Targhee National Forest
June 14 & 15, 1999
June 14 & 15, 1999
Sorry, folks of Idaho, I blew through your towns without so much as a salutation. The main problem was that there was no camping around Idaho Falls and Pocatello except for a few expensive RV joynts. I think that I was really just more excited to bump around the Teton and Snake River Mountain ranges than I was in getting to know the regulars 
at the area Tastee-Freeze.
The Snake River is a big blue-grey carpet that winked at me seductively to follow. Each ripple speaks in the tongue of the mountains. I threaded my way along the barking river, swollen and fat with spring feed, and saw man's testaments to the primordial powers and lore of the land in this region. Carved wooden totems are displayed at roadside cabins with names like Big Elk, boasting the forms of bear and bison.
Do you know about overlooked? My first stop was in a far east portion of Idaho about 30-40 miles west of Jackson, WY. In this part of Targhee National Forest, the main road, (Hwy. 31) branches
off in several places into gravelly ribbons of intrigue. Graded dirt in a national forest makes me giddy. These roads are right there in plain view but the masses, thankfully, pass them by. Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem.
Two days I spent by a brook partaking in all pleasures of outdoor chicanery.
The winter was obviously a wet one this year and two different mountain bike rides were limited to under five miles in length on account of snow and my flailing motor skills. Dipping around a corner to negotiate a rock fall, I took a forearm shiver from a stiff pine bough. Battered by ice and wood, I was forced to bound through the high meadows on foot. Wildflowers were exploding, creating a veritable bumblebee traffic jam. If I wasn't turning my saucers to the ground, it was because I had them glued to the sky. The trees are so huge and burly. I think Noah could have put a sixteen inch lift on the Ark with some of these.
Back in camp, in full Rik Smits-style gear (he's easily got the coolest socks in all of sports), I hacked around and
thought about things I don't understand. Can anything be motivated by purity? Do the trees behind me hold the weight of the world? Why is Fox Sports so cheesy?
After two months on the road, I believe that I've learned some fundamental truths about the environment and how they relate to my current position and our present situation. I've seen a lot of different ecosystems and I've begun to get a feel for which ones are healthy and which are not. What separates environmental health from sickness is the inclusion, or lack thereof, of all the "nuts and bolts" in the machine. That each piece of life and landscape operates together according to systems of long-developed interdependence is indisputable. When many of the minor cogs that make up a forest or a marsh or a grassland are altered or removed, change is affected. We only notice the effects decades down the road and only if the effects are negative. Remove a species, remove a nut. Take out a habitat component, take out a bolt. In the cycle of the perpetual give-and-take of life, we've learned to alter the ship's course but never to predict its direction. Close your eyes at 55 m.p.h. and you will get a sense for the recklessness of our designs.
I think that the world is breaking. Laugh if you will, for I have no proof to substantiate that childish notion, only observation and contemplation. I also have no hidden agenda that forces me to write it. I'm a truth addict, awwwww shit, I got a head rush. If one travels around, being cognizant of man's effects, he will see the gaping wounds. I can't help but think that the wounds are significant. In our tinkering we have pulled apart the machine, not keeping track of the screws and bolts. In fact, they have been wildly thrown to the side. Marshes, diked and drained offer no more refuge for migrating birds. Forests, harvested and replanted, refuse to grow again because natural temperature regulations have run amok. Native prairie grasses that built the rich soil (and will probably be needed someday to rebuild it) have been eliminated by farming. The advance of cheat grass due to overgrazing has wiped out grazeland and winter forage for thousands of animals (the cows included). All of this is accompanied by, silently, the loss of open
space and pure habitat.
Two hundred years ago (only one-millionth of 1% of the earth's current age), wildflowers in the variety and abundance with which I see in remote mountain ranges, occurred everywhere. In the unrelenting push to farm and grow and build, they've been lost, paved over and plowed under. Few people know what the countryside's flowers, upon whose bed their suburban home now rests, were once like or how they shone each spring in splendor and diversity. I am no different.
