Poet, Professor, Prankster
August 12, 2025
Among the hundreds who have helped shape the philosophy(?) of Outdoor Idaho, there are three individuals who stand out in my mind: Bill Studebaker, John Freemuth, and Cort Conley.
At one time each held the record for most appearances in our Outdoor Idaho series.
And there was a reason for that. They always brought authenticity and wisdom to our programs. Sometimes they provided a contrarian perspective, always thoughtfully presented. Occasionally, they even brought books and magazine articles, and even old films hidden away in other states' archives.
A former Idaho Public Television colleague, Bill Manny, who used to write for the Idaho Statesman, commented one day how different it was to seek interviews for Outdoor Idaho, as opposed to the newspapers for which he worked. People were enthusiastic, gracious, friendly and helpful, he said. He just wasn't used to that.
I’ve probably taken it for granted over the years, but looking back on it, Outdoor Idaho did benefit immensely from the generosity of strangers and friends.
I'd like to think they appreciated the series for its fairness and willingness to go the extra mile. I hope they realize how valuable they were to the show.
But for this chapter, I only profile three individuals. I could easily have featured more. But, hey, this chapter is already too damned long.
Bill Studebaker the Poet
Idaho had an inferiority complex. That’s what published poet and essayist Bill Studebaker informed me one day. He said it almost as an aside, as if everyone knew. I was surprised because I had come to Boise from North Dakota as a ten-year old, and I had seen the Sawtooth Mountains.
Idaho was hardly inferior.
He explained it this way. “Look at the early writings about this area. The historical event of having had the region leaped over, having had the region written about poorly and badly in many diaries and journals. Idaho was a place you traveled through quickly. We’re kind of a backlash from the coast. The sense of historical apology permeates a lot of the locals, a lot of the mentality.”
I had to agree. We had included excerpts from those early diaries in our 2009 “Pathways of Pioneers, Idaho’s Oregon Trail Legacy.” They were the kind of reviews that would have shuttered a Broadway production in the first week.
There was a reason it was known as the nation’s longest cemetery. Nearly one in ten never reached their destination. They lie buried in graves along Idaho’s part of the Trail, just deep enough that the coyotes wouldn’t dig them up.
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Bill was a prolific writer, a dozen published books, including a centennial anthology of Idaho poets. Being a fourth-generation Idahoan and a sixth-generation Westerner gave him special insight into understanding this state parceled from others.
I’m not sure I ever witnessed Bill laugh, at least around us, even when we did laughable things. When interviewing Bill, he was no-nonsense, knew the answers to our questions, and never stumbled. It was obvious he had thought about the larger questions of Life and had come out the other side relatively unscathed.
The first time Bill appeared in an Outdoor Idaho program was for our 1994 “A City Made of Stone.” I wanted something in the program that would contrast with the harsh granite of the City of Rocks National Reserve.
I had heard that Bill was a poet who taught at the College of Southern Idaho and wrote convincingly of Idaho landscapes. Maybe we could get him to read something for us. It would be the first time anyone had written a poem and then read it aloud on Outdoor Idaho. Sometimes that can work. Usually it doesn’t.
We sat him on one of the million nearby rocks, and when he started to read from his book of poetry, I knew we had found our guy. (name the book of poetry)
“This is the city no one built. Each monolith and boulder is crafted by wind and water. For convenience, all the streets run downhill and disappear in the distance. Right now hawks are out tag-teaming your lunch. Raven, rabbit, and coyote are wandering, wherever you go. And the silence? The silence is the sound of flowers. Purple-eyed mariposa, penstemon, and paintbrush. Especially paintbrush, applying more color... If you get lost, just knock, and every door will open.”
Bill believed that some landscapes had a consciousness, and that it’s concentrated in locations like the City of Rocks. His goal, he told us, “was to translate that into poetry, for people who don’t have the opportunity to come here. Or don’t respond to that consciousness.”
Now when I watch “A City Made of Stone” from the perspective of 30 years, I know we found the right person.
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We turned to Bill again in 1998 for his thoughts on Deserts. His book, “Travelers in an Antique Land,” offered insight into the life of the high desert. Then, ten years later we featured a rollicking Bill Studebaker kayaking a snow-covered mountainside for our “Extremely Idaho” program.
I had assumed Bill would fit comfortably under the category of “enviro,” but he was not someone you could easily define. That was brought home to me when he compared the residents of his hometown to Native Americans on a reservation, for our one-hour program “Salmon River Country.”
Bill was born and raised in the town of Salmon, and its namesake river flowed past his house. He saw it every day. It was hard to avoid, whether it was over-flowing its banks in late Spring, or partially frozen during deep winter.
“Wilderness as a concept is wonderful,” he told us, “but Locals feel like the Native Americans must have felt. Now they’re locked out, with no sensitivity given to their emotions, to the spiritual connections that locals have. That’s where the anger comes from. They feel they have a special right to it, because they have a special attachment to it.
