Ghost Story

Do you see what I see? Rusty iron and weathered pine...

Layers upon layers...

Do you see trash? Or do you see a story?

The story I see always starts the same way. It is the late 19th century in the American West. A man slogs into an icy creek in the middle of nowhere, having trekked off the trail that veered from the last fork off the road he found at the end of the earth.

He spends spring, summer, and fall bent over his souped-up strainer, searching the silt for gold, silver, sapphire, garnet. When he stands up, he takes his axe to the fallen pine...

 ...and hews the trees into logs. He lugs these atop one another, till he has shelter from the snows, which will start at the end of September and continue through April.

News of a good strike lures other men....

...and the gears of the business of mining begin to turn.

The hum in the air lures the people who service the miners. Those who sell and repair mining equipment, those who barter dried beans, coffee, sugar. Those carrying grain for mules and oxen. Those selling whiskey. Or women.

 And then come the blacksmiths, the assayers, the bankers, the barbers...and a town comes to life.

In short order, a cemetary appears on the hillside.

If the mines continue to cough up ore and the government keeps those mineral prices steady, the next wave begins. Cast iron behemoths of inexplicable configurations, the machinery of ore extraction and processing, sit like giant mastodons on the edge of town.

And now the families pour in.They need real homes with front porches. Churches and schools. All the accoutrements from their lives back East.

And because men with whiskey and guns will be boys...

...a jail.

Populations surge, often to several thousand. It is called a boom town.

But in these remote areas, boom is just a breath ahead of bust. The men overfish the mines or the government devalues mineral prices. The railroad barons push them off The New Map. The gears of commerce begin to slow...and then they just stop. Everyone packs out, except the odd soul who has no stomach for moving--or no other place to call home. And Nature moves back in.
Sometimes, usually during the 1920s or 1930s, a mining company will take a second look. The town burps to life. With electricity, running water, and the stuff of the 20th century.

But that boom too will last just a moment. And then it will all be over.

Sometimes, a ghost town catches the attention of a private foundation or a state government, who will halt or even repair the decay. In most cases, the town just falls away, piece by piece.

Until it looks like this.

We spend hours roaming these towns. In California, Nevada, Utah...New Mexico and Arizona...and now,Idaho and Montana. He collects images, I hunt for bits of broken glass and china, odd pieces of rusty metal, dirty mattress ticking nailed to a wall. 

But there must be a bigger reason that we are drawn to these places, all of the same single story, over and over again.

We just don't know what it is.

Signs

Lots of signs in Idaho...the kind you don't see so much of in my neck of the woods.

Residents of the next town over were a little less temperamental...

...while those even further up the mountain tried a completely different approach.

This poor guy wasn't sure how he felt.

 Even the state government has a sense of humor. Can you imagine the guy who has to tell his cell mates that he's serving time 'cause he harassed the fish?

Then, there was this.

Some of the most compelling signs had nothing to do with words.

Some signs required interpretation. We found several sets of tracks at the secluded alpine lake that I lured Himself to hike to with me, largely by dropping my voice two octaves and mumbling when I came to the word "alpine" in the hike description. (Alpine involves a mountain which therefore necessitates an uphill climb.I'm such a bitch.) The nice Ranger confirmed our guess about this one.

Most definitely wolf. (Yes, I know they look like raccoon but they are about the size of half of my foot.) You get to that, she explained, by recognizing the dog pads, but with claws. We knew this next set were feline and she concurred.

 

 Mountain lion. By now, I began to fantasize about my new career in animal tracking. And so I spent days on the internet trying to figure out this one.

Large mammal with three toes. Probably hooved. Clearly not extinct and, because of the gait pattern, unlikely to be Sasquatch. I couldn't find anything on the web. I poured over the books of tracks in every Ranger Station gift shop. Finally, I showed it to Nice Ranger Lady and she knew immediately.

Do you? 

Okay, scroll down.

 

And if you said "one elk following another," you are right.

 

Getting My Feet Wet

Two weeks ago, I was here.

Fishhook Creek, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho

I thought I would rush back here and treat you to all 567 of my photos and the 968 taken by Himself. But I can't seem to find my bearings--in my blog, in my creating, in my studying.  There seems to be a whole lot of fog between my brain and my hands. Fog over my heart from events in the Middle East, fog over my soul in seeing my parents' aging so progressed in just two weeks, fog over my eyes because where the hell did the summer go?

