Silver and Gold

Following the White Truck Across Nevada

Roman Nose Lake

Visiting Family

Silver & Gold

Weasels Hiding in the Rocks

All Quiet on the Lake

Except for the Curious GSP

Treeless after Nearly 50 Years

White Truck's First Idaho Adventure

Sniffing the Gold

Ghostly Mist on the Ridge

"Make new friends, 
 but keep the old.
One is silver, 
the other is gold."

"Make New Friends" is a scout song that comes to mind as I scan the silver rocks and gold tree leaves of Roman Nose Lake. Silver and gold, silver and gold.

A few weeks back we had dinner and ice cream with old friends, shared laughs about long ago antics and marveled how much silver we are all getting.

We brought back the Mills farm truck from Sandblow Dairy in Fallon, Nevada. My inlaws have retired and gifted us with the truck at a time we could use the gift. The best gift, though was visiting with family and old friends.

We returned and had our first truck adventure. Todd's brother Gee and his wife Kathy drove up from Nevada in our wake and it was a pleasure to share with them our beautiful mountains and valleys.

We laughed about elevations, though. While the mountains are steep here, the valley floors are relatively low. We live at about 2,200 feet above sea level in Elmira. Our mountains go straight up to 5,000 and 7,000 feet in elevation. Stunning.

Yet, if you consider Nevada, the elevation of Fallon sits on a basin already 4,000 feet high. Those Great Basin ranges have mountains as tall as almost 12,000 feet. Many are surprised to realize how mountainous that state is and why it is called a high mountain desert.

No desert here in the Inland Pacific Northwest, though we continue to be unseasonably dry. Clouds and mist have returned but lack rainfall typical of this season. It's warm for October, too. We are concerned for the snow pack which requires lower temperatures, heavier precipitation and a slow spring.

Without it, we are in danger of another bad fire season.

Up on the Roman Nose, the peak itself remains bald of forest. In 1967 the Sundance Fire burned so hot -- a raging firestorm -- that nothing has grown back to replace the timber lost. Two men died up there, dozing a fireline when the fire roared over the peak like a flaming hurricane. A third man, on lookout at the station on the peak, managed to get into rock crevices deep enough to have survived.

When I visit the quiet alpine lake in the treeless bowl, I can't help but think of those who fight fires. Some win. Some do not. I pray for a heavy snowpack.

We met new friends at Laughing Dog Brewery. We always meet the most interesting people there. This young couple, newly married, have a six month old Springer Spaniel. Dogs are welcome in the tasting room. We make many new canine friends, too. The young man, so full of life yet, a college baseball player, new wife, new dog, just visited Costa Rica...he's a fire fighter.

There's something so youthful and courageous about those who fight the flames. He tells us he spent a good month on the fires in the St. Jo region. That's steep terrain. He says he loves to hike and it was nothing. Yet, it is everything he places on the line. His life.

Up there on the Roman Nose the ghosts of fire fighters are silent. Their memory hangs in the mist. And I bid them farewell, until we return next spring, hopeful of moisture and huckleberries. Hopeful of a reprieve from fires.

Linking up with Abracabadra for Wordless Wednesday. All photos (including the drive-by shot) by Charli Mills.

Where There's Smoke

State Your Emergency

A Roadside Fire

No, I Don't See an RV

Electrician to the Rescue!

Hub & ID Civil Servant Stamping Out Fires

The More Exciting Fire Was Down the Road

Another Traffic Jam in Elmira

Heroes in Neon

Charred Grass Across From Our Driveway

Molten Missile--What's Left of a Wheel Bearing

Emergency 9-1-1 call goes something like this:

Dispatch: What's your emergency?

Me: A fire, along the road, mile marker 490, highway 95.

Dispatch: Yes, we have responded to a report of an RV fire.

Me: Uh, no...just grass...no RV.

Dispatch: We have an RV on fire at that location.

Me: Just grass. My husband is out there with a shovel. Wait. I see the sheriff.

(At this point in the conversation several vehicles with flashing lights zip past my husband, battling smoky grass with a shovel. None stop.)

Dispatch: They're on the scene now.

Me: Actually, they just drove past the scene.

