My family
moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, when I was in high school. We had relatives living in Spokane,
Washington, so a couple different summers we traveled as a family of eight from
Salt Lake City to Spokane in a Ford station wagon fully laden with people and
road-tripping paraphernalia. My mom,
whose imprint on me certainly includes every last one of her wanderlust genes,
could never resist a historical site, a new place she had read about, or a road
not taken before. On one of the trips
home from Spokane, we abandoned the Interstate for US Highway 93 at the behest
of my mother and followed the Salmon River southward through Idaho. Although my
memory of that trip has manifestly dimmed, I can still conjure “pretty” as a
descriptor of that stretch. My sister
Diane remembers it as “devastatingly beautiful.” With our lives always carrying us elsewhere,
neither of us ever quite found our way back to that Salmon River valley. Until last Monday, that is.
Early
Monday morning, four of us—my sister Diane and I and then two of our friends,
Katherine and Carolee—piled into Diane’s vehicle and headed northwards. After
exiting the Interstate at Blackfoot, Idaho, we wended our way through a bit of
the Fort Hall Indian Reservation (Shoshone-Bannock Tribes) to Challis and
rediscovered the Salmon River valley from Challis to the Idaho-Montana border. Sacajawea was born in this valley, and the
Lewis and Clark expedition explored it as well in the summer of 1805, first
floating a stretch of the Salmon River but ultimately finding it necessary to
trek their way out. I am most positive
my mother knew all these facts when she bent the route of our family trip into
that valley so many years ago.
From
Challis, driving north on US 93 and escorted always by the Salmon River on one
side or the other, we commented sporadically on the beauty of the landscape
unfolding before us. And we would
inquire of Diane, “Is it devastating yet?”
Even though Diane never quite found the “devastatingly beautiful” images
treasured in memory over all the ensuing years, she did concede that before us
was indeed a land of aching beauty.
Arriving in the town of Salmon by late afternoon, we checked-in at our motel—the Sacajawea Inn, where each room was graced by a mural painted by a Native American artist, a mural that also established each room’s decorative theme. Diane and Katherine would bed down in the Turkey Room—turkey feather fan, turkeys on the light fixtures, and a turkey toilet paper dispenser to accompany the mural—while Carolee and I would spend the night in the Deer Room—a deer head on the wall next to Carolee’s bed in all its taxidermied glory and a deer toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom…in addition to the mural!
Then we
headed to the river, spotted the Idaho Adventures office, and signed up for a
morning float on the Salmon River. Such
an assignation in place behooved us next carry out a brief shopping foray in
pursuit of more suitable clothing items for our newly planned exploit. In
Salmon, a town with the population of approximately 3000, we prowled the aisles
of two of the three premises offering clothing options. At the second one, where three of us
purchased river-worthy shorts, the proprietor was visibly relieved to learn
that the four of us did not plan to float the river on our own but had also
rented a strapping oarsman along with the raft!
The next
morning we floated the Salmon River for about ten miles with our strapping
oarsman—a Boise State student studying civil engineering—who pointed out
wildlife and geographic features, discussed both Sacajawea and Lewis and Clark
lore, laughed at our antics, and skillfully navigated us along that stretch of
river. It was beautiful—at moments,
devastatingly so.
