(not sure how done this one is... will we even use it?)

 

 

“Idaho, An Aerial Tapestry” is the result of purple prose coupled with a video camera attached to a Bell Jet helicopter. 

It is the kind of love letter that a young man might be too embarrassed to share til later in life... and only after apologizing for the over-wrought phrasing and the blind eye to any imperfections. I wrote this in 1999,  and after stumbling upon it recently, I thought it said something about our willingness to expand the Outdoor Idaho franchise.

"Aerial Tapioca" was the clear winner for the station in the era of VHS tape sales.
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One could spend a lifetime searching for a single image that is Idaho,

only to realize that the allure of this place lies precisely in its dazzling diversity of altitudes and attitudes.

 

This brilliant tapestry is woven from sturdy stuff, compelling in its geologic difference, suffused at once with the spirit world and the world of commerce.

A landscape of stunning contradictions.

 

For those intent upon understanding this region, then, a note of caution: beware of sudden geographical mood swings.

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It is a state that seems to have been parceled from many, wrote the author Vardis Fisher.

 

Indeed, there is little logic to her boundaries, except that provided by a portion of the Snake River and the Bitterroot mountains.

 

Temporarily part of the Oregon and then the Washington Territories, Idaho once held -- within her territorial boundary -- all of Montana and most of Wyoming, a territory even larger than that of Texas.

 

But by the time she burst onto the national stage as a full-fledged state in 1890, no one could ever accuse Idaho of looking like all the rest.

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No guest from the east has been so readily accepted, so fervently embraced as the Snake River.

 

Streaming west from its birthing grounds high in the mountains of the Continental Divide, the Snake gathers momentum as it winds its way through ancient glacial highways, beside exquisite postcard scenery.

 

 

 

At 10 million years, these are among the youngest of America’s mountain ranges… and likely the most famous.

 

Lonely French trappers named them the Tetons,  granite spires shoved heavenward through a massive fault line, then chiseled and sculpted by Nature’s omnipresent hand.

 

On the east side lies the valley of Jackson Hole. On the Idaho side, a series of foothills stairsteps up the base of the 13,000 foot peaks.

 

It’s a grand entry for any river, particularly one that will touch virtually every aspect of Idaho life as it carries more than twice the water of the Colorado.

 

But almost immediately the Snake is corralled, forced to linger, like a favorite relative we’re not ready to see leave just yet, first at Jackson Lake reservoir and then at Idaho’s Palisades reservoir. 

Here the drama of rushing water has slowed to an imperceptible crawl.

 

Below Palisades dam we catch a rare and wonderful glimpse of what life must have been like, even 200 years ago.

This blanket of old growth cottonwood trees provides sanctuary for bald eagles, osprey, deer, elk, and moose.

 

For many this irrigated land has been the source of material wealth and personal reward.

Yet it is hardly a conquered landscape.

As any farmer knows, it is more a blending of dreams and topography, requiring cooperation with neighbors and with Nature.

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Further to the north, in a land accustomed to legends, a trout haven known as Henry’s Lake lies nestled in the curved, collapsed remains of a large volcano.

 

And from this lake emerges a small inconspicuous stream.

 

It meanders in no particular fashion through meadows of lush grass.

But its destiny awaits, just around the bend, at a place called Big Springs.

 

For here, over a hundred million gallons of water a day gush from the earth, draining the Yellowstone aquifer and transforming an ordinary stream into the legendary Henry’s Fork.

 

The Henrys Fork of the Snake River:  it was captured in our imagination, and because of that has itself escaped capture.

 

In the last decade, folks have worked hard to let the river sing, and its song has been heard around the world.

 

Cascading from the rim of the ancient Island Park caldera are two of the last unspoiled waterfalls of consequence in the West… upper and lower mesa falls on the Henry’s Fork.

 

Just beyond the thunder of the falls, beyond the lodgepole maze of forest, lies Idaho’s tiny Sahara Desert:  golden sand dunes, shifting and flowing uncertainly over the hardened lava surface of the Snake River plain.

The sands have blown in from former glacial lake beds, on the winds of ten thousand years.

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More than a mile high, it glitters like an opal. Clearly, this is not a sight one expects to see in desert country...

 

Bear lake, half in Idaho and half in Utah. It does have a way of startling visitors, particularly at certain times of the day. 

Calcium carbonate particles in the water catch the sun’s light and reflect back vibrant blues and shimmering turquoise.

 

Some have called it the Caribbean of the Rockies.

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From barren wasteland to fertile crescent, in a little more than one generation. There are few regions of the world that can make that claim so convincingly.

