Aerial Tapioca      

Draft 3.8.2
March 3, 2026

FINIS

 

It was an audacious gamble, bordering on folly: to distill the essence of Idaho into video and words in the span of an hour -- and to do it completely from the air. That meant no people and no interviews. Whether we succeeded or not is open to debate.

However, the audience reaction was quick and emphatic. Judging by the flood of comments, donations, and DVD sales, Idaho Public Television’s 1999 “Idaho: An Aerial Tapestry” became an instant success story. In sixty minutes, viewers saw more Idaho than many manage in a lifetime of travel, including many of the producers of Outdoor Idaho!

Inside the shop, we jokingly called it “Aerial Tapioca,” a wink at my occasionally overcooked prose paired with soaring images captured from a camera bolted to the belly of a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. The combination, improbably, worked beyond our wildest dreams.

A quarter century later, I still think of “Aerial Tapestry” as my love letter, written by a young man too smitten to blush at his flowery language. “For those intent upon understanding this region,” I advised in the script, “a note of caution: beware of sudden geographical mood swings.”

 

 

 

Even now, if I were teaching a course on Idaho, that hour would serve as a worthy starting point.

The producer, director, chief videographer, and editor of the project was my colleague John Crancer. Ricardo Ochoa assisted on camera, along with David Walsh of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The original score came from two northern Idaho musicians performing as Wild Roses. I served as writer, narrator, and executive producer.

 

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The promotional copy promised “an aerial celebration of mountains, rivers, deserts and lakes,” and “a bird’s-eye tour of the state’s natural beauty and geological extremes.”

 

“It was an ambitious undertaking,” said John. “We needed a near-perfect alignment of moving parts: the helicopter schedule, crew availability, rented equipment.

“And then there was the one factor we couldn’t control: the weather. What we wanted was no rain and little wind. And if we were lucky, everything lined up during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset. When that happened, the results were magical.”

 

 

John and the pilots mapped out a sweeping route: east to west, south to north, all the way to the Canadian border. It was essentially the same approach we had taken with “Idaho’s Scenic Splendor” the year before, a program that covered the state from the ground.

For “Aerial Tapestry” there was a crew of two plus the pilot. One crew member, usually John, was up front directing the pilot and running the tilt of the camera stabilizer attached to the bottom of the chopper. The second crew member sat in the back seat handling the important exposure of the camera and making sure it was actually recording the footage.

 

The idea of the project was to keep the focus of the program on the landscape and to keep people out of the storyline. For the most part, the program succeeded in doing just that. But sometimes shots of people could be a plus, especially when they added scale: a hiker on the Bruneau Sand Dunes, a rafter on the Middle Fork Salmon River, or a tractor plowing a field on the Palouse.

 

 

We got lots of questions from folks wanting to know the elevation of a helicopter shooting video as it drifts and soars across Idaho. “There were two ‘elevations,’ and they both were fascinating,” said John. “We recorded some of our best footage flying just above the mountain tops. In the Lost River Range that meant flying at 12,900 feet, to barely skim over Mt. Borah.

“The other elevation was near river level, gliding just above the Salmon, the Snake, and the St. Joe. Those low-level flights delivered some remarkable footage, also,” said John.

We followed the arc of the Snake River, starting at the Wyoming border and tracing its westward journey across the state. The helicopter circled and lingered over geological landmarks so that we could do some teaching. “Taller than Niagara,” I narrated about Shoshone Falls. “This spectacle is the signature work of the 15,000-year-old Bonneville Flood, whose waters drained Utah with such force that massive whirlpools tore blocks from the bedrock.”

Central Idaho’s batholith and wilderness areas received a great deal of attention, always with one eye on the gas gauge. “Light on the mountains, gem of the mountains: to many that will always be the real meaning of the word ‘Idaho,’” I wrote, “mountains as jagged and crumpled and pleated as the Snake River plain is flat.”