“The locals and Native Americans now have something in common. They’re both on reservations. They don’t have access to the heart of the state.”
Bill made the case that the Salmon River was the spiritual heart of Idaho. “It’s undammed, it’s free, it’s a continuous watershed, in the center of the state. It’s kind of a river for all people at all times, unlike the Snake or the Clearwater, that are dammed and manipulated.”
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But it was for a creature under the waves that Bill showed his full humanity, and it’s frankly what drew us to him and separated this poet from the others.
“For me the salmon have been a symbol of a cycle of life, where you begin in a spot, you make a world journey, you return to that spot to give something back. It’s the ‘Hero’ cycle, the kind of thing that Joseph Campbell talked about, and Karl Jung talked about, where we begin, we journey, and we return.”
I remember my first encounter with a chinook salmon. My dad considered our family great adventurers, at least as adventurous as one can get in a Ford pickup with a camper on the back. So it was perhaps inevitable that one day we would journey to Bruce Meadows in Bear Valley.
And then I spotted it. My dog Gus began barking. He was obviously used to brook trout, and this fish clearly outweighed him, plus it looked like it had been in a cat fight. It was almost comical, as if someone had deposited the behemoth in a tiny stream for amusement, to watch it wiggle up the creek. Just one more proof that we weren’t in North Dakota anymore.
It was much later that I came to understand Bill’s perspective as I learned about the remarkable life story of this fish. Starting as an egg in a stream, one day the three inch smolt decides to head to the Pacific Ocean, tail first, using the currents to push it along.
It’s an 850-mile journey that once took less than two weeks. But the slack water from eight major dams along the way now seriously befuddles the vast majority of these world travelers who rely on current. The precious few who do survive the gauntlet have already begun the transformation to live entirely in salt water. That in itself is quite a feat! The Pacific Ocean will be its new home, as it travels a thousand miles in and around the Gulf of Alaska in search of food.
Then one day the urge to return home is overpowering. When she begins the journey back up the Columbia River toward Idaho, she’s sometimes larger than a man’s leg, and ready to scatter her eggs for the next generation.
Heading back home, her body must adjust once more, to live in Idaho’s fresh unsalted water. That’s why scientists call salmon anadromous -- a fish who ascends rivers from the ocean to breed. If she does manage to survive all the death traps along the way – the eight dams, the warming water, the orca whales and the seals and the birds – this remarkable fish will arrive at the stream where it had begun life three to five years earlier.
Let’s face it, there aren’t too many life stories that can compare. And yet, most Westerners hardly know of the effort these fish go through, just to get back to Idaho.
“This is death, you know,” said Bill. “The instinct that drives the salmon out of the ocean and up the stream to a gravel bar, where she wiggles a nest for her redd. But she knows that she had to come, she had to spawn to continue the cycle, to continue her species.
“And at the end she finally struggles in that cycle, and she’s going to give up, and she’s going to die. She’s going to suffocate in that very water that gave her life, her death being the great hope.”
She has fulfilled her destiny in an Idaho stream. “In the Salmon area we know of this cycle of the salmon,” said Bill. “It’s very important to us. We’re fighting for it. We’re fighting to preserve it."
The Outdoor Idaho crew was so impressed with the passion of Bill’s words that we produced a three-minute segment for our 30th Anniversary program, joining his words with our video, showing the life cycle of the salmon. Thirty years later that segment still carries a punch.
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Bill drowned on July 4th in 2008, while kayaking near Yellow Pine, Idaho. “Spill,” as his friends called him, was an expert kayaker. He knew the Salmon River and the famous Middle Fork as well as anyone alive. He had also kayaked the rivers back east and in Colorado and Utah. According to friend Rick Ardinger, Bill had become fearless in a hardshell kayak.
On that fateful July day, Bill chose a Class V rapid on the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River. “Flight Simulator” has a well-earned reputation as one of the ten biggest rapids for kayakers in the U.S., according to Zach Collier, owner of Northwest Rafting Company.
Very few would consider running that rapid even if they were fully healthy. And Bill was not healthy. He had been fighting a degenerative condition brought on by a severe car crash, and it was beginning to drain him of the strength of his limbs.
He had put in the hours working on strength-training machines, but like the Chinook salmon that he so revered, there was little he could do to change his fate, and he knew that. On Independence Day Bill and two friends entered the complex mile-long gauntlet of rocks and holes that stretches along six bends in the river.
Bill’s body was recovered three days later.
In Bill’s Obituary, written by his loved ones – and there were many who loved this man – were these words: “Even though he might have wanted a few more years in this world, he would not have wished for a more appropriate end to his life.”
John Freemuth, the Professor
John Freemuth and I had a special pact that served us well. He kept me from making a fool of myself whenever Outdoor Idaho tackled a major public policy issue.
And I made sure when interviewing him not to use his occasional rants during and after our on-camera interviews.