It's a ridiculous conversation, trying to convince a dispatcher that there are indeed two fires, not one at the same mile marker. Maybe I should have reminded her that mile markers cover a mile in territory, thus space enough for more than one fire.

Where there's smoke, there's fire, but our fire wasn't smoky enough to catch the attention of first responders. It wasn't like we had flames--or an RV in flames--but the west is a dry tinderbox and smoke a dangerous spark.

Not 20 miles from here, firefighters died in a blaze back in 1967. In 1910, fires swept across Idaho in two days killing 86 people and burning over three million acres. The scars of both fires are in our wilderness back yard.

I don't take smoke lightly.

Another man joins the Hub in battling our grass fire. At first I see just a portion of a white vehicle, thinking a sheriff's deputy did turn around. Turns out it is an Idaho civil servant, but of the electrician sector. He helps with a small red fire extinguisher.

From our driveway I can see another traffic jam building. A truck, whose driver apparently missed that traffic was stopped ahead, slams on his breaks so hard his tires smoke and he leaves a trail of black rubber on the pavement.

And yes, there is an RV on fire just down the road.

The men put out the fire, only to have it smolder again. So Hub treks across the road once more and shovels. The returning fire trucks and deputy vehicles pass by. None stop. But the electrician returns.

We chat about the previous Idaho traffic jam last week. He tells me he saw the cattle truck in town that took the hit of logs from he other truck. Kind of scary when logs fly loose and cows have to duck. The cattle truck had a gaping hole.

This time a tourist is the culprit for our Elmira roadside excitement. Within the charred grass my husband retrieves the melted remains of a bearing that evidently caused our grass fire and eventually stopped the RV. How long the driver had been going with flames licking at his tires, we don't know but at our place the fire was hot enough to create a molten missile.

That's one way to make a vacation memorable.

Osprey Honor Guard

Pastures Mature

Shady Tree

Ring-necked Ducks Flirting

A Little Apple?

Cherries!

Pastures mature; green deepens like a husky voice. The verdure of spring has faded like old WWII Army fatigues.The northern Rockies look drier now that the white of snow has melted to reveal brown and gray stones. Tamracks that grow among the evergreen pines flourished brightly with new needles bright as first-month aspen leaves, have now faded to olive green. As the pond retreats into reeds, the surrounding meadow takes on hues of blond and brunette.

Even though it is early morning I make this observation under the shade of an apple tree (maybe). I see no fruit in the canopy of leaves, so I am guessing that this is even a fruit tree. It's already hot and I plop down upon the grass in the shade of this tree to watch. I don't even bother with coffee; ice water already sounds appealing. Two ring-necked duck males paddle after a female. Another hot day and not much happening.

Still gawking as I rise from my shady spot, I see little apples. Not in the apple tree, but the skinny, poplar-like tree next to the wood shed. I zoom in with my camera and see glossy-red. Cherries? With reverence, I walk to the tree, looking up. It is a cherry tree! Hopping, I swing at a branch, missing. So I carefully bend a branch to me and pluck a ripe cherry. Gold, I am eating gold. Never in my life have I had a cherry fresh from a tree. I thought fresh strawberries were the hallmark of summer, but that was before cherries.

As if that first bite infused magic into the air, I hear an osprey. In the heat, the sky in no longer bright blue, but the osprey still soars like a wing-master. There are huge power lines that cut across the back of the pond and he lands on the middle post. Capturing him in the telephoto lens, I notice that sparse slope behind. I had thought it to be logged, but at closer look, the hill and trees have burned. Wildfires are the tornadoes of the west, the wind-driven hurricanes of forests.

Osprey Arrive

A moment of silence to mourn the passing of 19 firefighters from Prescott, AZ. It could have been my father, your brother, my neighbor's husband. They were all such to women who keen the loss. We mourn with those who mourn.

Osprey with Fire-scarred Slope Behind

They were defending the west, whether human homes or natural habitat. I imagine them as saving my home, saving the trees the osprey fly among this morning. Three osprey show up and show off. If there is an honor guard to escort us to heaven,
let's hope it is osprey. The tones are dusky, but watch the photos for flashes of white and brown. Presenting, the osprey honor guard. May they bring us home one day.