Finding My Way

Draft 3.6
January 17, 2026  (drop part about prank in the Sawtooths? create another chapter from the first three?)

 

When people ask me if I’m an Idaho native, I tell them, "No, I came to this state with my pants on."

What they’re really asking, politely, is How did someone like you get to host and guide Outdoor Idaho, the intermountain West’s longest running and most awarded outdoor show? And what’s been the formula for success for four decades?

I sometimes ask myself that, too. So, where to begin.

Traveling with my family in the far back seat of a green American-made station wagon, with a small duck won at a school fair, I arrived in Boise from Minot, North Dakota, in 1960 with my mom and dad and two brothers. My dad's job in the finance business meant a promotion out west, and I decided to go along for the ride.

I was ten and fresh off a 5^th grade U.S. geography test, where my only mistake was the misspelling of Idaho’s capital city. Some might have taken that as an omen. I just know that for this young North Dakota transplant, the misspelling was more humiliating than not being an Idaho native. 

 

I guess my story is not so different from all the others who have recently poured into the state, except maybe for the duck part. Like most Midwesterners, I knew next to nothing about this strangely configured state. And what I did know turned out to be wrong. Idaho is not the “Tick Fever State,” as one bumper sticker proclaimed. Idaho's crazy border with Montana was not the result of drunken surveyors. “Idaho” is not an Indian word for “Gem of the Mountains.”

 

What cemented me to my new surroundings was what has hooked so many others: the Sawtooth Mountains. I still remember coming around the bend on Highway 21 near Stanley for the first time. Suddenly my world got a whole lot bigger and more exciting. I swallowed that hook deep. There would be no “catch and release.”

It was a 50-mile hike sponsored by the city of Boise, with men and pack horses, and a dozen kids I didn’t know.  After that, personal trips with high school buddies to lakes like Alice and Imogene, Toxaway and Edith ended any connection I once had with the state of my birth.

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Growing up Catholic, I studied the Bible, but there was another bible that fascinated me at least as much. “Mountain Lakes of Idaho,” published by the state’s Fish & Game Department, featured 20 pages of lakes found in various mountain ranges across the state, complete with trails and descriptions about fishing, with easy-to-understand words like “excellent,” “good,” and “poor.”

I still have that 1965 dog-eared pamphlet, and I pull it out when I want to reminisce about how sweet life was back then. The folks would drop my friends and me off somewhere along that menacing expanse of towering Sawtooth peaks. After promising to meet them later in the week, we would begin our trek into the “promised land.”  

 

It took me years to stop seeing Idaho as merely a series of lakes and mountain ranges, with the Sawtooths the fairest of them all. Idaho was the perfect place for this young inexperienced “mountain man.” Deserts and canyonlands would just have to wait until I was ready. 

 

Part of the Sawtooths had an official name that made things even sweeter. The Idaho Primitive Area had no roads, no motorized vehicles, no permanent buildings. But it did have lots of hiking and camping and chances for adventure. We didn’t realize it at the time, but a decade later that "Primitive Area" would become the "Sawtooth Wilderness," and part of the newly created Sawtooth National Recreation Area.

We took our fishing seriously in the Primitive Area, and made sure we always carried butter and salt, along with oatmeal, rice, dried fruit, and chocolate bars. Our ace in the hole was a small container of worms, sure to impress the large fish our bible promised us. I suspect the prophet Isaiah would have approved of our slavish devotion to God’s creation.

Highschool friend Larry Reilly had travelled from Portland to join our trips into the Sawtooths. Years later he reminisced about our several trips together. "I can see why those mountains made such an impression on Bruce. They are majestic and scary and safe, all at the same time. They certainly were a big part of our growing-up process. Idaho is lucky to have mountains like that."

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I wince when I think of our camp manners: the waste of brook trout that we caught and never ate; the haphazard way we dealt with waste of all kinds; our unconcern for how we piled rocks to contain our white boys’ campfires. There was no excuse, but we were teenagers, and we were virtually the only ones around the mountain lakes we visited. 

