V is for Veil Falls

Dimly remembered, but a check of Google tells me it is still there. A check of the Middle Fork guide which I have managed to hang on to all these years informs me it is mile 80.7. I remember the iron stains (I think it's Iron anyway) on the walls of the hollowed out space beneath the falls. The Veil Falls I remember was wide and whipsy, almost like the wind was blowing it as it fell.

While the Middle Fork is in the midst of large wilderness areas with little accessibility, the country is not pristine. It's been lived in for a long time. First by Sheep Eaters and later by gold miners, homesteaders, fortune seekers, settlers and hermits. Earl Parrot comes to mind.

Veil Falls is in the same stretch as Big Creek, Waterfall Creek, and Elk Bar more happily remembered places on the Middle Fork, and all worked in to the stories running through the pages of River and Ranch and New Grass Growing.

M is for Middle Fork

Where to start? I've already used the term 'flyover country' too many times. Idaho - yes that's true too. I haven't covered the severe infestations of Sasquatch...probably because it does not exist, although the country is certainly big enough to hold a few Sasquatches.....

In River and Ranch, Cale is a river guide on both the Main and the Middle. This is part of his cover story as he works on his last project, but it is also part of his 'recalibrating' to life as a civilian after years of high stress, high kinetics Special Operation Forces work overseas for Uncle Sam. River rafting is the prescription for a mind that has seen and experienced the violence and stress that most do not even know exist, and for that matter, Cale and his partner generally cannot even talk about.

In life as in fiction, Idaho and its Main and Middle Fork provides what many seek. In the quiet of the mountains, the energy of the rapids, and the peace of a dark night on a river beach, we all find the cure for the aches we carry along.

E is for Elk Bar

I remember climbing a steep hillside and topping out on a bench. There was a cave of unknown dimension over on the edge of the bench, of course built-in or dugout or naturally occurring right on a cliff face. Big old Ponderosa pines dotted the bench. Other than the trees it was wide open, unknowable and unseen from the sand bar below where we were camped. I do not remember what inspired the climb up that steep slope, but I am glad we went. The revelation of that bench was like the discovery of some secret place that no one had seen prior to us emerging over the lip of the climb. I'm sure reality was/is different, especially now 25 years later.

I also remember a couple bighorn sheep jumping out of the cave mouth in alarm as they heard us approaching. The ease in their exit was impressive, especially after we tried to climb up to the cave mouth and really couldn't even get close due to love of life and lack of rock climbing skill.

A multi-paragraph lead up to the word of the day is getting to be habit. Hopefully the discerning reader noted the inclusion of the hint phrase "sand bar" in the verbose foreshadowing of today's word. Yes that sand bar, that gorgeous luscious bar of whitish sand next to the gorgeous luscious Middle Fork is Elk Bar, which is today's word.

As always, this is one of the actual real sites on the Middle Fork that our cast of characters float by and camp on in the course of the adventures taking place between the covers of River and Ranch. I am trying to use real places throughout this series. I am a big fan of geography, particularly this area of the USA, flyover country to most, Big Sky country to some and full of places a person can spend a lifetime (re)discovering. This book series is fiction with the exception of the land. Most of the geography did at one time reach up and trip me while I was walking by. I passed two amazing summers as a river guide on both the Main and Middle Fork of the Salmon. I would be remiss in failing to mention that I am also an alumni of the University of Montana. The hootch that Cale and Lane live in is the house on Pine Street that I lived in. All the place names mentioned in Missoula exist and are as truly described as memory allows. Of course 25 years of winters, spring floods and development can also bring about significant changes.

A huge exception is the Lemhi Pass area. I had little occasion to go down Highway 28, past Leadore, Tendoy, Sharkey Hot Springs and the myriad gravel roads leaving the highway and going off up into the hills. Those real roads are the actual basis for the Cayuse Creek road leading up to the Turner ranch. The whole rare earth mining aspect (a plot give away hint hint) that is, in fact true in real time, as I write this blog entry, was a gleam in the eye of unknown people back in the early 90's when I was there, although the Last Chance vein was already a well known quantity in Idaho mining history.

Thanks for reading this far! The always mysterious letter "F" awaits your visit tomorrow!

a book about Idaho and fishing and romance with roots in Africa

I think we can all accept as fact that "A" is for Africa.

River and Ranch is one book in a series. I'm starting towards the back of the series because that's how I started out with my set of characters and places. As River and Ranch matured in my head, the back story and where I wanted to go developed. So there's lots more in the past and in the future. But for now Cale and Dana are in Idaho.

Africa is one of those places in the past for Cale and his partner Lane. The bulk of their time in Special Operations Forces was spent on African soil in numerous countries chasing the bad guys. In between missions they were in places like Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, or Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Researching the African part of this plot is fascinating. In reality, the US is very active on the African continent. As is China I might add. Neither of which makes many, if any, media headlines. The largest U.S. military presence is in fact at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. There is in fact, another outpost in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. I'm a big fan of geography, so while I had heard of Djibouti and Burkina Faso, I had no idea where they were, and I had not heard of either of the locations.

The U.S. military's pivot into Africa was one of the two the biggest surprise of all though, in doing my research. In reality, there is much going on throughout the African continent, much of it tangentially related to the growing Chinese presence on that continent, but probably more related to the concern over the growing likelihood of terrorist operations taking place in several remote, near lawless locations in the African outback. All of which is perfect back story for the characters in River and Ranch.

Hang tight for that other big surprise uncovered in research. Unfortunately it comes more toward the end of the alphabet, the letter "r", but it is a significant surprise and cornerstone of many plot lines in this series. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction at times.

Tom's Dispatch offers up a great article on this U.S. military activity in Africa.

I hope you will tune in tomorrow for that thrilling letter "B".

snowpack is holding up...

In Cale's world of rafting the Salmon River and the Middle Fork, much depends on runoff from snowmelt. So rafters spend much of their winter huddled around basin snow reports like this:

Here's the real snowpack report. High water is a spring thing, but summer water on the Idaho rivers often arrives with the July 4th launches. In my memory, the launch closest to July 4 was a big double launch and kicked off summer. You could kind of get away with not wearing a wetsuit. Finally. Prior to that though, as in all of June and May, rafting had to deal with cold high runoff. On undammed rivers like the Middle Fork and the Main, runoff can be an amazing thing. When you see how strong high water is during spring runoff, you start to understand how 20,000 foot peaks can be reduced to sand on a beach. On the map above, the Salmon Basin is looking pretty much average, which should make for a decent rafting season. What stands out for me are all the yellow triangle down in the Sierras. Poor California. It's going to be a tough season down there.