Blog Description

Weekly Posts Concerning my Sabbatical Research and Writing Project


Thursday, January 24, 2013

Canyon Winter

The Tree Will Lose its Frost Quickly
as the Sun Peeks Over the Cliffs.

The canyon is still white and frosty.  The sun brings around three hours of melt during the afternoon; that is, if it comes out.  I hear there is snow on the way again, maybe even tonight.  The guides are looking forward to snow as it makes lion hunting much easier.

Yesterday a guest from Latvia got a big Tom up in the mountains, and in the last blog I promised to post a picture of the Tom taken on the Ranch in Suzie Creek draw.  Idaho has a robust population of these magnificent cats.  In the past few years more cats have moved into the canyon.  Maybe competition with the increasing wolf population in the mountains has brought more of them down into the canyon.   

Big Tomcat in Suzie Creek Draw of Lawyer Canyon.

One of the guides gave me some lion meat, so I'll ask Chef Ryan for one of his amazing recipes before preparing it.  My diet here is much different than my darling wife's cooking.  She watches the food channel.  Most of the meat I cook is crock pot roasted or fried in butter, and most is wild game and fish given to me by Joseph or the guides.  Ryan offered me a duck, but I don't like duck very much.  I have some salmon and Joe offered me some perch.  I’m definitely about to experience an eclectic culinary time.  I miss Pinky's cooking, but the nostalgia of visiting my childhood diet is fun.  I grew up where "Get your deer yet?" was the accepted fall greeting, and a limit of walleye constituted a status symbol.

Bottom of Cliffs Trail Above Lower Flat.

I spent a sunny day out in the canyon collecting GPS tracks of some of the trails in the canyon.  The trails used by humans have never been mapped; only the one road into the canyon and the public roads and rails that cross it appear on any map.  Mapping the trails in the canyon requires landowner permission, as the trails are not open to the public like national forest trails or BLM trails.  But for me it gives purpose for spending time experiencing the canyon’s environ and listening to her spirit.  As long as I am visiting her as much as possible, the collected tracks have value.

I will offer the maps to individual landowners but will not publish them in the book or public forums without permission.  Even with authorization, the reason for publishing would have to be judicious.  The Flying B Ranch will use the map of their property to educate guides and guests.

Deer, Coyotes and Cats Use
the Trails Extensively.

 Some of the trails used to be wagon and farm roads some horse trails, but most are used by quads so much they look a lot like the trail in the photo above.  Animals use them as much as people as they are easy to walk on.  That is not to say that deer prefer them.  Deer trails often go straight up steep and rugged hillsides and animal tracks cross the trails as much as they follow them.

I went up Shununway Draw to the top of the canyon.  I have tried to get the guides to use this historic name for this ancient road.  They call it Fish and Game Road.  The cabin Redneck Joe lives in used to be owned by Idaho Fish and Game, and the road begins close to Joe’s cabin.  But is is a prehistoric trail.  It is the easiest and shortest way up to the southern portion of the Camas Prairie from the Kamiah Valley.  Indians and pioneers called it Shununway. I don’t want this historic name lost.  Lillian Pethal, the local Kamiah historian recorded the name in her papers collected in the Kamiah Public Library, and before she past on, she asked me if I would help preserve the name.  Any hardy vehicle can still easily navigate this road; it hasn’t waned into a quad, snowmobile or horse trail like some other lesser-used trails.

Two Muleys Getting Ready to Hop Down
Into the Cover of the Trees Below.

Two whitetail deer fled from me as I entered the lower forest and a few mule deer greeted me as I approached the top.  It feels like the sky expands and your vision can extend forever when you climb out onto the prairie.

The view below from the top of the Shununway Road across the Kamiah Valley might have been something like what Coyote saw when the Monster raised his head up out of the valley, and Coyote began taunting him.  If you haven’t heard how Coyote tricked the Monster and created the Nez Perce people, the story is a few blog posts back (Coyote Tricks the Kamiah Monster). 