Farther north, over some of my favorite terrain, we paused above the Palouse. “It feels comfortable, like home,” I narrated. “The lush curvature of the landscape tells you that life is easier here. These undulating hills, randomly arranged and brilliant in their diversity of colors, are in effect a sea of wind dunes, blown in by strong southwesterly currents. The green lawn, pelouse in French, stretches and swells and flows.”

 

The last leg of the 3,000-mile journey allowed us to explore the Clearwater drainage, past the discovery of gold in 1860 that shook the region like an earthquake, above the salmon fishing grounds of the Nez Perce that Lewis and Clark would recognize even today, around the 20-mile circle known as Silver Valley that produced more valuable metals than almost anywhere in the world.

 

After that, we headed even further north into Big Lakes country. “Northern Idaho is land overrun by floods,” I observed, “flooded first with lava flows, then later with ice flows from the north. A warmer climate chased away the glaciers, but tell-tale signs remain: glacial deposits, natural levies for beautiful lakes.”

 

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While producing the program, we deepened our understanding of the cataclysmic floods that shaped the region. Not just the outburst that sculpted the Snake River Canyon and Shoshone Falls, but the even larger Ice Age floods that repeatedly roared across northern Idaho, gouging out Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s largest and deepest lake.

As I noted in my narration, “ancient ice flows trapped and then released a flood of biblical proportions through the mouth of the Clark Fork River... among the greatest floods documented by man.”

And not just one. Geologists tell us the floods poured across the state and into the Washington scablands, perhaps a dozen times or more, as the ice jam froze and thawed and froze and thawed again.

 

Our fascination with hour-long shows featuring the entire state got a little out of hand at the beginning of the 20^th century. “Idaho’s Scenic Splendor” made quite a splash in 1998. Following on its heels was the 1999 “Aerial Tapestry,” in some ways the same show, but from the point of view of a helicopter.

One might argue that we had become prisoners of our own success, with programs like “Idaho Edens,” “Imagine Idaho,” “State of Wonder,” “Idaho Rhapsody, “Idaho, A Portrait.”

“Idaho Edens,” for example, returned people to the landscape. We spent 55 days in the field, logged 5,000 road miles, and shot 4,000 minutes of tape -- all to craft a single hour. It also allowed us to revisit 3,000 miles of helicopter footage.

We invited individuals to share a place in Idaho where they felt most at home. That took us to Priest Lake, Silver Creek, the White Clouds and Sawtooths, the Henry’s Fork, City of Rocks, and more. I wrote the narration, but Jeff Tucker carried most of the structural load. “Idaho Edens” and a half-hour version of “Aerial Tapestry” became our nationwide offerings to other PBS stations.

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Aerial productions, however, do not come cheap. The hour-long “Aerial Tapestry” cost more than $100,000, with helicopter rental, pilot fees, and fuel consuming most of the budget. The specialized stabilization system -- the Tyler Mount fastened to the bottom of the helicopter-- was shipped from Colorado and needed to be reserved weeks in advance, at $600 per day, weather be damned.

If the wind kicked up, if smoke drifted in, if clouds lowered, the meter kept running. When light, air, and timing aligned, it felt like magic. But more than once we wondered if we’d gotten ahead of our skis. Idaho’s size, other programs, the state’s seven degrees of latitude, and the tyranny of budget meant there were corners of Idaho that we never reached.

Then-General Manager Peter Morrill later called it “a groundbreaking, beautiful program that our viewers responded to in a positive way. That sustained the agency during a difficult period, as we dared to attempt what many PBS stations avoided for fear of financial risk.”

Across the country, public television stations were struggling. However, in Idaho our local productions made us, per capita, the most-watched PBS station in America. Programs like “Aerial Tapestry” and “Idaho Edens” led the charge.

We also gained deep respect for our pilots. They were collaborators in the sky. We would suggest a target. Once there, they often charted the line, and we merely tilted the camera. The pilots found the angles that made Idaho sing.