John was a passionate man with strong opinions, and when he was with us, he didn’t seem to care if the camera was rolling or not. He knew I wouldn’t use his venting about the “idiots” who were destroying the Republic, even though it would certainly have helped our ratings!
And he was correct. I had no desire to lessen his value to the state as an honest broker and bridge builder, as well as a respected academic. He brought people together to discuss their differences better than anyone I knew.
At one point there was talk of sending complete Outdoor Idaho video interviews of important people to the Idaho State Archives. The argument was that many of those interviews were special and needed to be saved for future generations. After all, in many cases, our interviews were often the last and perhaps the only lengthy discussions anyone had with them before they passed.
My response to turning John's various interviews over to be archived was an emphatic “Absolutely Not! At least not until we cleaned them up first." I believed the special pact between John and me extended beyond the grave.
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John's views were not so different from mine when it came to public lands. By the time I had met John, I had taken many trips into America's public lands. In our 2000 Outdoor Idaho program, "The People's Land," John expressed his feelings this way: "I would argue to anybody that, by and large, the public lands of the United State have been a policy success over the last hundred years. Could things have been done differently or better? Of course. But to fed-bash all the time as if it's the federal government that's caused it all... this to me is nonsensical. Look at all the benefits this has provided people in quality of life, in production of commodities. It's been a success, and most people who look at it over 100 years would say so."
In other words, criticize how the land is being managed but accept that those lands help define Idaho and much of the West. John believed it would be shortsighted to have the state accept ownership. Even Governor Butch Otter, who railed against the federal government, realized that a transfer of federal lands to state ownership would not benefit Idaho in the long run. In his last term as Governor, he commented to various business groups that his administration had studied the numbers, and decided owning the federal lands could bankrupt the state.
The cost of one bad wildfire season would prove overwhelming. The cost of consecutive bad wildfire seasons would likely require the state to begin selling off public lands to the highest bidder. And wildfires are just one of many issues facing the nation's public lands.
Hunters and ATVers know what happened in south-central Idaho when two Texas billionaire brothers bought up more than 170,000 acres of former Boise Cascade and Potlatch land. Almost immediately big red gates began appearing on lands that before had been open to sportsmen.
Like many other sportsmen, I lost access to some of my hunting and hiking and wood-cutting areas that were less than five miles from my cabin outside Idaho City. It's not far-fetched to suggest that if public lands went to the highest bidder, the general public would again be the losers.
Fighting over public lands is in our make-up, John contended in one of our many interviews. "It's always been that way. People tried to blow up the Constitution when we were trying to write it. I'm biased towards the notion of people sitting down and talking and trying to find common ground."
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John was executive director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University, as well as a teacher and mentor to masters and doctoral students. He organized important conferences with the Andrus Center, where participants could attempt to find that common ground. The experts John brought together came from all parts of the West.
One of those all-day conferences was the 2017 symposium “Why Public Lands Matter.” There was already a full schedule for the day, but John wanted to put together a forum about the convoluted White Clouds story in central Idaho; namely, how a 1960's proposed open pit molybdenum mine managed to become the nation’s newest Wilderness area 50 years later.
John convinced former Governor and Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus and ten-term Congressman Mike Simpson to free up their evening before the Conference. That allowed our forum to become the kick-off to the next day’s events. John invited me to moderate the discussion, and he would gather questions from the audience. I thought that was curious, because he usually did the moderating at these events. But I guess he just wanted to make sure Outdoor Idaho was tied to the event. But who knows, perhaps he also wanted a fall-guy in case things didn't go as planned. After all, what are friends for?
Joining Cece and Mike onstage were Idaho Conservation League executive director Rick Johnson and Rocky Barker, respected outdoor writer for the state’s largest newspaper, the Idaho Statesman.
All four of the men definitely knew how to play to a full house! The ensuing discussion was lively and informative and at times even joyous. Cecil Andrus talked about how in his 1970 campaign, he took up the mantle of saving Castle Peak in the White Cloud Mountains from the ignominy of an open pit mine, and how that one decision delivered him enough votes to catapult him into the Governor’s office, where he served for four terms, with a break as Interior Secretary under President Jimmy Carter.
Mike Simpson described the importance of the word “Compromise” as he worked for more than fifteen years to secure Wilderness status for the Boulder-White Clouds area. Most of his friends and colleagues had come to accept that the best the Congressman would be able to deliver was National Monument status. But it was the Congressman's seventh(?) attempt at Wilderness legislation that surprisingly prevailed, creating not one but three new Wilderness areas: a White Cloud Wildernss, a Boulder Wilderness, and a Jerry Peak Wilderness. These weren't as big as a National Monument might have been -- and some enviros tried to derail the compromise -- but Simpson's bill seemed to satisfy both the residents of left-leaning Sun Valley and of right-leaning Challis. Let's face it, that's a remarkable compromise.
