The Breaks, Part II

     So let's start this off with some good news, the removal of fishing net from a whale.  Said the piece in Reuters: One of the divers, 32-year-old marine biologist Gigi Torras, said last Friday's rescue and a little gesture of appreciation from the giant mammal were also a birthday present for her - the 'best ever' in her words.*  I bring this up because I had just finished another article in The New Yorker about the relaxed laws in Idaho on killing wolves. Idaho has long had a reputation as the most hostile toward the gray wolf, a once endangered species; it’s legal to slay pups in their dens there.  But last spring the state legislature dramatically broadened opportunities to target wolves.  For the first time, sportsmen could kill an unlimited number.  Trappers could operate year-round on private property.  Night-vision goggles, silencers, snowmobiles, A.T.V.s—all legal, though such tactics pose ethical concerns about “fair chase.”  Sportsmen could now use motorized vehicles to pursue wolves to the point of exhaustion, or simply run them over...Brendon Ash, an outdoorsman with a growing social-media audience, announced a plan to take “full advantage” of the new law...Creatures caught in traps often die miserably.  Some attempt to gnaw off the immobilized limb...Some states require trappers to check their lines every twenty-four hours, but Idaho law allows devices to go unmonitored for seventy-two....Ash once told his fans, “I’ve caught wolves a month later, the next day, and sometimes not at all!” His traps had lain empty for eleven days when, in late September, he posted a glum video.  It was the sixth anniversary of his father’s death, and he had caught nothing.  Then, around sunset, he heard a clanking chain.  “Look what we got here, boys,” he said.  He showed a wolf—mottled gray, medium-sized—caught by one of its feet.  As Ash walked toward it, the wolf jerked frantically at its chain, then crouched behind a fallen log.  Ash let the camera run for a bit, then turned it off and shot the wolf.  Brendon Ash would go on to film his killing of another four trapped wolves before he came down with Covid and was forced to curtail his media feed.**  Anyway, I bring this up because this sort of attitude was what I was expecting to run into in Idaho, a state my wife and I would have to cross in order to make it to our destination in eastern Washington.  So when our rental car hit some debris in the road and stranded us miles from anywhere, I wasn't sure what to anticipate when an Idaho state trooper was called out to help.

     To my pleasant surprise, the state trooper was nowhere near the stereotype I had imagined, instead proving to be the start of what would be a series of pleasant encounters everywhere.  Not only that but the trooper knew far more about today's modern tires and the spare being attached to a pulley that needed to be lowered.  Perhaps he saw the befuddled look on my face when I initially gazed at all the parts of the tire change kit in our rental, far more parts than the simple jack and cross-bar tire iron that my teenage self used to jump on just to loosen the bolts.  That was the last time I had changed --or even thought of changing-- a tire.  Before long, the trooper had changed the tire, recommended a few small towns further up and pretty much bid us adieu.  30 miles away and limping at a slow speed with our flimsy emergency spare and our flashers on, we crawled into a tire shop who informed us that they didn't carry 18-inch tires.  Keep going another 30 miles, they told us, and check with our car rental company to see if they would just exchange vehicles, which they did.  

Yes, they get snow up here...

      People were people, at least those we met.  On the drive, now pushing us from an expected late afternoon arrival to a late night arrival, we passed roaring streams where construction vehicles sat parked having worked earlier during the day at widening the sheer rock cliffsides that apparently often dropped boulders which crashed onto the roadway and into the nearby river.  15 miles of class 5 rapids, our innkeeper told us, and considered one of the better rivers to run because of its easy entry and exit; I could see that although with no guardrail along the entire road, I was concentrating more on not driving off the road and into that river, the Payette.  Do they know what they're doing, I asked the innkeeper, my amateur eyes spotting the calm waters further up soon giving way to the blistering drops and traps of the churning waters below.  "Oh yeah," he said, "these are the best of the best, and this weekend is the North Fork Championship.  Win that and you are basically the king and queen of kayaking."  Wouldn't be for me, I said as he handed us our room keys (it was now 10:30 PM); he nodded, and as we grabbed our bags he added, "...almost every year we pull bodies out of that river...sleep tight." The next morning he elaborated on his comment.  "That river is now running at 4000 cubic feet a second.  A basketball is about a cubic foot so think of 4000 basketballs passing you by each second. You'll be heading further north and hitting the Salmon River...it's running at 17,000 cubic feet a second.  Beautiful.  Have a safe drive."   Dang, friendly with a quirk or two...but I sort of liked it.  This was country up here, small towns not far from the image one has of old prairie towns or farm communities, and likely filled with people far more skilled at making a go of things than the two of us city slickers now jumping back into our rental car.  But still, everyone welcomed us with a smile and a genuine nod of welcome.  

