Idaho's seasons

Many people come to Sun Valley, Idaho in the winter to ski.  They're missing out on what I think are the best seasons.  The summertime allows for camping in the cool mountain air, and on the Earnest Hemingway memorial it states, "Best of all, he loved the fall."  Autumn is quite special as well, after the heat of summer has gone and the leaves display their glorious color.

This picture could have been taken in any season, but it shows the Smoky Mountains, to the west of the Wood River Valley.

This surely does look like summertime in the Sawtooth Mountains.  Maybe that is Snowyside Peak in the distance at the right.  There are 216 mountains taller than this in Idaho.

This looks like autumn with the brown grasses, dried at the end of the growing season.

Southern Idaho's autumn is predominantly colored yellow from Aspen and Cottonwood, but the riparian areas and northern Idaho give some reds and oranges in the fall.  This is Freezout Ridge in northern Idaho's Clearwater Mountains, with red huckleberry bushes.

Here's another look at the Smoky Mountains, in the fall.  The aspen are green and gold patchwork in the sagebrush ocean.  The north side of the hills gets enough shade from the sun that evergreen trees can grow.  The southern exposure is too hot and dry for a tree seed to germinate and thrive.

There is a downside to living in a ski resort community.  It snows.  It snows a lot.  You can see my neighbor on his roof, shoveling what looks to be about four feet of compressed snow.  First I would shovel the driveway, then I would get up on top of the snow piles, and shovel the piles away from the driveway.

These are the Boulder Mountains as seen from Galena Summit on a clear morning after a heavy overnight snow.  I saw this view my first week in Idaho.

Winter on Bald Mountain

I spent a couple of decades of my life taking an early retirement as a ski bum in Idaho's Wood River Valley.  As a youngster I grew up in Maine.  Going out the door of my house I could go across the road, through the baseball field and cemetery and down the hill to the estuary.  Or I could go up the road or down the road.  Behind me lay the woods, which seemed endless, but in fact were really just swampy and not conducive to hiking.  Down the road, toward the main highway (US Route 1) was an old vacant house, overgrown with tall grass.  One day, after years of vacancy, a retired couple appeared and they could be seen moving in.  The fellow got a lawn mower and worked to restore order to the overgrown yard.  It took a lot of mowing.  Then an ambulance pulled up, and took him away.  Heart attack.  My mother became friends with his widow.

This was my life lesson about the thing called "retirement."  Retirement was a chancy thing.  There are no guarantees except for those who create their own destiny.  Some would say I invented "slacker" before the Me Generation became aware of it.  I prefer to think that I invented the hedge fund.  I placed my bets that I would have a retirement by taking it from age 18 to 36.  The odds were good, and I won.

For the record, I paid my own way.  When I say "slacker," I'm not talking about "freeloader," kids.  I paid for my own college.  All of it.  Yes, parents and relatives extended me credit, and I have always repaid my debts.  I rather loathe debt, actually.  I was brought up not to be beholden.  Nobody likes indentured servitude, even if it is an American institution.  I had seasonal work, when it snowed, on Sun Valley's Bald Mountain.  I had self-employment, as a photographer.  When I got serious, at age 36, I went into part-time employment.

For the record, I'm now in wage-earner mode.  A minimum of 40 hours per week, sometimes with overtime that once hit 70 hours in a week.  I plan my vacations a year in advance.  It is the kind of thing the parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper tries to encourage.  The tax collectors love it, too.  I'm helping to fund a global superpower.  I buy U.S. Savings Bonds.

Let's talk about the good old days, instead.

I lived and worked in Ketchum, Idaho, at the base of Baldy.  As my buddy Murray and I searched for housing, one fellow asked, "Coming up to the mountains for the winter?"

"No," I replied, "coming down from 8,500 feet."  That's another story, for another day.  If you think Idaho has mountains, check out Colorado.  I was an aspiring artist, and the above image of Baldy exposed by moonlight with a 4" x 5" camera was printed as a photo aquatint, also known more commonly as a gum bichromate.  It is a permanent photographic process invented in 1858 in which watercolor pigments (not dyes) are bonded to archival paper and was the first instance of color photography.

Did I mention that my winter job came with a free season pass to Bald Mountain?  I was a pinhead.  I'm talking about telemark skiing.  Free the heel and the mind will follow.

Here's Kelly, skiing uphill in the backcountry.  Before I got the job at the ski mountain, that was how one earned the fun of skiing down ... by attaching skins to the bottom of the skis and trudging up for hours, then skiing down in minutes (or falling downhill over and over, depending on the very variable snow conditions).

There was a lot of beauty to be enjoyed in the winter, and by staying active I stayed warm.  But, those who have experienced Idaho know that the seasons just keep getting better and better.  The warming of spring and brief greening of the desert, then the summer when one retreats from the heat to the melting snowfields and alpine meadows, and, as the Earnest Hemingway monument states, "Best of all, he loved the fall."

We'll look at those other seasons later.  For now, here's another photo taken from nearly the same vantage point as that gum bichromate I talked about earlier.  This time we're again using the 4" x 5" camera to create a multiple time-exposure of the fireworks over Sun Valley, Idaho along with the torchlight parade ending at the bottom of Dollar Mountain during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of America's premier ski resort, the location where the ski lift was invented and first installed.  The Sun Valley lodge is over there on the left.

Down by the River

I took a walk by the Boise River today. Though the temperature was below freezing, with no wind and a warm sun it was a glorious day!

The Song Sparrow does not mind the winter weather. They're here all year long.

With smaller birds gathering by the seeds and berries, the accipiters (birds that hunt and eat smaller birds) are arriving. This one is a Cooper's Hawk.

Splashes of color always catch my eye, like this American Goldfinch.

My favorite sighting today, though, was this Downy Woodpecker, eating mullein seeds ... or, perhaps, seeking insects in the seed heads?

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

Winter Solstice Birds

Happy Winter Solstice ... the day the sun is lowest on the horizon in the northern hemisphere. Now the days will begin to lengthen once again as the sun appears higher in the sky each day.

I always wondered why birds would want to go to the arctic in the springtime. It is because the days are very long there in the summer ... the sun never sets at the height of summer. So the birds can forage for food for their new hatchlings 24 hours a day.

But in the arctic winter the sun never rises, so many birds come further south to seek food and warmth. That is why some birds can only be seen where I live in Idaho on a winter day. Yesterday I finally saw one such bird for the first time in my life.

Black Rosy-Finch

In the evening the Black Rosy-Finch seeks warmth and shelter in Cliff Swallow nests, or a cave or old mine shaft. The light was fading when they showed up to roost, but I managed to get a few photos and watched them through binoculars. I initially identified this as a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, but there are three species of Rosy-Finches, and upon further study, I now believe this is the Black, not Gray-crowned, Rosy-Finch. I'll have to go back to see and photograph the browner Gray-crowned sometime soon!

I also saw a Prairie Falcon while out looking for Snow Buntings. I've never seen a Snow Bunting and they have been seen nearby. I didn't see any.

If you enjoy birds and the natural world, I think you should watch "The Life of Birds" hosted by David Attenborough and produced by the BBC. The Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and all of the David Attenborough shows depict nature in all of its majesty and intricate diversity.