Rick Johnson recounted how Interior Secretary Sally Jewell came up to him on the day that President Obama signed the Wilderness bills, wanting to know what this “Idaho story” was all about. Was there a secret sauce that allowed Idahoans to do what others could not? The answer, said Rick, was perseverance... and someone named Mike Simpson.
Rocky Barker described the twists and turns of Idaho Wilderness legislation, how it used to be a Democrat talking point, but that recent successes were the result of strong Republican support. The Owyhee Wilderness was a pet project of U.S. Senator Mike Crapo, and now Congressman Simpson, with the assistance of Senator Jim Risch, with the White Clouds Wilderness.
To me, the highlight of the evening was a simple gesture. At one point in the discussion Cecil Andrus and Mike Simpson, who were sitting next to each other on the stage, reached over and gave each other a “fist bump.” The packed room loved it. A Democrat and a Republican, sharing a symbol of respect and approval and companionship. When will that happen again?
I admit, it took a good ten seconds for me to gather my composure as the moderator.
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John loved to teach, and it was all in a day's work when he got a call from a national reporter from back east. She had heard that John was an expert about BLM. John explained to the reporter that there are two federal agencies that control the vast majority of public lands in Idaho: The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. And that in Idaho and much of the west, BLM almost always refers to the federal agency... not to Black Lives Matter.
John told this story often. To him it was indicative of how dysfunctional America was becoming, and how important the job of teaching was to the well-being of the nation.
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One of the things that makes Idaho different from neighboring states is that we have no National Park. Oh, sure, there are National Monuments -- like Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument and Craters of the Moon National Monument -- but that's a far cry from a Yellowstone or Yosemite or Grand Canyon National Park. A Wilderness is congressionally approved legislation. Once enacted into law, it's virtually impossible to change. A National Monument can be created by the stroke of a President's pen... and un-created by the next President.
Most of Yellowstone National Park is in Wyoming, but there is a sliver of the Park that spills over the border near Island Park, Idaho. That 50 square miles has no roads and no inhabitants. No one I know considers it Idaho's National Park, but we visited that sliver of lodge pole pine for our 1992 show, "A State Without a National Park."(or another show?) Nice country, but not exactly breathtaking. At least you don't have to pay to get into the Park.
At the time, we did not know we were in the "Zone of Death." It was 15 years after our show aired that a Michigan State University Law Professor wrote a paper called "The Perfect Crime." He argued that, theoretically, a person could murder someone in that Zone and avoid conviction. How can that be, you ask?
According to the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, a jury has to be comprised of people who are from the same federal district and also the same state where the crime was committed. In other words, a juror would have to be from both Wyoming and from Idaho. Forming a jury would be impossible since there are no people who live in that section of Yellowstone.
That interesting legal theory even resulted in the 2022 Idaho Legislature adopting House Joint Memorial 3, calling on Congress to close the Zone of Death loophole. National Park Service officials don't seem too worried, however. They say they'll handle the miscreants.
Our show, "A State Without a National Park" concerned itself, instead, with this question: Why would a state with so much beauty choose not to establish a National Park?
I thought it instructive to visit a sister state with several National Parks and asked John Freemuth to join us as we drove to Canyonlands National Park in Utah. John had been a seasonal ranger for the Park Service, and he had a special affection for that federal agency. He also liked the cool hat that he got to wear.
My real motivation for inviting John was that I had allowed Outdoor Idaho to get tripped up by a deadline coming too fast upon us. With John in the station wagon, we could at least discuss the best way to approach the half hour program, as we sped down Interstate 84. The Outdoor Idaho editor needed to begin editing as soon as we got back to the station. I knew we were cutting it close, but luckily we finished the show with hours to spare.
Years later, while reminiscing about that trip, John and I agreed that Canyonlands National Park was, indeed, a special place. But it was the cattle in a fenced pasture near where we camped that had warmed our hearts. As we played catch with a ball near the fence, the herd of cows moved their heads back and forth in unison with the ball, first one way and then the other. We thought, it's too bad no one had videotaped that.
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John and I may have disagreed about the need for a national park in Idaho. He was holding out for full National Park status for Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. The polls suggested 57% of the people in the nearby rural towns wanted a National Park, and it would be an easy transfer, since both the National Monument and the National Park are managed by the National Park Service. The size would remain the same; hunters would still be able to hunt. Only the name would change, but that alone would draw thousands more to the nearby towns of Arco and Carey.
John was incensed that the Idaho Farm Bureau could turn people against the idea in the home stretch. Their argument: you simply can't trust the federal government to do what they said they would do.
Personally, I was ambivalent to National Park status. If people living near Craters of the Moon were willing to accept an increase in Winnebagos and tourists, who was I to tell them they were wrong. After all, we're talking about small towns struggling to exist amidst a sea of sharp black basalt rock. What could a hundred thousand more visitors do to a place called Craters of the Moon, where temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit are not uncommon on a hot summer day.
