idahoans is greater than most of us see in our circle of acquaintance.
A.H. Baldwin, Oncorhynchus clarkii, West Slope Cutthroat, Evermann, B.W. and E.L. Goldsborough, 1907, The Fishes of Alaska, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
And it’s probably no accident that the principal city of Latah County is Moscow.