Except for that wizened old miner whom we met near Toxaway Lake. He enjoyed bad-mouthing the U.S. Forest Service. We were pretty sure he didn’t know what he was talking about, because every ranger we had met was friendly and helpful, even if Lassie was nowhere to be seen.

 

The miner did lend us twine so we could build a raft to float out to the island in Toxaway Lake, where we promptly carved our initials in trees. He also assisted us in devising a devious prank.

Toxaway Lake is a seven-mile uphill hike, starting at Pettit Lake, one of the Sawtooth lakes people can drive to. Three of us guys headed to Toxaway Lake. The other would arrive later that day.

That meant the three of us had plenty of time to scheme.  One of us had an extra pair of jeans. We stuffed it full of grass and twigs and hooked tennis shoes to the end of the jeans.

The miner lent us some rope, which we wrapped through the belt loops of the jeans. Our plan was simple enough. We had noticed a small creek running alongside the trail.  After a hearty meal of brook trout seared in butter and garlic and salt, we headed back up the trail toward Pettit Lake.

We found the perfect tree, one with an overhanging branch across the trail. We soon managed to toss the rope over it, and with a bit of practice, we got the jeans to swing across the trail, at about eye level.

 

Each of us had a task that evening. As our hapless friend Brad was struggling up the trail in the light of the full moon to be with his good friends, he would hear in the distance the bloodthirsty howl of a wolf.

That would set his mind racing. The next sound would be the hard splash of something in the creek just behind him. We pictured Brad spinning around in abject fear, expecting the wolf to attack at any moment.

As he turned back toward the lake to hightail it to where his worried friends were waiting, the other member of our team would release the rope, and the legs would swing across the trail, brushing Brad’s face.

 Now all we had to do was wait for our victim to arrive.  We congratulated ourselves, and wondered how loud his screams would be.

It was after midnight when we decided Brad would not be coming after all. He was must be sleeping in his car back at Pettit Lake.

We took one last look at the specter of the half-man swinging in the light of the full moon. Perhaps it was best that Brad had not come up the trail that night. The ghostly presence of the dead man hanging by a rope was even frightening us.

 

The next morning, we had all but forgotten the previous night’s shenanigans. We were too busy trying to fix a meal that didn’t involve brook trout. It was then we noticed an official-looking man on horseback riding into camp. He and his horse had run into something up the trail. He asked if we knew anything about it. We played dumb, which for us was not hard to do.

 

After taking a good long look at each of us, the man and his horse proceeded up the trail toward the next lake basin. We couldn’t tell if that snort we heard was from him or his horse.

 

About ten in the morning, Brad arrived at camp. He didn’t look right. He said he was walking up the trail with his head down, and out of the corner of his eye he spotted something that caused him to almost die of fright.

We tried to keep a straight face and had even promised ourselves that we would keep it a secret. But we were teenagers, so that was never gonna happen. 

Eventually he did forgive us, because later that day, after we had caught our limit of brook trout, we decided to climb the tallest mountain at the far end of the lake. There were places along the climb when each of us needed assistance. There is nothing like a tough climb to forge a tight-knit bond, regardless how asinine we had been the night before.

From our perch in the crow’s nest someone had built, we counted 22 mountain lakes and one highway. It was my first major climb, and I quickly learned what experienced climbers tell novices: climbing up is optional, but coming down is mandatory. And usually much harder.

I had never seen so many lakes. I could make out the route of that 50 mile hike I had taken a year a year earlier. The Sawtooths were revealing themselves to me. There was a logic to the landscape that I never would have grasped without that climb to 10,000 feet.

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I’ll be the first to admit that my resume was downright sad. I had attended high school at Mt. Angel Seminary, where I studied to be a Catholic priest and where I had developed a like/knack for writing.

How did I get there? It turned out that the Benedictine nun who taught 7^th grade at Sacred Heart School in Boise had gotten the assignment to teach 8^th grade the following year. It was a bit strange, but we just figured they were running out of nuns.