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John and I were on the same page when it came to the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. National Park status had been proposed as far back as 1911 by the Idaho Federation of Women's Clubs, but the idea went nowhere. Even referring to it as the "Alps of America" didn't help U.S. Senator William Borah's efforts.
In 1960, U.S. Senator Frank Church again tried to make the Sawtooths Idaho's first National Park. But too much pushback led him to propose a National Park "study," which eventually led to the concept of a Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The SNRA provided protection, but was more acceptable to the citizens of Stanley and surrounding areas. Hunting and fishing and wood-gathering would still be allowed. And a National Recreation Area was not the magnet that a National Park would be.
Another thing John and I agreed upon was the value of the Sawtooth Society, a non-profit group created to address the threat of inappropriate development and deteriorating recreational infrastructure. The non-profit organization has secured millions of dollars to fund conservation easements on much of the private land in the Sawtooth valley.
Bob Hayes, one of the founding members of the Sawtooth Society, met us at Galena summit, so we could look down on the Sawtooth Valley, for our 2012 program, "A Sawtooth Celebration."
"What you don't see is what is important," said Bob, looking down at the valley below. "What absolutely blows people's minds when they've come over Galena summit, they look down into the Sawtooth valley and see this wide open expanse. They see the Sawtooths to their left. They see the White Clouds to their right. They see the Salmon River running down the middle of this broad valley, and they can't imagine why it isn't filled up with homes."
According to Bob Hayes, the Sawtooth Society's vision has been a marked success. "That isn't to say that everything is perfect, but it's darn near perfect," he told us.
But the area is starting to lose that pastoral feeling the SNRA was established to protect. There are those who prefer McMansions in the heart of the valley. And it's hard to compete with rich men's egos: the millionaires and billionaires who think nothing of violating one of the best views on the planet. Shame on them.
(add to this the memorial not celebrating snra)
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Cort Conley, Prankster
Draft 3.6.7 August 11th
5 pm
Idaho writer Cort Conley is my kind of enigma.
He earned a law degree from the University of California and even spent time working for the infamous attorney Melvin Belli. Yet he exited law to commit himself to the life of a river runner and guide.
He’s a serious man who has rubbed shoulders with renowned western writers like Wallace Stegner, Barry Lopez, and Edward Abbey. Yet he will go to great lengths to arrange highly elaborate pranks on friend and foe alike.
He has also served as a sounding board for Outdoor Idaho and is one of our staunchest supporters. Yet he doesn’t even own a television set, preferring to get his news from the Wall Street Journal, scholarly articles, and local newspapers.
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One of the many serendipitous events that made a difference to Outdoor Idaho was when Cort mailed me a copy of his Idaho for the Curious. I remember opening the package, thinking, who is expecting me to read a 700-page hardcover book organized by highways? It took only a few minutes to realize that I had in my hands the most entertaining and thorough book about Idaho that I had read.
His book quickly became required reading for the Outdoor Idaho crew, especially in the early years. Cort had made curiosity a commendable commodity.
You’ll discover, however, that the book won’t help you find a motel or a good restaurant. “Idaho for the Querulous” -- my title for his tome – is instead a history and travel book, but with a bite.
His description of Dworshak Dam, the third tallest dam in the United States, on the North Fork Clearwater River, is a serious indictment:
“Unfortunately, there have always been more politicians than suitable dam sites,” he wrote. “Building the highest straight-axis gravity dam in the Western Hemisphere, on a river with a mean flow of 5,000 cubic feet per second, at a cost of $312 million, in the name of flood control, is the second-funniest joke in Idaho.
"The funniest joke is inside the visitor center: a government sign entreats: ‘... help protect this delicate environment for future generations.’”
I once suggested to Cort, half in jest, that one day we should team up and try our hand at a podcast. Cort’s response: Really? What’s a podcast?
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For my first major trip after I retired, I visited Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, Africa. Decades of poaching and civil war had completely decimated what was once the jewel of the continent. Idaho philanthropist Greg Carr had taken on -- as his life's work -- the return of Gorongosa to its former glory.
When I arrived in 2024, Greg had just agreed to donate another $100 million to assist in returning wildlife to the --- acre park. His real interest, he told me, was the work he was doing with the many villages around Gorongosa, building schools, jump-starting businesses and seeing to it that the best and brightest village kids got into prestigious colleges in Europe and America. His measure of success, he said, was when Gorongosa National Park could be completely self-sufficient in all aspects of running a huge enterprise.
When I returned to the states, I knew I had to see Cort, to share some of my experiences. I knew Cort was not like other people, but I had forgotten just how true that is. There he was, sitting at an outside table at a coffee shop, wearing a khaki safari hat, a camouflage shirt and sunglasses, with a leopard skin draped over one chair and a cheetah skin over the other. My white chocolate mocha was waiting for me, on a tablecloth featuring Africa’s largest charismatic animals.