But good ole Grace waved from the comments bleachers and that's my cue. So I will do what one does in the fog: go forward slowly.

Ok, then.There's so much I want to share about the exquisite gem of Idaho, which no one I know thinks about much if they're not thinking about potatoes. Let me just get my feet wet, so to speak, by telling you about the especially thrilling feature of central Idaho: its bounty of natural hot springs. I'm not talking about those weird little resorts that dot mountain towns everywhere, the ones with swimming pools, showers, saunas, and hot and cold running radon.

I'm talking about natural hot springs like these.

Russian John's Springs, near Ketchum

And these...

Weir Hot Springs, Highway 12 near Kooskia

And this one, which not only had a bath...

Last Chance Springs, Highway 55 near McCall

But a shower, too.

Do you see all the other people around? Neither did we. Not a soul. And yet, none of the hot springs we visited were more than a mile hike in from the road (Himself's rules.) I could even see the cars rolling by on the interstate highway from this one and yet, no one else was there.

And now, let me pause for a love letter to Doug  Roloff. He wrote the book that I found at the very beginning of our trip and that proved to be my bible.

He provided everything he promises on the cover...and more.

Isn't it so wonderful that someone would do all this? Before the fog, I promised myself I would write him a thank you note. Fog or no fog, he needs to know how happy he made me. In fact, because of this book, our trip took on a dual theme: Explore Ghosttowns AND Explore Natural Hot Springs No More Than a Mile of Hiking Away. With the exception of one spring that was about 106 degrees F on a day that was 100 degrees F, and another that was a first cousin to the boiling sulfur thermal events in Yellowstone, I went in every one. And I have already highlighted the ones that entail a solid day of hiking, in case Himself gets hit on the head, undergoes a personality change, and wants to spend the day hiking. Or for future adventures with E.

My favorite experience was Slate Creek Hot Springs, near Stanley. Here's how we got there:

1. Take the first road off the highway after the bridge...oh, wait, we're going in the OTHER direction from Hot Springs Guy's directions. So that would be BEFORE the bridge. Um...how do I know when we're BEFORE the bridge? I don't know, that's what it SAYS. Goddammit. Just go over bridge and turn around and then go back and turn off the road. Now I'm behind the RV I finally passed after a half hour....wait, was THAT the road? I didn't see it, I'm reading the directions.Goddammit. Why aren't you turning around? Does it LOOK like there's anywhere to turn around? I'm not looking, I'm reading the directions.

2. Once you turn off the road, follow Slate Creek for 7 miles on a gravel road. Well, we've gone 1 mile and this isn't gravel. Its not even a road.  We're going 4 miles per hour, we'll be there next Tuesday. That's what the book says, what do you want from me? I'll go another mile and then I'm turning around. Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. Goddammit, there's no place to turn around. This can't be right. There's the creek, it has to be right. Oh. What? That's not the creek...that's the Salmon River. We passed the creek. Turn around. There's no place to turn around.

3.  Once you get on the nice gravel road, drive 7 miles till you pass a dilapidated gate on the right and then in another 100 yards, a parking area. Did you see a gate? I wasn't looking at the road, I am reading the directions. Goddammit. 

4. Park and walk along the trail 1/10 mile...

5. The path continues along some mining tailings. Be careful to stay on the 4 inches of loose rock and gravel so that you don't slip off the side of the mountain,scrape every inch of your skin on the sharp rocks, and fall into the freezing creek that is actually about 50 feet down.

 6. Continue until you see a "soaking box" slightly above the creek. Oh, and be careful to avoid the open shaft of the abandoned mine on the trail.

7. Be certain to bring Public Works Engineer with you, preferably one trained at MIT, to figure out how to get water to remain in soaking box and then, what to do with each pipe. In lieu of that, challenge husband, who loves a good challenge that doesn't involve hearing about my feelings. He finds a drain, a drain cover, and determines that the pipes actually represent a sophisticated system for capturing impossibly hot water from the spring and cooling it with freezing cold water from the creek.

And then...

Who would believe that our house came with a spa off the pool that is approximately 7 feet from the kitchen door and turns off and on with a switch?And that we never go in it.

Ok, more tomorrow....