Of course, not every moment was lyrical. On an earlier shoot for our 13-part history series “Proceeding on... A Television History of Idaho,” producer Jeff Tucker asked the pilot to circle a granite spire in the Sawtooths. “That’s when Peter Morrill demonstrated what he’d had for breakfast,” laughed Jeff. “The pilot promptly returned him to Stanley so we could resume filming. Peter still complains about being left behind -- without his jacket.”

 

One of the little things we hadn’t counted on was high-flying insects. More than once the pilot had to touch down so we could clean the camera lens.

“In the Selkirk Mountains near Chimney Rock and the Canadian border, a pilot once balanced one skid on a rock ledge because there wasn’t a flat spot in sight,” recalled Jeff. “I jumped out, Earl our pilot steadied the ship, I took care of the offending bug, and we were good to go.”

But it wasn’t always fun, recalled producer and occasional videographer Sauni Symonds. “I remember when you and I hired a helicopter to shoot the first aerial video of Hells Canyon with a Tyler Mount.  It was very exciting swooping over and around the cliffs and zooming over the river, just feet above the water.  At one point, there appeared to be a malfunction with the helicopter, and we had to land quickly. There aren’t a lot of flat places in that canyon!  But everything checked out ok, and up we went again. 

“I also remember when Outdoor Idaho was a co-production with Fish and Game,” said Sauni. “I sometimes had to hang out of the open door with my camera, secured only by a harness, while the pilot chased bighorn sheep across the desert. I found that very exciting but was glad when we began using a Tyler Mount!”  

 

For the most part, the pilots seemed to be having as much fun as our production team, but there was that time we got a stern lecture from one of the pilots. “Don’t leave anything behind,” he barked. “The last guy in my ship left a roast beef sandwich under the back seat. It took me a week to figure out where the smell was coming from.”  Of course, everyone on the camera crew knew immediately who the culprit was, didn’t we, John.

Years later, drones offered a more affordable alternative, though the early ones lacked the ability to cross mountain ranges. When we needed a sweeping panorama and needed it in a hurry, we sometimes turned to a friendly pilot and his Cessna, with a small camera mounted under the wing. Pretty sure no one checked in with the Federal Aviation Administration beforehand.

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There is a particular chemistry between images and words. At its best, it reveals something true. Idaho is complicated, confounding, and resistant to summary. No single vantage point -- not even from a Bell Jet Ranger two miles above the earth -- can fully capture this remarkable state. But that has never stopped us from trying.

 

You’d think a 3,000-mile flight over several weeks would leave one favoring a certain part of Idaho. But that doesn’t always happen.

To hear the man who spent the most time in the helicopter tell it, “I do have an affinity for the opposite ends of the state,” said the

noncommittal John Crancer. “The big lakes area up north and the desert canyons in the south. You can’t get a bigger change from the desert than to spend time on the lush lakes of north Idaho.”

 

Pressed further, John relents. “Priest Lake is particularly stunning.  Surrounded by the Selkirk Mountains, Priest is a star among stars, especially Upper Priest Lake, rescued from development by Frank Church.”

 

Depending upon what season it is and what day and hour even, and aside from Ship Island Lake in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, I tend to agree with John’s assessment.

 

And perhaps it’s why we saved Priest Lake for the end of our aerial journey. “Traveling north from Sandpoint,” I narrated, “it is easy to trace the trough of the advancing Canadian ice fields. Their retreat left a kinder, gentler landscape.

“The jewel of Idaho’s far north country, Priest Lake, nestles among the outstretched fingers of the Selkirk Mountain range,” I continued.  “The delicate play of fading sunlight on water creates the illusion of a gentle, sleepy blue wonderland, teeming with the mystery of wildness and home to caribou and an occasional grizzly bear. 

“Beautiful, bewitching Idaho. Esto Perpetua. May you live forever.”