Ketchum – e.alia.salim

On the way out of the Sawtooths I stop to pay my respects to Ernest Hemingway, whose toxic masculinity does not appear to have had stunted the cypress consuming his corpse any more that it ever bothered me. I continue south through Ketchum and Hailey and a valley of log-cabin McMansions with mowed lawns and a strange speed limit of 34 miles per hour. I wonder how rich people here made their money.

The Forest Service trailhead at the other end of the subdivision leads to Greenhorn Gulch, a creekside climb recently burned and more work than I was expecting. At the top it opens up into bare brown hills that could be home. In combination with the view of the Pioneer range, the roller-coaster descent is legitimately dangerous: I’m alternately gawking at the horizon, yelling “Wow!” to myself, and skittering haphazardly over babyheads, blinded by the wind. Like Galena Summit, the trails here are in perfect condition and don’t have another soul on them. It might look here and there like California, but it is today—sorry, Ernie— my private Idaho.

At Craters of the Moon several hours later I terrify myself in a series of volcanic caves. My demographic tends to give the National Parks a lot of crap for sanitizing attractions: the railings at Yosemite Falls, the warning signs at Old Faithful. Here, on the other hand, I am shocked to encounter no deterrents at all: in fact, there’s a paved path and cheerful signage encouraging you into the Bowels of the Earth, and when I get there—by slithering on my stomach through a gap in the jumbled boulders—I quickly discover that 1) my headlamp is not very good and 2) I do not AT ALL like being underground. I force myself to walk into the far chamber, clammy-palmed and convinced of some imminent geologic event that will seal the entrance behind me. Then I haul ass out of there. Even the caves open to the sky are stalked by creepy pigeons.

Idaho — Top left in hopes a selfie trail from the cloud might help someone recover my body. o_O

The park has dark and low but also bright and high. At the top of the cinder cones I can see for miles, and I prefer this.

Not pictured: awesome, glorious, 30 mph wind. Never been so sure I could fly.

Between Craters of the Moon and Boise is Trump Country. I stop for gas between a pickup with three “Lock her up!” stickers and a purple PT Cruiser whose giant window decals declare “NO OBAMA NATION” in Scooby-Doo bubble-writing. Inside, on camo t-shirts, the suggestions continue: “Ban idiots, not guns”; “America, stand your ground.” I buy coffee and a spongy breakfast sandwich, catch myself paying with cash to avoid an unnecessary reveal of my last name.

It’s October. There are three weeks until the election, and I know how it’s going to go.

October 2016 — Left: Interpreted. Right: In the flesh.

Consequently I’m a little on edge by the time I get to my last stop, the World Center for Birds of Prey. As I step out into the parking lot there’s a loud rushing noise overhead that sends me ducking back into the car. Squinting into the sun I find the sound is the flapping wings of a condor. Ten feet across, easy.

Typically my great enthusiasm for killer birds has manifested itself in meeting doodles and memorizing relevant poems rather than any useful ability to identify or understand them. Nonetheless I take notes on the handlers’ presentations, sitting on the ground while school-age children stare at me. Whatever. Did you know a turkey vulture’s stomach has a pH of 0? It can eat anthrax. You’re welcome.

The vulture is called Lucy and she really does seem to like the attention. She struts back and forth across the audience and spreads her wings whenever she hears her name.

Lest I imply it’s all sunsets and rapture out here, let me begin by saying Twin Falls sucks. The outskirts are parking lots and pawnshops, beady-eyed men with neck tattoos and listless women in the passenger seat. If possible, the city center is even worse for being its own idea of “nicer”—in (my) reality, a hellscape of poor zoning in which the otherwise stunning Snake River Gorge has a golf course in the middle and a Bed Bath and Beyond 20 meters from the edge.

I attribute the sense that I’ve arrived in an urban-planning nightmare to a mix of coastal elitism and an altitude hangover: having accidentally spent the night at 10,000 feet I feel bad enough to cut the drive short at a KOA. In the “family room,” fluorescents buzz over copies of LIFE from 1966 and couch cushions dusted with dead insects. But the showers are clean and that goes a long way.

I’m in Idaho to spectate—not base jumpers, but sheepdogs.

The trials are being held in a huge razed wheat field ringed with moonscape hills. I am extremely pleased with myself for having brought binoculars but don’t know what I’m looking at, only that it feels like a cross between a horse show and a golf tournament (and not especially like Babe). The shepherds—or shepherdesses, mostly—have actual crooks; the dogs slink low to the ground or bolt across the flocks in apparent response to whistles and cries of “AWAY! AWAY!” that I can’t decode. People clap and make knowing remarks about the particular obstinance of “fresh range ewes.” A silent judge in a cowboy hat writes on a clipboard alongside a white Ford F150, which seems with animal intention to itself survey the scene. I could watch all this for a long time, and I do.

The actual Trailing of the Sheep is a bit of a Sun Valley scene, lots of botox and bronzer and polo shirts and wine. The parade performers represent various sheepherding cultures, from the Scots, who have of course brought bagpipes, to the Basque, whose enclaves across the mountain west I have never before heard mentioned. I am contrasting the dance steps of straight-backed Poles—exchanging partners as if handing off a military secret—with the slow, sleepy shimmy of the Peruvians, who lead with their hips. One thing leads to another and soon enough, here I am, just a girl at a sheep parade deconstructing colonialism and capitalism and Catholic guilt.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I ride bikes, too, though, I swear. I came for Osberg Ridge, the Ketchum showpiece, but there are no weekday shuttles and the shop staff tell me flatly I’d be stupid to ride it alone even if there were. No matter, there’s more trail here than anyone knows what do with: I cruise berms at Galena Summit for hours without seeing a soul (dead pioneers notwithstanding), and even the “busy” stuff in the center of town has only a handful of polite hikers near the start. I have a bell on less for them than to keep myself from floating away.

Idaho

Driving out of the mountains in the evening, I see and do not hit a pronghorn antelope, my first. It bounds out of the grass and across the road in an instant—the flash of its heavy white flanks a fleeting impression of athleticism and, frankly, meat— and I can see both why you would and why you wouldn’t want to shoot one.

Tag: Ketchum

Ketchum to Boise, 10/13-10/16

Twin Falls to Ketchum, 10/9-10/10