Looking Out the Mouth of Lawyer Canyon Across the Kamiah Valley.

Thorn Got Me.

 Sunny winter days in the canyon are nice.  The trails I followed were not all easy to navigate.  Going back down, I took a trail that dropped far more steeply into the Upper Flat of the canyon than the Sununway Road I took coming up.  Not all the trails were nice to me.  I kept feeling something wet on my face after a small branch hit me, so I turned the camera on my face to see what was going on. Guess the branch had thorns.  

From some positions on the trail coming off the top, the views of the Lodge and other Ranch complexes gave me pause for reflection how truly magnificent this canyon is as a safe winter haven.  It is no wonder why Twisted Hair and Broken Arm chose this place for their winter lodges.

Broken Arm's 150 foot long lodge was Somewhere Down There.

Collecting GPS tracks of the trails in the canyon will give me time to enjoy her presence, and the subsequent map will be fun to make, even though I won't publish it. Here's a peek though of the product I collect and will be using to make the map.

My Route on This Trip Up Shununwy and Back Down to the Lower Flat.

 

   

 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Back in the Canyon

There is a couple inches of snow in the canyon, but it is melting fast, at least on south-facing exposures.  The area of the canyon where I am staying gets no direct sunlight at noon, even though it is on the north side.  The south canyon wall blocks the sun around noon.  It just doesn't get high enough to shine over the cliff, so I am in the shadow when snow starts to melt.  Maybe this afternoon the west sun will shine at the house I'm in.  

My Desk

I am working in an office in a building called the Quail Barn.  It is not a barn, but the room is cold.  I have a small heater on the floor behind my chair, but it still feels cold.  I have been a desert rat too long.

Conference Room from My Desk

The conference room that my desk is in has a table big enough for me to work on maps and archeological dig artifacts.  I have a map of the Ranch to frame and then hundreds of artifacts to sort through.  I was lucky enough to catch Leah Ezans-Janke in her new building at the University of Idaho on my way to the Ranch from Spokane.  Leah is charged with cataloging and organizing the artifacts from the archeological digs done by the U of ID Anthropology Department.  The work she and her team does is detailed, precise and quite phenomenal. The U of ID houses the Ranch's boxes of artifacts from the 1999 Kittle Rockshelter dig conducted in the Canyon by Dr. Lee Sappington.  One of my Sabbatical tasks is to build a display highlighting the findings of the dig for the Lodge.  The collection consists of well over 2000 bones, flakes, points, shells, beads, and other relevant items from the dig.  Each artifact has been labeled and recorded in Leah's database.  Here is a page from the database:

A Page from the Kittle Rockshelter Artifact Database.

Leah brought out some boxes for us to go through.  I was fortunate that Redneck Joe was along.  His memory of the dig far exceeds mine, even though I was present at the site more than he was, and his knowledge of animal, bird and reptile bones proved to be invaluable, as I have a very limited knowledge of paleontology. We tried to select representative samples from each level and trench of the dig.  Out of the hundreds of bags, we chose enough to almost fill a box.  Leah and her team recorded everything we took, which was no small chore.  Each of the little packets like the ones in the above bag had to be individually recorded that I have them.  I will spend hours going through them to construct the story and create a display for guests of the Lodge to enjoy.

I will be writing every morning now; sorting, organizing, visiting and dreaming every afternoon; and spending as much time as possible listening, watching and trying to embrace the spirit of the Canyon. BUT, one of the lion hunters is back, and he shot a tom up in Suzie Creek.  I'm going to go see it.  I'll post the cat's picture next week.  Until then, "Bye."