 

The secret of course is water. In the West life is written in water. And the passion with which men have pursued it has rivaled the passion of gold seekers.

 

Water had always been here in wondrous supply. The trick was to collect it in the spring and move it to farmers’ fields in the summer.

 

Fully eight percent of the nation’s total irrigated land can be found in Idaho, and most of that on the Snake River plain.

 

Even the diversion of water in the summer months does not completely dim the majesty of this 212 foot high falls.

 

 

 

Taller than Niagara, this spectacle is the signature work of the 15,000-year-old Bonneville flood, whose waters drained Utah with such force that its massive whirlpool eddies loosened blocks from the bedrock to create Shoshone Falls.

 

In the summer months, Idahoans can’t seem to have both irrigated crops and a Snake River.

 

The proof is here at Milner Dam, where the river ends…its water spoken for, diverted into Northside and Southside canals, to fuel the engine of the Idaho economy.

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But like the mythical Phoenix rising from its ashes, the Snake River emerges once more.

Fed by rain and snow and lost rivers, the waters of the Snake River aquifer have traveled underground, through fractures in the porous basalt, across the entire width of Idaho, to finally break free at Thousand Springs.

 

The cornucopia of sugar beets and potatoes, barley and corn masks the true nature of this region. The thin veneer of green extends only as far as the canals and irrigation pipelines.

 

But beneath all this courses a network of fissures and fractures and cavities carrying the equivalent of several centuries of Snake River runoff.

 

For thousands of years no one knew about the Snake River aquifer below.

 

No one knew that this sackcloth covering of basalt lava hides a trail that leads directly to Yellowstone, directly to a stationary hotspot that is blowtorching a path through the slowly drifting continental plate.

 

No one knew that the Snake River plain is the remnant burial ground of former Yellowstones.

 

But this desert is more than a dreary, featureless region dominated by sagebrush.

Hidden throughout these dry and empty spaces are breathtaking canyon lands, hiding rivers which seldom see the sun.

 

Twisted lava fields of eerie desolation, where eruptions seem to occur every 2000 years.

 

 

Golden banks of sand, North America’s tallest sand dunes, blown in and deposited by the wind.

 

And some of the oldest rock on the continent, towering granite outcroppings that suggest a silent City of Rocks.

 

Our senses tell us this is an unchanging plain, fixed in time. But science knows better.

Approximately 2000 years ago, boiling floods of stone gushed from cinder cones and fissures along a great rift.

 

Idaho has no national park, but it does have this National Monument, a tribute to the awful and on-going inner workings of the planet.

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Before there was fire, there was water, several thousand feet of it.

A million years ago a massive lake covered most of the plain. When Lake Idaho drained suddenly through what is now Hells Canyon, the mouths of the Owyhee and the Bruneau rivers landed high above the lake floor.

 

Thus began the inevitable downward erosion through basalt lava, and the creation of one of Nature’s most enchanting and primitive landscapes.

 

If awe and inspiration are hallmarks of religion, then here the age-old connection between the desert and the spiritual is in full display.

For who among us is not inspired by the incisive power of rivers like the Bruneau, whose swift, brown water has cut an 800 foot deep slit through solid pink rock.

 

Or the wide-ranging sweep of the Owyhee, where big horn sheep outnumber the humans.

 

Along the thin green corridor of a river’s edge, wherever it was possible to gain a toe hold, people tried… miners, ranchers, outlaws, and hermits…anyone with a hankering for solitude and isolation.

 

Geologists point to this Owyhee country as the origin of the Snake River plain.

One grand hypothesis has a meteor crashing here with enough force to wound the earth’s mantle itself, thus sparking a hot spot that is today evident under Yellowstone National Park.

 

 

 

The massive and explosive outpourings of rhyolite lava commenced 15 million years ago, capped later by countless flows of less volatile black basalt lava.

 

And over the top of this unmovable force, searching for a way to the sea, flowed an irresistible force, with nothing but time on its side.

 

The brown silted waters of remote Owyhee County eventually merge with the Snake.

 

The river continues its arcing path through canyons made famous by birds of prey, and past boulders planted high and dry by the awesome force of the Bonneville flood.

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Further north another famous watershed fans out across a convoluted landscape.

The fingers of the Boise River trace the contours of alpine covered mountains racing headlong toward desert lowlands. 

 

It was an early goal of U.S. Reclamation to hold back all this water. They did that, in 1915.  And a thousand feet below, a treasure valley prospered.

 

This is Idaho’s largest metropolitan area, its capitol,  renowned for its trees, for the high-tech flavor of its industry, and for the quality of life. 