My colorful African print short-sleeved shirt that I had purchased just before boarding the plane in Johannesburg was clearly unworthy of the occasion.
Once again Cort had outdone me. In fact, I think he always outdoes me, except maybe when mutual friend Hope Benedict and I jokingly threatened to create a Facebook page for this most private of individuals. "Meet you in Court" was his short, cryptic retort. I suspect he meant it. Of course, how would he even know?
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He may live in the book world, but Cort seemed peeved when I told him that John Freemuth still held the record for most appearances in an Outdoor Idaho show. But he could still win the honor, I suggested, with a few more interviews. After I retired, however, Cort's interest in pursuing the record faded like a sego lily in August.
The more I learned about Cort, the more I came to believe he's more "local" than some Idaho natives. He built his own log cabin up against the Sawtooth Mountains, and he did it with traditional hand tools. He's worked as a ranch hand and a packer, a boatman, and a lookout.
I also appreciate him because he has seldom criticized my prose. In fact, he was the one who suggested that I write a memoir, using Outdoor Idaho as the hook. “There will be nothing else like it out there,” he told me. I said I could hardly remember what I had for breakfast. “No one cares what you had for breakfast,” he replied.
This is something a mutual friend shared with me, which suggests that the man has a soft side that he hides well. When Cort read a story in the rural Grangeville newspaper about a young girl who couldn't afford the $500 pet deposit for a puppy, he sent the author of the article the $500 deposit, with one admonition: "It's OK to let people know this happened, just not 'who'."
"My mantra," he wrote to the reporter, is not to say 'if there's anything I can do.' Instead find something and do it... Perhaps it will inspire others to act on their better impulses."
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One day in 1998 Cort presented us with a large film reel that he said we would want to watch. We quickly transferred it to a digital format for our editing system. What we saw was 1926 footage of the first wooden boats to run the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.
We were immediately enthralled by the black-&-white footage and the nerve of the men in canoes daring to tackle life-threatening rapids, sight unseen.
Payette businessman and photographer Henry Weidner and three others launched two canoes into Bear Valley's Marsh Creek. Henry carried with him a 16mm hand-cranked camera. His goal was to capture the wonders of central Idaho and to cobble together a movie from the experience.
One of the canoes overturned and Henry lost some of the footage he had shot. Nevertheless, he did edit a movie from what film survived. According to the Lemhi County Museum, the subtitled version played in theaters in Idaho, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Oregon, as well as Chicago and Philadelphia.
Cort also acquired for us one of the full-sized posters that Caxton Printers had produced for the occasion. "Henry Weidner used the posters to promote his movie," explained Pat Metzler. "Looking at the poster made me wonder how film goers must have felt entering the theaters. They probably thought, 'This Idaho must be something special!'"
Cort also gave us a remarkable color film from a 1939 trip, featuring three world-famous boatmen. Amos Burg piloted a rubber raft they called Charlie, the first inflatable rubber raft on the Middle Fork. Doc Frazier and Buzz Holmstrom rode the wooden boats. The men traveled from Dagger Falls all the way to the town of Salmon.
Doc and Buzz developed the technique of going down the river backwards. No doubt it worked, but not always. We have great footage of one of the boats flipping in an unnamed rapid. The film also featured guys gigging four-foot salmon and walking around with the fish on poles.
The film introduced us to Earl Parrot, the Hermit of Impassable Canyon. We saw Earl using a series of wooden ladders to climb up to his dwelling place above the cliff, where he also had a garden. He climbed back down to the river whenever he wanted to pan for gold.
Since we wanted to be as accurate as possible, we put Cort in the audio booth where he could watch the film with us and offer a running commentary about who and what we were seeing. "Our goal," said Pat, "was to use as much of the film as we could, and Cort's narration really made the old film come alive for us."
Cort told me he saw Outdoor Idaho as a repository of important moments in the state's history, and that we needed to have films like these in our digital library. His friend Barry Lopez, the author of Arctic Dreams, often referred to Cort as "a man of rivers." And we were the beneficiary.
Outdoor Idaho still uses that footage, as well as other films that Cort has found. The film from Cort and other boatmen have proved invaluable in telling the Idaho story. "They are some of our most popular programs," said Pat. "People love to see old footage from a time never to return."
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When Cort ventured into the edit bay, he was like a kid in a candy store, watching director Pat Metzler tweak the lighting and take out the “ums” and “ahs” to make our interviewees sound as smooth as possible.
It was always fun to joke with Cort about how I had butchered his latest interview, making him say things he never would have said. Cort would study my face to see if I was serious, because he sure as hell wasn't going to buy a TV set to find out.
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Sometimes Cort would regale us in the edit bay with stories usually involving pranks that he thought we’d appreciate... Like when the city of Boise cut down six healthy silver maple trees alongside Sixth Street in Boise. Cort considered that unnecessary and blasphemous. He took two pieces of rebar and formed a cross, and with a ¼ inch drill he embedded the cross into the stump. Then he splattered blood-red paint around the cross and stump. He did that to each of the six stumps.
