Potlatch

13. When I think of all the great things this country has to offer I have to be thankful for the community in which I have lived for nearly 25 years: Potlatch, Idaho. Potlatch sits at the base of the Hoodoo Mountains on the rolling hills of the Palouse. Here we get the four seasons in full force so you get to see every shade of beauty that comes from our lush evergreen forests and the rolling farmland of the Palouse Prairie. Right now at the end of winter and the budding of spring the remains of the last of the dirty snow banks are flooding the rivers and the fields are beginning to look like grasshopper pie with the green crème de menthe of wheat fields against the chocolate hues of the muddy, as of yet, unplowed fields. And of course there are plenty of gray misty days with the constant dampness of the season that still, on certain cooler mornings, gives way to snow.

Our community supports each other. When someone is sick we have fundraisers to help them pay for incidentals. We have a food bank for those who are hit by hard times. We have community gatherings to celebrate our heritage from logger sports to fiddle concerts. We have athletic events for our kids through our Parks and Rec. District and our schools. We have community band and a community choir for our Easter Cantata. We have a great EMT and Fire Department made up entirely of volunteers.

Another great thing about Potlatch is that with all its beauty, it is just off the radar for tourism. We don’t have a whitewater river, rugged mountain peaks for climbing or skiing, nor any big lakes right here. We do have a large place in the history of the Northwest as the founding company town of Potlatch Forest Industries, home of incredible families that continued to make other big timber corporations and people instrumental in the invention of Teflon. But most of that is just quiet keep-to-ourselves information that doesn’t attract crowds. It’s the amazing beauty of the area, the community support, the four seasons—all of these things make me really proud and thankful for this little town where I live: Potlatch, Idaho.

Bear Lake

12. Bear Lake

      Another lake that has always captivated me and for which I am thankful is Bear Lake, a beautiful turquoise gem that rests on the border of southern Idaho and northern Utah not far west of the Wyoming border. It is definitely an alpine lake formed by glaciations in the Bear River Mountains as they call them in Idaho or the Wasatch Range as they’re better known in Utah. The lake is easily approached in Idaho from Montpelier south to Paris, St. Charles and Fish Haven. But the most spectacular approach is to come through Logan Canyon out of Utah so that you get spectacular scenery of the canyon itself and the high mountain forests and then an incredible overlook of the lake itself in all of its beautiful blue. While there are no large towns on Bear Lake there a number of small burgs such as St. Charles, and Fish Haven, Idaho as well as Garden City, Garden, and Meadowville, Utah. There are also some bigger towns very nearby in case you need any amenities. The famous sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, was born in St. Charles, Idaho.

            As far as the scenery around Bear Lake is concerned, it is that curious high desert with timbered north slopes of all the surrounding mountains. If you look to the west you very much feel a sense of woodsy-ness, but in late summer if you look east you might suddenly feel the need for a cold drink and a bottle of sunscreen. You’ll see plenty of raspberry bushes and you will want to stop at a local drive-in for a raspberry milkshake, the one amenity all the little burgs have.

           The waters of the lake are of a Caribbean blue. That comes from the silt carried into it from the aforementioned mountains and their desert character. Its color is unlike any other lake I’ve ever seen. Because of its unique isolation from other waterways (as is true of so many Great Basin waterways) it has some special kind of fish that are only found in its depths.  The lake is at a high elevation and freezes over nearly every winter so it is a great place for ice fishing. While it is a big body of water it still has a distinctly alpine feel. You know you are in the mountains when you are at Bear Lake. It’s kind of a secret hideaway for a select group of people in Idaho and Utah. And that, along with its beauty is something I am thankful for.

Aches in my back from running?

Whenever I get out of shape to run and then I get back to it, like now after the winter ice hiatus, I find myself getting all tight and knotted in my back between the shoulder blades. I’m never quite sure what to do about it. I’m also not sure if it’s just me with this problem or if other people have similar experiences. I can’t decide if it means I have a weak core or what. Sometimes I’ve just thought it was coincidental along with some other stress I might be having. I don’t usually stop doing crunches or pushups or other core work just because I’m not ready to run on the ice or because my mileage has been slack. I don’t know what causes it but I do know it coincides with getting back into running and it happens to me in the spring or fall when I pick up my mileage.

            So you would think that if you were going to get sore after a run following a winter hiatus that your legs would be the muscles that were sore, wouldn’t you? That doesn’t usually seem to be the case with me. I get all sore and tight between my shoulders. It slips up on me and more often than not I don’t associate it with my running. I start scanning all my activities in my head. What is causing me stress? It seems a huge irony that any stress build-up during my lay off didn’t cause aches in my back and shoulders. Sometimes it has taken me a couple of weeks to even realize that the center back tension is actually being caused by my reintroduction to running. Sometimes the ache creeps up and down my spine causing me to be stiff and to have tension headaches. I usually take ibuprofen or Tylenol at first.