What that meant was she had two years to instill in me a belief that I was someone special, that I had what she called a “vocation,” and that the next obvious step was the Catholic priesthood. That meant I was on my way to a place called Mt. Angel Seminary, located on a hilltop above the little town of Mt. Angel, Oregon. To this day I still marvel at the impact? of Sister Mary Barracuda on my teenage years.

At Mt. Angel Seminary my high school teachers were Benedictine monks. Everyone on that hilltop wore long black robes, including me.  Life was nothing if not structured. You knew where you’d be every hour of the day.

The first bell rang at 6:00 a.m.; the second bell ten minutes later. You better have your bed made and be heading to study hall by 6:25. After half an hour of study hall, there was a walk to the monastery crypt for religious services and the Mass. Afterwards, the 150 of us highschoolers headed to the breakfast hall located in a nearby building. 

We each were assigned a weekly stint waiting on the others, and we were judged by our ability to bring extra Wheat Chex or Cheerios to the six guys sitting at our assigned tables. The rubbery pancakes made by the seldom-seen nuns were a special treat, and an exceptional student waiter was the one who could track down uneaten pancakes and deliver them to the hungry teenagers. After breakfast we all cherished the half-hour of "free time" before the first class at 9:00 a.m.

 

My freshman class was the largest ever: 65 students. It was the era of Pope John the 23^rd, and there was a feeling that “change” was on the horizon for the Catholic Church. The size of our class seemed to prove it.

 

However, one of the things that changed almost daily in my world was the number of students in our class. Sometimes a student would leave between evening study hall and breakfast, with nary a good-bye. Apparently, having a “vocation” in a monastery of monks, with no girls on campus and no mom and dad nearby, was not what some teenagers had signed up for. By senior year in high school, our original class had dwindled to 25 students.

 

The classes themselves were rigorous and fairly classic. My favorite class was English. I’m sure I landed in the 99^th percentile in punctuation, thanks to Father Ignatius of the Order of the Benedictines. I also liked Speech and Debate. My debate partner and I always did well in the tournaments held at various high schools around Portland, Oregon.

Aside from a few trophies in oratory and debate, I also won First Place in “After Dinner Speaking” for the entire state of Oregon. My speech consisted of making fun of my seminary training.

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I figured all this gave me a leg up in the writing category. But in Television, the melding of words and interviews with video involved a whole different set of skills.

However, I had another ace. I had spent a summer as a college intern for a Republican congressman whose district included Eugene and Medford, Oregon. Think Sun Valley and Challis. I can only guess that the Political Science Department at the University of Oregon was not fond of Congressman John Dellenback, and so chose me as his intern.

 

Washington, D.C., was an alien place to me, but one with magnificent museums, exotic sandwiches, and secret tunnels and passageways throughout the Capitol. I may be a slow learner, but it took me only two days of intense humidity to know precisely how to shut down the government. Derail the air-conditioning. By noon the deed would be done without firing a single shot.

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But it was what I did after graduating from college that seemed to matter the most to me. I had spent a few weeks in a tent outside the mountain town of Idaho City, the self-proclaimed “Ghost Town That Refused to Die,” located 40 miles north of Boise.

 I was on my way to Whitefish, Montana, to visit my older brother for several weeks. He owned property bordering the Bob Marshall wilderness. The day I had planned to leave, I wandered into O’Leary’s Saloon. The bartender just happened to be an architecture student. We got to talking, and that’s when he informed me he was heading back to architecture school in a few days.

He said that Pat O’Leary would be looking for a new bartender for O’Leary’s Saloon. He introduced me to Mr. O’Leary, we shook hands, and I was hired.  Pat told me I’d pick up the necessary skills soon enough.

 

But not quite soon enough. A ‘ditch’ was the primary drink of many of the ‘locals.’ It’s a simple mix of bourbon and water. Thinking that the City Marshall deserved better, I ran a lemon slice around the lip of his glass and dropped in a red cherry. One of the locals, Jerry Lansing, was sitting next to the city Marshall. He looked me straight in the eyes and proclaimed, “Reichert, you’re not going to last 2 weeks here.”

That’s when I knew Idaho City was where I belonged.  

                                                        -30-