Or the time he brought to Kathryn Albertson Park his mounted sage hen with its wings outstretched. He knew his friend, another birder like Cort, would be taking his morning constitution through the park with his camera. Cort was hiding in the bushes, with a string around the bird’s leg so it would seem to be moving. He knew the two of them would have a good laugh about it afterward.
I was also the recipient of one of Cort’s pranks. Cort had written a full-page letter directed to “Whom it may concern,” implying to public TV administrators that I “had betrayed the public trust and the emoluments clauses by trading on his public podium-pulpit and public name, thereby lining his already deeply green pockets.”
Cort’s supposed wrath was directed at a foreword I had written for a biography of Harry Shellworth, entitled Idaho’s Wilderness Visionary. Shellworth was a land agent for the Boise Payette Lumber Company, and his campfire gatherings each October at “Cougar” Dave Lewis’ cabin on Big Creek were legendary.
On one such hunting trip the discussion turned to ways of protecting the vast undeveloped lands along the Salmon River and its Middle Fork. Around the campfire were Idaho Governor Clarence Baldridge, Kellogg mining executive Stanley Easton, district ranger Richard Rutledge, and others.
The men favored the concept of “primitive area” and the protection that it could provide. In 1931 the U.S. Forest Service designated that land the Central Idaho Primitive Area, which became the precursor to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.
“His foreword itself should be called a ‘backward,’” Cort continued. “Once again, this ‘producer’ who always takes dead aim at mediocrity and never misses, has scored a bull’s eye.... His loopy syntax and rapturous egotism and hyperkinetic and analytical-less prose on behalf of a tree-hugging clotpole of yesteryear is inexcusable, unforgivable, no?
“What next? Are we to allow state employees to pen endorsements for Lorissa’s Turkey Jerky? Little Debbie Snack Cakes?”
He signed it H.C. Earwicker, an “every man” name from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.
I showed the letter to our Development folks at Idaho Public Television. They were used to hearing praise from our viewers, not harsh broadsides, and they were concerned.
I told them it was nothing to worry about, that it was Cort Conley, and I was being pranked, or at least I hoped I was. I told them that Cort had provided valuable resources to Outdoor Idaho, and that he seemed to like us. Besides, the likelihood of him donating money to our Pledge Drive was as likely as Highway 55 ever being considered worthy of the state’s main north-south roadway.
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In 1997, we invited Cort to join the Outdoor Idaho crew as we journeyed up north to follow in the footsteps of the Corps of Discovery. Cort had written convincingly about the Lewis & Clark story, so we made him our “guide.”
We took two crews, since we wanted to produce more than one program. We were shooting for an hour-long Special called “Echoes of a Bitter Crossing: Lewis and Clark in Idaho.” We hoped to also produce two Outdoor Idaho programs as well: “Lewis & Clark in Idaho” and “Lewis & Clark Among the Tribes.”
By the second day of a four day excursion, Cort had already created tension among the crews. One team he labeled Team A, consisting of Alberto Moreno. John Crancer and Pat Metzler were the Team B.
It was nearly dark when Team A discovered a tipi off in the distance. Luckily, that's where we found Nez Perce tribal elder Alan Pinkham, teaching young Nez Perce boys about their heritage. Even though it was getting late, we figured Alan couldn’t say “No” with his students present. We got the interview we needed, and Cort declared Team A the winner for that day.
My competitive colleague John Crancer, however, was not buying that. He had noticed an outside basketball court, with a single light illuminating the hoops. It was after 10 pm, but I knew we had to accept his challenge, in order to keep peace in the family. After getting to 20 points before Team A, John was finally satisfied, and we headed back to our tents for the night.
As I think back on it, Cort had accomplished several things on that trip. Aside from providing us with quotable material for our shows and making sure we didn’t miss something important along the L&C trail, he also kept the pressure on both teams to perform their best. We managed to get three programs out of our four-day shooting schedule. A pretty impressive use of everyone’s time.
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My favorite prank, which Cort told Pat and me in the edit bay with such gusto and laughter that we couldn’t help but be sucked into the humor of it, occurred along the banks of the Salmon River.
Cort’s friend Doug Tims had been the CEO of the raft-building Maravia Corporation and had a 27-year career as an outfitter on the Middle Fork of the Salmon.
In 1990 Doug purchased, along with several others, an 85-acre historic homestead deep in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Everyone called the private in-holding Campbell's Ferry.
William Campbell had established a ferry in 1898, to shuttle pack trains across the river and on their way to the Thunder Mountain gold diggings. After Campbell died, the Ferry fell on hard times.
Doug and Phyllis Tims spent nearly two decades and countless hours each summer refurbishing the cabin, installing an underground sprinkler system to give them a fighting chance when the fires raced over the mountains. They turned Campbell’s Ferry into a favorite stop-off for the rafters who float the river each summer.