 

It’s a region with the enviable task of working and playing and protecting the many faces of the Boise watershed.

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Light on the mountains. Gem of the mountains. To many of us that will always be the real meaning of the word Idaho.

 

Mountains as jagged and crumpled and ragged and pleated as the Snake River plain is flat.

More than eighty named mountain ranges, with the center of the state underpinned by the deep stone of the Idaho batholith.

 

Like the side of a tree straight up, a Shoshone Indian explained to Lewis and Clark.  That’s an image of Idaho with a lot of staying power... Straight up. Straight up through the molten lava.

Straight up skyward into the heavens.

Straight up into our hearts.

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But even in the midst of this sea of endless peaks there is diversity. Consider the Lost River Range.  It takes its name from the waters that sink into the desert floor below.

 

But up here at 12,662 feet the name means one thing:  Mt. Borah. 

 

Only fifty miles from the flat lava plains, Borah Peak rises on the crest of a massive fault block, in one of the most active earthquake prone regions of the West. 

 

Because it is so remote, Borah receives little recognition. Few can identify its shape. 

But many remember the 1983 Mt. Borah earthquake, when the valley floor dropped four feet, and the Lost River Range rose a foot.

 

Further east, the morning sun catches the starkly barren peaks of the Lemhi Mountains. The Lemhi parallels the Lost River range, its origin a product of earthquakes that uplift mountains and sink valleys.

 

Thus one feature of Basin and Range mountain building is the flat valley floor that surrounds the elongated range.

 

And that’s where we find the town of Salmon, its back to the long spine of the continental divide, and its future straddling the famous River of No Return.

 

For over four hundred miles the Salmon River winds its way through the spiritual heart of Idaho. In the lower forty-eight, it’s the longest river completely contained within one state.

 

For half that distance, highways and roads provide a comfortable view of the river that stopped Lewis and Clark.

 

Eventually the Salmon doubles back to the West, streaming toward its rendezvous with the Frank.

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The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area… preserved in law, as a place “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” 

 

The Frank is the largest single forested Wilderness in the continental U.S., larger than Yellowstone.

 

It’s the crown jewel, the forest primeval, a spiritual tonic for the soul.

 

“The river is almost one continued rapid,” wrote William Clark, in the summer of 1805. “The passage with canoes is entirely impossible.”

 

Ah, but that’s precisely why the Salmon River and its famous tributary, the Middle Fork, is so beloved by so many people.

 

And with the nation’s blessing, it will continue to run free, the longest undammed river in the lower forty eight… as free as in the days of Lewis and Clark.

 

Rafters take a week to float the 100 miles of protected wilderness of the Middle Fork. It’s a week they wish could go on forever.

 

 

The Middle Fork and the South Fork drain the Idaho batholith, a 70 million year old chunk of granite the size of some states, with enough variations on a theme to last a lifetime.

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To fly among these serrated peaks, to follow the tracks of this rugged granite wave, to peer down into cobalt blue lakes, is to understand the redemptive power of Nature.

 

It’s country big enough to be the headwaters of rivers like the Salmon, the Boise, the Big Wood, the Payette.

Little wonder that this is the most photographed region of the state.

 

But even in this last great vestige of primitive America, towns have sprung up.

Along the Big Wood River, Sun Valley glitters in the international spotlight, its celebrity status assured at the base of a world-class ski mountain.

 

 

 

The folks who live in mountain communities like McCall know they have been changed by their surroundings, and they would have it no other way.

 

Meanwhile, as far to the west as it’s possible to go in Idaho, the Snake has veered hard north for one final push, one glorious finale.

 

Towering overhead, the Seven Devils, the caretakers of Hells Canyon.

 

In a state known for exquisite canyon building, nothing compares in size and scope. This silver coil of a river has carved a canyon deeper than that of the Colorado… the deepest river gorge in America.

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It feels comfortable, like home. The lush, gentle curvature of the landscape soothes the mind. Something tells you that life is easier here.

 

Water flows abundantly; in fact, it’s a veritable lakescape. And green, everywhere green. 

 

Crops grow without irrigation. And they grow without fail. Rainfall favors northern Idaho. 

That simple fact – that, and a rich loamy soil that holds the water – has made the Palouse the world’s foremost producer of winter wheat. 

 

These undulating hillsides, randomly arranged, and brilliant in their diversity of colors, are, in effect, a sea of wind dunes… blown in by strong southwesterly currents, perhaps before the last ice age.

 

The green lawn, Pelouse in French, stretches and swells and flows.

