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.