Boise News

Resort Review

Skiing Soldier Mountain near Fairfield, Idaho, feels sort of like a guilty pleasure. The economy in the tank, it’s no doubt wrong to celebrate parking next to the lodge and zero lift-line wait time. But great snow, meticulously groomed runs and bright sunshine are reasons to celebrate any ski experience, and Soldier delivers in spades.

Situated less than an hour southwest of Sun Valley, Soldier has all of the famous resort’s Central Idaho scenery, but none of Sun Valley’s shi-shi-la-la. No reason to hurt yourself rubber-necking at glamorous movie stars – the Humvee limos don’t bother traveling through the countryside to get to this modest resort.

Instead, the mountain that opened in 1948 draws mainly from the small surrounding agricultural communities and residents of nearby Mountain Home and Mountain Home Air Force Base, thanks to a deep discount for military members.

Even without a military discount, Peggy Freisinger is gripping her credit card receipt with a big grin. A resident of Albuquerque, Freisinger is visiting Idaho relatives for the holidays. “I just bought lift tickets for all three kids for 57 bucks,” she beams, marveling at the half-day youth prices. The Freisingers typically ski at Taos, where the bill for the family tops $400, she says.

A New Take on Old West Lit

In the September High Country News, Laura Pritchett wrote that she doesn’t want to live up to some stereotyped image of the “new” western woman if it means she has to gut trout (“The Western Lit Blues”). She’s “starting to get a little worried” that westerners have lives that are more complex than the ones she sometimes sees portrayed on the printed page. “There’s more going on with life out here in the West than is often rendered in books,” she says. But the publishers—mostly in New York--“expect certain patterns” and “want stereotypes to be affirmed.” At the same time, they want a novel to reflect the “authentic” West.

In a novel, the plot is driven by one of two questions. One is, “What is the character thinking? The other is, “What happens next?” Thanks to a very complicated interplay of literary supply and demand, the nineteenth and early twentieth West produced an inordinate number of “What happens next” books. Adventure books, romance books. In 1902 Owen Wister called his own novel, The Virginian, a “colonial romance.” And the demand for horse operas and ten-penny potboilers led to books called “westerns” and “westerns” led to all this stereotyping.

A New Take On Old West Lit

She won “Best Leading Actor” from the Omaha Actor’s Guild, packed the theater as Emily Dickinson in “The Belle of Amherst” and now she was on the phone asking me for Christmas material.

“I need a western piece to read for some charity appearances,” she said. “I won’t have time to read them all, so just pick one and I’ll cut it to fit the time requirements.”

Cripes. If there’s anything I hate worse than making decisions it’s making other people’s decisions.

Okay, so what makes a good Christmas story? The answer’s as obvious as an elephant in an outhouse. It shows how Christmas is a time when Evil is banished by Good and self-isolated people crave society. Look at A Christmas Carol or How the Grinch Stole Christmas. For that matter, look at “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or even The Nutcracker. Christmas is magic, Evil is overcome by Good and people celebrate.

This made Owen Wister’s “A Journey in Search of Christmas” my prime candidate. Lin McLean has a wad of roundup money in his jeans and an ache in his heart. Everyone in Cheyenne seems to know that a woman has made a fool of him by marrying him when she already had a husband. Looking to be alone, Lin takes the train to Denver. He intends to spend Christmas Eve by punishing a power of whiskey and blowing himself to a fine meal. He might even go to the theater. 

From the Idaho Panhandle

A recent article in the local paper helped us Sandpointers be more appreciative of some ethereal public art that appears every year as Christmas approaches and disappears as the days begin to lengthen again thereafter. We can perhaps be forgiven for having taken it for granted, as it’s been a hallmark of our winter downtown for a decade.

Every Christmas season, wintry paintings appear on the storefront windows of many businesses in the blocks at the heart of town. Every window is different, but they’re all variations on the same theme. Nothing overtly Christmas-y, like Santa or elves or Jesus, they’re more stylized—snowflakes, stars, swirls, and branch-like things that look like sheaves of wheat with snow on them, along with the occasional tree. The palette is simple and unified: they’re all white.