With some of the inspiring words of my viewers, I drove over the pass and into Wyoming. Someone is listening.
at the area Tastee-Freeze.The Snake River is a big blue-grey carpet that winked at me seductively to follow. Each ripple speaks in the tongue of the mountains. I threaded my way along the barking river, swollen and fat with spring feed, and saw man's testaments to the primordial powers and lore of the land in this region. Carved wooden totems are displayed at roadside cabins with names like Big Elk, boasting the forms of bear and bison.
Do you know about overlooked? My first stop was in a far east portion of Idaho about 30-40 miles west of Jackson, WY. In this part of Targhee National Forest, the main road, (Hwy. 31) branches
off in several places into gravelly ribbons of intrigue. Graded dirt in a national forest makes me giddy. These roads are right there in plain view but the masses, thankfully, pass them by. Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem.Two days I spent by a brook partaking in all pleasures of outdoor chicanery.
The winter was obviously a wet one this year and two different mountain bike rides were limited to under five miles in length on account of snow and my flailing motor skills. Dipping around a corner to negotiate a rock fall, I took a forearm shiver from a stiff pine bough. Battered by ice and wood, I was forced to bound through the high meadows on foot. Wildflowers were exploding, creating a veritable bumblebee traffic jam. If I wasn't turning my saucers to the ground, it was because I had them glued to the sky. The trees are so huge and burly. I think Noah could have put a sixteen inch lift on the Ark with some of these.Back in camp, in full Rik Smits-style gear (he's easily got the coolest socks in all of sports), I hacked around and
thought about things I don't understand. Can anything be motivated by purity? Do the trees behind me hold the weight of the world? Why is Fox Sports so cheesy?After two months on the road, I believe that I've learned some fundamental truths about the environment and how they relate to my current position and our present situation. I've seen a lot of different ecosystems and I've begun to get a feel for which ones are healthy and which are not. What separates environmental health from sickness is the inclusion, or lack thereof, of all the "nuts and bolts" in the machine. That each piece of life and landscape operates together according to systems of long-developed interdependence is indisputable. When many of the minor cogs that make up a forest or a marsh or a grassland are altered or removed, change is affected. We only notice the effects decades down the road and only if the effects are negative. Remove a species, remove a nut. Take out a habitat component, take out a bolt. In the cycle of the perpetual give-and-take of life, we've learned to alter the ship's course but never to predict its direction. Close your eyes at 55 m.p.h. and you will get a sense for the recklessness of our designs.
I think that the world is breaking. Laugh if you will, for I have no proof to substantiate that childish notion, only observation and contemplation. I also have no hidden agenda that forces me to write it. I'm a truth addict, awwwww shit, I got a head rush. If one travels around, being cognizant of man's effects, he will see the gaping wounds. I can't help but think that the wounds are significant. In our tinkering we have pulled apart the machine, not keeping track of the screws and bolts. In fact, they have been wildly thrown to the side. Marshes, diked and drained offer no more refuge for migrating birds. Forests, harvested and replanted, refuse to grow again because natural temperature regulations have run amok. Native prairie grasses that built the rich soil (and will probably be needed someday to rebuild it) have been eliminated by farming. The advance of cheat grass due to overgrazing has wiped out grazeland and winter forage for thousands of animals (the cows included). All of this is accompanied by, silently, the loss of open
space and pure habitat.Two hundred years ago (only one-millionth of 1% of the earth's current age), wildflowers in the variety and abundance with which I see in remote mountain ranges, occurred everywhere. In the unrelenting push to farm and grow and build, they've been lost, paved over and plowed under. Few people know what the countryside's flowers, upon whose bed their suburban home now rests, were once like or how they shone each spring in splendor and diversity. I am no different.
With some of the inspiring words of my viewers, I drove over the pass and into Wyoming. Someone is listening.
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