Hours of Daylight – 9:29

Coming down from the Key West high has been difficult. More than anything else what i’ve come to realize back here in Boise is how isolated individuals are. Plus i am utterly sick to death of the way people here proclaim what a wonderful place Boise is to raise children. Honestly, i think i should live someplace everyone believes to be the worst place to raise children.

What people are really saying when they decry how wonderful it is to raise children here is that Boise is safe. This perception may or may not be true. Do the math, there are fewer people living here, so odds are there are A) fewer psychos, and B) fewer cars on fewer roads for one might expect fewer traffic accidents. Also, tacitly, or openly in some cases, they’re also saying their money buys a bigger place here and can buy more stuff for the kids. As i told a proud mother yesterday Boise is a fine place to raise kids if A) you want your kid to grow up believing everybody is white, B) everybody speaks English, C) guns are a birthright, D) consumerism is what makes America great, E) the natural environment is another version of Disney Land that is best seen from a hydrocarbon burning vehicle (either an SUV or an ATV), F) fear of change is a way of life, G) freedom does not entail responsibility, etc., etc. That all sounds pretty harsh, but what worries me most is how fragmented this society is. If gasoline suddenly went to $10/gallon the tenous fabric of society here would unravel since the vast majority of friendships/jobs/worship is all based on the service of the automobile.

Key West is probably regarded as a pretty bad place to raise kids. No wonder i felt at home there.

So here in the valley we have no snow on the ground. Temps have been tapdancing with the freezing mark for weeks. But up in the mountains (16 miles from where i’m typing this) there is oodles of the white stuff. The central mountain snowpack is guestimated to be about 146% of normal. This bodes well for the coming spring melt. Six years of snow like this and Idaho along with several other western states may emerge from the drought conditions of the past six years. Of course a couple of good water years will only spur on the ludicrous development currently running rampant in this valley. The result of which will be emphatic hand-wringing and claims of “how could we know” once the dryness returns.

But that’s not my worry. Annette and i, or i alone, won’t be here to listen to the accusations and counter accusations of the developers and government officials regarding the deliterious effects of rampant over-development. Well, as to where we’ll be in a few years, who can say?

In the meantime here’s something to look at:

I just love this! For those unfamiliar Hwy 21 is one of the two roads out of Boise to the north. 21 is a wonderful road with two “hummingbird” sections that are an absolute blast on the motorcycle. I’ve come to learn that 21 is commonly closed before the tiny town of Stanley. But to close it between Idaho City (abbreviated IDC) and Lowman is not as common. The town of Lowman sits at the intersection of 21 and the “Banks-Lowman road.” As you might guess the Banks-Lowman road, also called Garden Valley Rd, or NF-24, runs between the towns of Banks, itself located at the intersection of Banks-Lowman and Hwy 55 (Hwy 55 is the other road north out of Boise) and Lowman. NF-24 as i prefer to call it is a spectacular route that crosses two mountain ranges, a verdant valley (the Garden Valley), and large stretches of pine forest.

What i love so much about this is how the town of Lowman is now largely cut off from the rest of Idaho. I can’t help but think it would be fun to live in such a town. Of course it would certainly suck if you were diabetic and were watching your insulin supply dwindle. But that’s part of the attraction. To live in such an environment you have to think beyond tomorrow. You can’t live day-to-day. I’m romanticizing this of course, but i imagine such a small town would be a place where everybody knows everybody… and actually takes the time to check in on each other. Maybe when the road closes folks within walking distance of each other might get together and make a big shared dinner – pool their resources. Who knows… maybe it’s nothing like that at all.