            If the aching continues I build up to a heating pad and icy hot. Generally it doesn’t last any longer than soreness from any other activity but it just takes it awhile to click in my head that it really is from running. I also wonder why that’s where I get tight and achy instead of my legs.  My conjecture is that I always do enough cross training activities that my legs don’t drop off too much—that and the fact that when I go back to the trails I don’t ever overdo it anymore. I start up with a few (3 or 4) miles and then a day off. But I don’t do enough cross training for my upper body, especially my back, to keep that part of my body in shape. It’s either not enough shoveling of snow or that’s just not the same kind of work out I do with my back when I run. If you have any thoughts, drop me a comment.

Hunga Dunga

11. Micro-breweries: Hunga Dunga

Micro-breweries are places to gather with friends and enjoy each other’s company along with a good specialty beer. I like beer. In Moscow, Idaho there is a relatively new micro-brewery called Hunga Dunga Brewing Company that has replaced an old nursery where I used to buy many of the rose bushes I now have in my back yard. This year for Shrove Tuesday I went there for the first time with my good friend and colleague, Doug Richards. His wife, Shannon, met us there for the bar snacks that we turned into dinner. Some other friends came in and we all drank beer and ate snacks from the menu. If you want to go there you need to go for the beer. The menu is very limited and all considered snack food to go with your beer. It can get kind of spendy and, unless you order everything on the limited menu (like we did) you aren’t going to get full. The beers are all great so far as I could tell. I’m an ale man and I was impressed by a Black IPA and another IPA. I had a pale ale and samples of Winter Ale and Pumpkin Ale all of which were quite nice. I also had samples of an oatmeal stout and another light oatmeal beer. It seemed to me that there was an offering of every type of beer for everyone’s palate. The atmosphere was congenial and the crowd was eclectic. We all had a good time and I can see myself going back soon. It fits into my category of a good micro-brewery. And like I said, I like beer. I’m thankful for micro-breweries.

Lake Coeur d'Alene

           10.  Lake Coeur d’Alene is different than all the other lakes in northern Idaho.  The Coeur d’Alene Reservation encompasses most of the southern portion of the lake. The tiny town of Harrison rests on the eastern shore at the mouth of the Coeur d’Alene River. Old rail paths follow and cross the southern portion and they are now turned to beautiful bike paths. The city of Coeur d’Alene rests on the northern shores and at the head of the Spokane River which flows out of the lake making its way to the mighty Columbia.

            The lake is a mish mash of bays formed where creeks flow into it. The south end is where the St. Joe River flows between two lakes before entering Lake Coeur d’Alene. Interstate 90 follows the path of the Spokane River and crosses bays of the lake on the north end. That’s probably where the majority of people see the lake. That and the city of Coeur d’Alene itself where there are nice beaches, a resort, golf course, floating board walk and boat tours. It’s a beautiful place, very picturesque.

            I have spent lots of time on and in the waters of Lake Coeur d’Alene and it carries many fond memories for me. I’ve hiked Tubbs Hill, swam at the main beach, and purchased food from the street vendors in Fort Sherman Park. In summertime it can have the atmosphere of an amusement park where the attraction is the lake itself. I’ve taken cruises on the water, walked the boardwalk and enjoyed that whole atmosphere. I said it was different from the other large lakes because it isn’t quiet. But it still has its hidden bays where solitude can be found. It’s also the lake I live closest to and frequent most these days. I suppose I sometimes take it for granted. But it has a beauty and joy all of its own for which I am very thankful.

American Authors

           9. Of course I am thankful for a zillion things about America right where I live but as a nation we share a heritage that is greater than geography and I want to point that out in these entries also. We have a rich heritage in our American authors and I am a huge fan of several American authors living and dead.

The sublimity of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden brings me a sense of comfort as does his inspiring Civil Disobedience which has the capacity to give a sense of order to even the most disorderly times as now.

            Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King share a rich American experience of the horror genre. I know it might sound weird but it can be so much easier to fall asleep with the scary clown of It or one of Poe’s live burial stories than watching the news. As far as contemplating life, Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath are number one in my book. “Nothing gold can stay.” I love the help F. Scott Fitzgerald gives of humanizing the Jazz Age and Hemingway is a master at giving complex thoughts meaning through the least amount of words. The two of them help me understand so much about those film strip memories I have of my grandparents and great grandparents 50 years ago.

          You know I have studied and taught these masters for years. I could go on and on about the great American poets, What Whitman, Emily Dickinson giving voice to the voiceless, ee cummings stylistically rearranging the world; Langston Hughes daring to dream; Frederick Douglass forcing us to look beyond the fuzzy warm poetry of the fireside to the realities of oppression and slavery. And what about the angst of Holden Caulfield and the navigation of life from the point of view of an adolescent? Thank J. D. Salinger. Thank you America for your beautiful writers. Go read some of these masters.