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Doug had just finished his book Merciless Eden, about the many ‘characters’ along the river, including the colorful Frances Zaunmiller, the previous resident at Campbell’s Ferry.
Doug and Phyllis decided to invite about 40 friends and dignitaries to celebrate the renovation of the homestead and to thank those who had assisted Doug in the writing of his book. The gathering also coincided within a year of France's 100th birthday.
Among those invited were Cort and Richard Holm. Each had helped Doug with the proofing of his book. Richard is the author of several wilderness books, including Bound for the Backcountry, a history of Idaho’s remote airstrips.
All three men – Doug and Cort and Richard – were familiar with the story of Campbell’s Ferry and with Frances Zaunmiller.
Doug got them up to speed on the rumor about Frances and miner Jim Moore. The rumor involved a serious friendship and a fair amount of buried gold.
It’s likely that their liaison was mainly one-sided, because Frances was an attractive woman who had just become a widow, and Jim Moore was an elderly placer miner. Maybe to improve his chances and show his affection, Jim buried gold for Frances to recover after he passed on.
Frances wrote a regular column for the Idaho County Free Press in Grangeville. Her 20 years of weekly columns offered a glimpse of life in the backcountry. She wrote in the third person, and must have been pretty persuasive. She convinced the government to build a pack bridge across the river, since Campbell’s Ferry was no longer operating.
“I had casually mentioned to Cort that, wouldn’t it be fun to ‘discover’ the gold rumored to have been buried by Jim Moore, and to discover it just as Doug was entertaining his guests,” Richard recalled. “I thought nothing more about it, but Cort saw a prank in the making.”
Cort found an old red can from the 1940s and added some silver dollars and other small items from that era. He had tracked down one of Jim Moore’s letters to Frances, so he knew the miner's handwriting style. He found some parchment paper and composed the letter. An expert calligrapher penned the letter in the old miner’s handwriting, so that it looked like it had come from Jim Moore. Cort then had the letter antiqued.
All this was neatly layered inside the antique can, which was then sealed with black tar. At the bottom of all the items was a note that said, “Got you.” (YET TO GET EXACT QUOTE)
“The letter was priceless,” said Richard. “It involved Frances having an illegitimate child with Moore.”
Since Doug would have immediately suspected that his friend Cort was up to something, Richard’s wife Amy was the one who excitedly brought the old container right into the gathering at Campbell’s Ferry. It immediately got the attention of everyone at the event.
“I’ll never forget outfitter Wayne Johnson,” recalled Richard. “He said something like ‘Hang on. Before you open it, you have to think about the Antiquities Act of 1906. Do you or we have the authority to open this container?’ It was unbelievable, Bruce, and he was being honest!”
Nevertheless, Doug excitedly tore off the tar and the suspense grew with each item pulled out of the old can.
“When Doug came to the letter, some of Frances' family from back east were at the Ferry," said Richard, "and you could feel the tension when they found out they might have a cousin they had never met. The timing and how it all came together was unreal as I look back on it. Unreal!”
As Cort was telling Pat Metzler and me about his prank in the edit bay, he took particular delight in telling us that Wayne exclaimed to Doug, "Now you’re going to have to rewrite your book!”
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In 2025, Wayne Johnson was honored at the annual “Esto Perpetua” awards banquet in Boise, for his devotion and preservation of Idaho history. Both Doug and I were there for the ceremony. Cort was there, also.
Doug told me that he knew something wasn’t right when he saw the fool’s gold in the can. “That fooled the guests from back east,” he said, “but I knew the difference between fool’s gold and real gold. But I agree, it was an elaborate prank.”
They say that Revenge is a dish best served cold. On the Ferry property is a small museum that Doug and Phyllis maintained. It’s where river rafters can stop and learn about the history of the Ferry. I have visited it a handful of times on personal river trips, and it’s one of the favorite stops along the river for outfitted trips. The Forest Service estimates that 10,000 rafters each summer float that section of river.
In a glass case in the museum are Cort’s books, The River of No Return and The Middle Fork and Idaho Loners. (?) Next to them Doug penned a note that the 10,000 people who annually visit the museum can read: “Don’t believe a word this man writes. He lies.” (GET EXACT QUOTE)
You know, I’m beginning to think that pulling pranks on each other is a common trait among outfitters and guides.
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I consider Cort one of my dear friends. There are few people who can make me laugh like Cort can. If you want to know something about birds, he’s your man. If you want to know something about famous Western writers, Cort seemingly knows or knew them all, and is mentioned in the Acknowledgements of a handful of their books.
Cort definitely gave Outdoor Idaho a dimension that would have been lacking without his intelligence and his wisdom. His imagination inspired us in our creative endeavors.
I know he doesn’t like that I’ve written about him for this memoir. I’m guessing, when he reads this, there will be a prank coming my way when I least expect it.
But, hey, what are friends for.
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