Another reason I miss Idaho

There are not many places left that you can go out on a mountain bike ride and come across a scene such as this. I actually came upon a similar scene years ago on a bike ride to Bone, ID with my friend Heather. This time I was with her husband, David. This took place in Wolverine Canyon, south of Idaho Falls. A few years back Doug and I were riding further back in this same canyon and came upon about 600 sheep being herded back to their summer grazing area.

I was back in Idaho for a week for a job interview and to get my garden planted. It was a great visit. I got to spend every day with Ben. I had planned on including a photo of him that I had taken but I notice he was flipping the camera his IQ, so I won't be including that photo. At what age do teenage boys grow out of flipping off the camera? By and large, girls just don't do that. Come to think of it, plenty of boys don't do it either. I guess my kid is just a neanderthal.

This is the only bike ride I had the opportunity to take on this trip. Wolverine Canyon is my favorite area near Idaho Falls. It has trees, rushing streams, cliffs, caves and abundant wildlife. Very unlike mosts of the open space surrounding Idaho Falls. We were turned back from our final destination by snow pack on the rode.

The Feminist Controvesy

Our local newspaper has been stirring things up in its readers' opinion section. I love small town newspapers. People get all fired up and step on each other's toes with their opinions. With the Mormon Factor at play in this region of the country, the role of women is bound to be controversial.

I certainly don't believe that deciding to stay home instead of working precludes one from wearing the feminist mantle. Feminism has evolved way beyond the old defining question of whether or not to enter the work force. I contend that a true feminist can, and in many cases does, stay home with her kids.

Thanks to the hard work of the founders of the movement, these days, a feminist lifestyle is a multi-faceted endeavor. An obvious way to fight the entrenched patriarchal system is from within. By raising my sons in a family system that has a strong matriarchal figure, I am nurturing their formative conceptions on the role of a strong woman.

I see the Battle of Equality as having two fronts: the professional front and the home front. Not all women have the desire to "do battle" in the work force and have the luxury to choose not to. Does this mean they abdicate their feminist duties? I think not.

It is not by chance that the feminist concept gained rapid ground among educated, college campus women. These are NOT the women who tend to be running our nation's daycares. And these ARE the daycares that are raising our nation's future men and feminist women. By putting our kids in these daycares we miss an important opportunity to mold them.

My stay-at-home lifestyle has allowed me to take my sons to peace rallies and political events, travel with them to third world countries, bike 6 miles round trip to school daily, teach them to grow their own food in a garden, play soccer and climb trees with them after school. These are things we surely would not have time for if both my husband and I worked.

Since current studies seem to show that both a working and stay-home woman's role in the family is essentially the same as it was before the Feminist Movement, in that she still does a majority of the housework and child rearing, I suggest that perhaps the woman's role in family life warrents closer scrutiny and is also a meritable indicator of feminism.

Been a While

I am always writing posts in my head as I obsess on various issues. Sometimes they have a negative or sarcastic quality as I look around me and get frustrated, depressed, annoyed and/or angry at the political, economic and social culture here in the good 'ole US of A. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the beauty and goodness of life and my mental musings reflect this outlook. Currently I am neutral. For the moment.


I missed writing for the entire month of December. I meant to write about the awesome trail race I did at Pere Marquette State Park and about my realization that there is a hole in my psyche that is the result of not running...which is a result of the stand I have taken on not driving unless truly necessary. So I am running again, but not on trails. Boo hoo.

Much of December was spent at home in Idaho Falls. It is a veritable bastion of progressiveness these days. I jest, of course. But progress is being made. Of late there is a Drinking Liberally chapter, the first ever Peace Rally/War Protest, food co-op in the works, Community Pathways Organization(pedestrian advocacy) and a decent selection of organic food at Fred Myers. These offerings are in stark contrast to what was available in 2003, when we arrived in the state. Warms the cockles of my heart.

I just finished Edward Abbey's The Fools Progress. In it his main character makes his way back home to West Virginia to die and on his way passes through the heart of Missouri. He are some of his impressions (written in 1980):

"We roll through the towns, the franchise strips, the Sonic Happy Eating and Radio Shacks and Pizza Huts and Serve-Ur-Self Gas and Good Will Pre-used Cars and the candidly usurious glass-boxy banks with no pretense at anything but money. As usual the most stately dignified house in town has become the "Funeral Home."....Everything that is beautiful decays from neglect; the cheap, false, synthetic transitory structures inspired by greed spread along the highways like mustard weed, like poisin ivy, like the creeping kudzu vine. The vampires of real estate, the leeches of finance, the tapeworms of profit, have fastened themselves to the body of my nation like a host from Hell. No wonder the land, the towns and villages, the old homes and farms and so many of the people wear the worn-out used-up blood-sucked bled-white look. Ill fairs the land. The aliens are here. The body snatchers have arrived."

And this refers to twenty five plus years ago. He should see it today.

Letter to the Editor

I moved to Idaho Falls in 2003 and it only took me a matter of weeks to discover Taylor Mountain and its extensive network of trails and wilderness solitude. Since then I have gone there regularly to escape the suburban sprawl that defines the landscape of the greater Idaho Falls area. I have logged hundreds of miles running those trails. The first few years I would see either moose, mule deers, badger, bear scat, or what looked like bobcat prints on almost every outing. Then the area seemed to be "discovered" by ATVers and the regular sightings dwindled. I am imagining that with a proposed 700 ( or 200) homes going in at the base of the mountain the opportunities to see wildlife will be slim to none.

What we need here is some good old fashioned outrage. Not for potential sewer problems or cost of support, maintenance and schools. Can't we just muster a little popular cry of indignation for the sake of lost habitat, open space, wildlife corridors? Once it is gone, there is no getting it back. Why doesn't that ever seem to matter in this part of the world. Edward Abbey once said, "The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs defenders." What, never heard of Edward Abbey? Ah yes, perhaps therein lies part of the problem.