From the Panhandle: North Idaho Blog

In the excitement and enjoyment of significantly greater than usual snowfall over the past few weeks, the challenge of getting to Grandma’s house for the turkey, the closing of schools due to extreme cold, the general search for snow shovels, and the scramble to get the car off the street before the plow arrived, I’m not at all sure that adequate appreciation has been shown for some of the gnarliest participants in this frigid drama: the diehard anglers who participate in the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club’s Fall Fishing Derby.

Western Book Roundup

You may recall New West’s recent interview with Oregon native Benjamin Percy about his first novel, The Wilding.  The book has drawn raves from just about every publication that reviews books, and though it’s only been out for a couple of months, Percy is already looking ahead to his next book, Red Moon, a novel that recently sold at auction to Grand Central/Hachette for publication in the Fall of 2012.  Variety reported last week that the Gotham Group has optioned the film rights to Red Moon. (Via Twitter.com/GraywolfPress) Tatiana Siegel wrote:

“[Red Moon is] described as an alternate history tome, story is set in a post-9/11 world of xenophobia in which the long-persecuted Lycans live among humans. Story kicks off with a Lycan uprising that results in a clash of civilizations.  Book proposal was acquired in a pub house bidding war by Grand Central. Lit deal is pegged at $500,000.”

That is some actual money right there.  Author and philosopher Jay-Z might even call it “cheddar.” Congratulations to Benjamin Percy on all his success.  I told you so.  Remember two years ago when I ordered you to check out his story collection Refresh, Refresh?

Also in the Roundup: Regional NEA grant winners for poetry, a debut novel by Denver author Cortright McMeel, and a profile of Ciara Shuttleworth.

From the Idaho Panhandle

A recent bit in The River Journal (“A Newsmagazine Worth Wading Through” published in Clark Fork) notes that someone saw something on the Internet indicating that the ubiquitous “they” were going to put lithium in our drinking water to help us happily weather the recession that, as we all know (or at least as we’re all told), is well on its way to being over anyway.

The writer, Trish Gannon, whose title on the journal’s masthead is “Calm Center of Tranquility,” might be expected to find such supplements superfluous. But her source, local geoscientist John Monks, checked out the National Uranium Resource Evaluation database—a handy collection of data from water samples collected and analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey—to identify the extent to which panhandle residents are being chemically mollified.

Western Book Roundup

I recently reviewed Brian Leung’s heartfelt historical novel Take Me Home for the Dallas Morning News.  Set in a rough mining town in Wyoming, the book tells the story an improbable love affair that develops between a white woman and a Chinese man. 

Leung’s novel got me thinking about the many books published over the past year or so that address the theme of Chinese miners in the Old West.  There’s The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West by Christopher Corbett (which I reviewed for New West) and Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon, by R. Gregory Nokes. That Idaho massacre is central to Dana Hand’s novel Deep Creek (which David Abrams reviewed for New West), and Chinese miners had a cameo role in Ivan Doig’s Montana mining novel, Work Song (which Abrams reviewed for New West and I reviewed for the Dallas Morning News).  All of these books are worth checking out for anyone who has an interest in Chinese immigrants in the Old West, or who is just looking for a good read.

Also in the Roundup: Jackson Hole Review is revived with a call for submissions, Temple Grandin’s new book, and Boulder Book Store’s generosity.

NEW WEST ESSAY

Lynne Stone, my favorite wolf advocate, hasn’t changed much. She’s still the same ruddy-faced, formidable, outspoken blonde I met years ago.

“Can you believe this guy?” she says in an outraged voice, reading me a statement by Idaho Gov. “Butch” Otter about the recent federal court decision putting wolves back on the endangered species list and, in the process, cancelling what was to be Idaho’s second wolf hunting season. 

Wildlife Watching

Hadley is a retired wildlife biologist and the most avid birder I know. He’s even written a book, “Birds of East Central Idaho.” He has big glasses and a nice laugh and reminds me of a wise old owl.

I asked him if he had seen the display and, of course, he had. He confirmed this in the same manner as though I had just asked the Pope if His Holiness was celebrating Easter Sunday. I asked Hadley if he knew where the snowgeese were heading.

Hadley explained that some of the lesser snowgeese who nested on Wrangel Island in Siberia migrated through Salmon on the way to California and even as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. He knew that because when he was spying on them a few years back at our city’s wastewater treatment plant, a snowgoose’s pink collar with tracking numbers gave the whole flock away as Ruskies.