Saturday, January 5, 2013

Heading Back to Lawyer Canyon

The new year crept up on me; my mind in other places, Lawyer Canyon in particular.  Arizona is a comfortable place to be during the winter, unless you are longing for the Northern Rockies.  As much as I have enjoyed the holidays and visiting with friends, family and colleagues, I spent most of December anxious to return to Idaho.  Unlike our "another perfect day" winter here in the Sonoran Desert, the Bitterroot Range along the Montana, Idaho border can be an unfriendly place in the winter.  Yet, it is time for me to head back.
 
 (near Lost Trail Pass in the Bitterroots)
© Mike Hoyt, Dec. 31, 2006.
http://www.summitpost.org/snow-covered-trees/256161
 SummitPost.org describes the Bitterroot environ like this: "These mountains, with long arduous approaches to major peaks, are some of the most impenetrable in the United States; except for areas of the foothills, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness remains mostly unexploited."

In the winter the snows are so deep only the tops of the trees peek out.  Lewis and Clark had to wait near the mouth of Lawyer Creek until late June to begin their journey back across the mountains that had so befuddled them the year before.  On the 27th of June, 1806, Lewis wrote:

"from this place we had an extensive view of these stupendous mountains principally covered with snow like that on which we stood; we were entirely surrounded by those mountains from which to one unacquainted with them it would have seemed impossible ever to have escaped; in short without the assistance of our guides I doubt much whether we who had once passed them could find our way to Travellers rest."
(Meriwether Lewis; The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 (Kindle Locations 21191-21194). Kindle Edition, 2005.)


The Flying B Ranch, where I will be staying for the next months has Hunting Camps in the Selway Wilderness.  I once got myself snowed in near the Wilderness' boundary for a few days until Redneck Joe collected me with a snowmobile.  Joseph has always taken pleasure in trying to keep me alive in remote areas.  Here in Arizona I trust in our college biologist Dennis Wilson to get me out.  Charles Miller, one of our security officers has also collected me from the Superstition Wildness.

But when I get back to Idaho, I will be staying where Lewis and Clark waited for over a month for the snow to melt enough in the mountains.  The Kamiah Valley, which Lawyer Canyon opens into, has snow but is sheltered from wind and the snow is seldom very deep in the canyon bottom.

Lower Flat Looking East

The snows can be "feet deep" on top the canyon, but the bottom is usually winter-friendly.  In the early 1890s, a pioneer woman who homesteaded the rich soil atop the canyon, stood in deep snow looking down into the Kamiah Valley Indian Reservation and lamented in her diary how envious she was of the Indians living down in the warm embrace of the canyon.  After the Dawes Act of 1895, which allowed settlers to settle on reservation lands, she moved down into the valley.

Flying B Lodge

I plan to spend as much of the winter as I can secluded in the canyon listening for her to talk with me.  I haven't spent a winter in her arms before.  Maybe I'm being a little naive.  It has been over thirty years since I left Minnesota.
I barely remember the claustrophobic, March cabin fever times of my youth.  Having spent so many years in the southwest, I wear sweaters in June and even July, when I visit northern friends and relatives.  But, if freezing cold and snow attacks me, I can always retreat to the one place I miss the most from my younger days, the hearth.

Greatroom in the Flying B Ranch Lodge


 For many years I built fireplaces for a living, but I didn't build this one.  Even so, the Lodge's hearth is one of the most cordial and sociable places I know, and that is the ultimate goal of every mason, to create a warm, soft place out of stone.  The stones of the Flying B's hearth come from the canyon outside; basalt rounded in the relentless weathering of the running water that carved Chief Lawyer's canyon out of 12 to 14 million-year-old, chocolate-colored lava flows.

Lower Flat Looking Southwest

Lawyer Canyon is a magical place, and I am excited to get back.  I have most of my research completed.  I have some interviews to conduct, plans and outlines to draw up, and I will endeavor introduce you to the Canyon's haunts and some of the people who know her in upcoming blogs.  But above all, I will wander the canyon, listen for her voice, touch her spirit and look for words to communicate what's in her heart.  I pray next week's blog comes to you from her bosom.