 

Surrounded by fields of wheat and barley, rapeseed and lintils, the university town of Moscow adds a decidedly erudite tone to the region.

This is home to the state’s land-grant college, entrusted with the study of forestry, mining and agriculture.

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The Palouse country sits high above the lowest point in Idaho.

 

A mere 738 feet above sea level, Lewiston owes its existence to the convenience of water. Once the end of the line for steamboats, Lewiston is today a seaport, the most eastern of western seaports, without the salt, without the tides.

 

And it is here we bid goodbye to the Grand Dame of Idaho rivers, the Snake... A thousand miles of work and toil, made even more evident by her encounter, at the confluence, with the Clear water.

 

Tracing the path of the Clearwater River takes us on a journey into the gray predawn of history… past the discovery of gold in 1860 that shook the region like an earthquake…

past the salmon fishing grounds of the Nez Perce, and the adventures of Lewis and Clark…

past the junction of three rivers – the Lochsa, the Selway, and the Clearwater…

and into the Bitterroot mountains and the 70 million year old granite of the north Idaho batholith.

 

Here lies a source of the Clearwater, north Idaho’s largest river drainage.

Forty years ago America debated which special lands should be set aside as the nation’s first wilderness. The upper reaches of the Selway River made the first cut.

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Northern Idaho is land overrun by floods. Flooded first with lava flows from the east, then fifteen thousand years ago, with ice flows from the north.

 

The warmer climate chased away the glaciers, but the tell-tale signs remain: glacial deposits, natural levies for beautiful lakes.

 

Managed in part by the Coeur d’Alene Indian Tribe, Coeur d’Alene Lake lives up to its billing as one of the world’s five most beautiful lakes.

 

Coeur d’Alene is the Panhandle’s largest city and its major watering hole, with beautiful beaches and resort hotels.

 

But its roots are tangled in mining and timber, and the rivers that flow into the lake take us back to those heady days.

 

This was the richest silver mining district in the world, producing more than a billion ounces of silver between 1885 and 1985.

 

This twenty-mile circle, known as Silver Valley, produced more than silver, lead, zinc and gold. It also produced incredible wealth, mining strife, heavy metal poisons, and a colorful history for the ages.

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At the lower end of Lake Coeur d’Alene, visitors marvel at a river within a lake. Lakes on both sides of the St. Joe River merged, with the construction of Post Falls Dam.

 

The fabled history of monster trees and lumberjacks to match grew up along the banks of the St. Joe. Old growth white pine, six foot in diameter, is now history, lost to the saw, to the 1910 fire, and to disease.

 

But trees grow fast in these parts, and timber towns like St. Maries rely upon that promise.

 

Further north, the curved splendor of a former ice age is evident in rounded peaks and u-shaped valleys… and 1200-foot-deep Lake Pend Oreille.

 

Idaho’s largest and deepest lake is an inland sea capable of ferocious storms that capsize boats, capable also of shimmering patterns of serene liquid light.

 

At the point where Idaho is less than 50 miles wide, the mark of the ice is everywhere evident. 

 

Ancient ice flows trapped, then released a flood of biblical proportions through the mouth of the Clark Fork River, often called the greatest flood documented by man.

 

Traveling north from Sandpoint, 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.

 

 

The delicate play of fading sunlight on water creates the illusion of a gentle, sleepy blue wonderland.

 

Yet the Selkirk mountains that surround Priest Lake and continue into Canada are some of the West’s most rugged. Teeming with the mystery of wildness and home to caribou and an occasional grizzly bear.

 

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

 

 

 

(from the song “Idaho” by Beth & Cinde, Wild Roses)

Sunlight shining on the mountains. That’s how you got your name.

Moonlight dancing across your rivers, the wild and the tame.

I’ve been with you all my life. Your beauty I have known.

 

This is my song for Idaho. I’ll always call you home.

 

I wish that I had known you then, your forest and your skies.

Your meadows still un-walked by men, your lakes unseen by eyes.

 

And when the campfire smoke had cleared, and sunlight showed your face, they sang a song for Idaho, to celebrate your grace.

 

Singing Idaho. Idaho.

Though my feet may often wander, my heart will always go.

 

And like a long lost friend, I’m home again.

I’m home in Idaho.

 

 

Credits for Aerial Tapestry

 

Producer/Director/Editor            

John Crancer                        

                    

Producer/Writer/Host

Bruce Reichert

 

Aerial Videographers

Ricardo A. Ochoa

John Crancer

David Walsh

S.K. Symonds

 

Copyright 1999