     We were heading north to eastern Washington, passing through Nez Perce Historical Park and whizzing past many of the historical markers with only a quick drive-by glance, as if the Nez Perce were still fighting for respect.  Only later, after returning, did I dig into some background and realize that I had traveled as little more than another settler, so anxious to get to a distant land that I was ignoring the ways and history of what I was passing through.  Here's just a small sample of what Britannica had to say: Nez Percé domestic life traditionally centered on small villages located on streams having abundant salmon, which, dried, formed their main source of food.  They also sought a variety of game, berries, and roots.  Their dwellings were communal lodges, A-framed and mat-covered, varying in size and sometimes housing as many as 30 families...The Nez Percé built up one of the largest horse herds on the continent.  They were almost unique among Native Americans in conducting a selective breeding program, and they were instrumental in creating the Appaloosa breed...In 1855 the Nez Percé agreed to a treaty with the United States that created a large reservation encompassing most of their traditional land.  The 1860 discovery of gold on the Salmon and Clearwater rivers, which generated an influx of thousands of miners and settlers, led U.S. commissioners in 1863 to force renegotiation of the treaty.  The new treaty reduced the size of the reservation by three-fourths, and continued pressure from homesteaders and squatters reduced the area even more...Many Nez Percé, perhaps a majority, had never accepted either treaty, and hostile actions and raids by both settlers and Native Americans eventually evolved into the Nez Percé War of 1877.  For five months a small band of 250 Nez Percé warriors, under the leadership of Chief Joseph, held off a U.S. force of 5,000 troops led by Gen. Oliver O. Howard, who tracked them through Idaho, Yellowstone Park, and Montana before they surrendered to Gen. Nelson A. Miles.  Best known is Chief Joseph telling his captors, "I will fight no more...forever."  Today, the Nez Percé land is just 13% of what the United States initially agreed to...

     

     We were now in grain country, field after field doing dry irrigation (relying only on rain water for the most part) and this year was proving to be an exceptionally wet one.  Field after field of wheat and rape seed (think canola oil) and mustard seed, all turning the rolling fields bright yellows, reds, and greens coming in every shade possible.  The silos appeared full or ready to be full.  It was the escape we sought as small town after small town seemed to welcome us as if beer glasses were also ready to be filled.  A bus destined only for Gene Autry mirrored a rusted out and parked Hudson car nearby (when was the last time you saw one of those?).  Animal sanctuaries let us pick up and hold baby porcupines (yes, beneath that soft fur are still-developing sharp spines), we viewed posters for the upcoming combine demolition derby, and park benches reminded us what was truly important.   I was coming out of my daze and identifying with the words of author Rick Bragg: The truth is that I had come to think of my life as a story I had already finished, and everything left was just a dull waiting, like cocktail hour at a Howard Johnson's.  I guess it happens to a lot of people...I have always resented gung-ho people who say, "When you get knocked down, pick yourself right back up."  I think a young person made that up.  Sometimes --and I speak from great experience-- it is better to stay down awhile, catch up on some rest, and think about life as you know it.  The world will spin on just fine, for a while, and I could try to catch up later, if I was able.

     So taking it all in is exactly what we did.  People were people everywhere, good, bad, and indifferent.  Throw in a few drinks or bring up a touchy subject and some different sides might emerge; but that can happen with close friends or family as well.  Heck we even got to tour a cannabis store packed with more "things" and items than we ever thought possible (and no wonder since cannabis sales are expected to be 32% higher in 2022 topping $33 billion, according to Fortune).  When the sales clerk pointed to the section and said "our flowers are over there," I asked, as in flours for baking?  Perhaps because he looked at my white hair and our ages (and our out-of-state drivers licenses) he simply chuckled and decided that we needed some catching up on just how much the  cannabis industry had changed...and admittedly the store and tour were fascinating and wildly different from the smaller cannabis "cafe" we had peeked into in Amsterdam many moons ago (the clerk there also smiled and offered us a glimpse at their "menu").  Anyway, enough of that...the point was that you're never too old to learn or to have fun; and what's that other phrase?  A picture is worth a 1000 words?  I'll just let the pictures do the talking and the writing, and hopefully they get your own imagination moving to another place, a place of your own escape...

\

*Sadly, this whale was far too weak to continue and was later found stranded on a beach, yet another victim of what Spain calls the "wall of death," long-banned drift nets that plague the area.  But let's end with a truly happy story, that of Bella the dog, also tangled up in chains and out of food and water.  Her tale of rescue and her finding a new home involved countless people and companies, but demonstrated that goodness still reigns supreme in this country and world.  The story comes from Best Friends with a follow-up of Bella's new adoptive and happy parents... authorities did find and charge the original  "owners" who had abandoned her and left her in a condition so poor that she, like the wolves, bit off her own leg to try and escape.

**Okay, there are hunters out there and hunting is quite a passion for many; but I threw this part in because I feel that adding silencers, night vision goggles, high-powered binoculars and scopes, concentrated deer urine, and digital injured prey calls is just, well, cheating.  I tend to side with author Rick Bragg who in his recent book, The Speckled Beauty, wrote about his growing up hunting in Alabama: I hunted much of my young life, mostly quail, deer, and a pig or two, even alligators, when I lived further south; my hands are as bloody as anyone's.  But in a way I had already begun to lose my yen for it, as the sport and the land itself changed.  I'm not saying I was ever any good at it, at the lore and the craft, but I learned it when there was an adventure in it, beside old men who hunted in overalls and ancient fedoras with century-old side-by-side shotguns loaded with slugs we called punkin' balls...Now, across my South, millionaires hunted big game in fences, where trophy animals eventually just ran into a corner to be penned in and shot down.  They dressed up for dove shoots on plantations where they let the terrified birds out of wire cages, to be shot to pieces by rich guys who couldn't otherwise hit a bear in the ass with a handful of sand.  It would have made my grandfather cry.