50. Salmon River Mountains

I don't number all my blog posts, but the ones I do number are part of my list of things I am thankful for in America. Time magazine inspired me in 2016 with their list of 240 things to be grateful for in America on our 240ths anniversary. Why not pay it forward and think positive about our country? Negative things always happen, but there is no need to focus on them.

            In Idaho there is a particular outcropping of mountains that extends from the spine of the Rockies to the point where the Snake River decidedly turns north and forms Hell’s Canyon.  Geologists know this band as the Idaho Batholith. In Idaho the area has often been called the roadless area and in more recent years the wilderness area.  Those of us who live in it or near its edges know it more particularly to its mountain ranges—all of it being part of the Bitterroot chain of the Rocky Mountains, the part of that chain that forms the Montana/Idaho divide. The parts of those mountains north of the Salmon River are known as the Clearwater Mountains and those to the south are the Salmon River Mountains.

            I have a particular fondness for those Salmon River Mountains. If you’re watching a Boise weather forecast they’ll call them the Central Mountains and then get specific with either the West Central Mountains or East Central Mountains. Of course I grew up in the West Central Mountains, but I have always had a fascination with the entire range.

            Of course I’ve hiked all over the western edge of the Salmon River Mountains, but I’ve also spent a share of time in the eastern parts. Old abandoned mining towns sprinkle those mountains—places like Florence and Deadwood.  As I said before, most of it is now designated wilderness but parts of it are still penetrable by road.  While these mountains are drier than the Clearwater Mountains they are still forested with pine, Douglas fir, Tamarack, Grand fir and Aspen and an Engelmann spruce in the creek beds.  Sometimes you’ll happen upon old abandoned homesteads marked by apple trees, raspberries gone wild and perhaps a tombstone that seems as out of place as you do while you read it. These mountains are sometimes so vivid in my imagination that I am in them when I’m walking down the streets of Spokane or Boise.  They never leave me, or I never leave them… I don’t know which it is.  I am so grateful for this particular place in the American landscape.