The final frontier

Thursday, July 16th we lit out from Missoula, driving through Lolo Hot Springs, and on to Route 12 in Idaho. We stopped several times along this road, including a short hike up the trail head to Eagle Peak with the dogs, where we crossed a wire bridge over the Lochsa River.

This was a two-lane highway, and although we did get stuck behind a few Winnebagos, it didn't matter to me because the scenery was so commanding. The road winds almost continuously through National Forest and National Park land, with tree-covered mountains rising steeply from the riverbed. Although it is high summer here, the river is still quite swift and full, perhaps because of the previous record-setting winter. It looked like it would make for a wild rafting ride in the earlier summer, and eventually we did see rafters. We are hoping to take some float trips before it gets too cold. Stephen drove most of this route, so I was free to gape. We did not take as many photos as we should have.

Once we hit relative civilization at Kooskia, where we had lunch, I took over the driving. This part of Route 12 is at a lower elevation, so the river widens out, cutting through the Clearwater Canyon and on to Lewiston, a town with the largest paper mill I have seen. This part of the drive was less forested, and once we got to Lewiston, the vegetation was parched, the skeleton of the land visible. From Lewiston, it was another 30 miles to Moscow, to home. We started ascending again, stopping at the Lewiston Hill overlook to get a view of how far we had come.

Once we got over the top of that overlook, the landscape changed again., this time into rolling hills that turn from green to gold and back to green in the hollows. This is the landscape that surrounds Moscow. It's called the Palouse, an expanse of rippling, voluptuous fields that have mostly been turned over to agriculture.

Our clever friend Kim, who performed our wedding ceremony, calls it Idahome, and that name is starting to seem very right. So says the woman who spent this past spring asking her friends to chant "No-da-ho" and "I-da-no" while Stephen was still applying for his job here.

We pulled up to our new home at about 3 pm on Thursday. I was a little nervous that Stephen might not like the house I had chosen, as this was the first time he had ever seen it. Like most homes, it didn't look so homey when it was empty and stripped of its furnishings, but even though our furniture and other personal stuff won't arrive until next week, it is feeling like home to me and we are getting settled in.

We met some neighbors Thursday afternoon. First, a woman named Anne and her daughter Mary, who looked to be about eight or nine years old. When Mary heard I was from Florida, she informed me that it was much hotter here in Idaho than in Florida. Stephen and I beg to differ, although it looks like most of the folks here are using their air conditioning to battle the oppressive 85 degree, no humidity heat that lasts for a few hours in the afternoon. Next year we will probably be bitching, too, but for now the weather seems ideal: deep blue skies, crisp nights, warm days. As I write this, it's 7 am and 52 degrees .

Friday morning, our first full here, we went for a hike up Paradise Ridge, which we can see from our house. Stephen ran ahead with Heather, while Sheena and I trotted up behind them on our shorter legs. The woods and fields are full of wildflowers, some familiar like yarrow and late lupine, others quite new to me. At the top of the ridge, we paused to look around, and to look at each other, to question and confirm that we are each happy here.

I have had my doubts, doubts of all kinds about this move -- whether a new job in a new place would make Stephen happy, whether I could stand the winter's darkness again, whether I could fit my quirkiness in to a small town, whether I could bear to leave a garden that is just now, this year, beginning to come into its own, and even whether Stephen and I were meant to be together, as once and now seems clear and inarguable to me. The events of this past spring challenged my willingness to accept the depth of my commitment to Stephen, and challenged my faith in my own adaptability, too. I prayed for the serenity to accept whatever was meant to be, and my prayers were answered with a change of attitude that was helped along by Stephen's astonishing patience with my hard-headedness.

Back home from our hike on Friday, I scurried around our new yard, marking in my mind where the roses grow, the irises, the columbine, the ubiquitous yarrow. Walking uphill from the wild and overgrown section of the yard, a hummingbird flew toward me, and then stopped in mid-air as if taken aback to see me before it nodded and zoomed off. In the moment it regarded me, the last tiny knot of doubt untied itself and vanished. That night Stephen and I walked in the field at the bottom of our hill, both marvelling at the expansiveness of the landscape, as the dogs ran and snuffled, and I looked toward Paradise Ridge to see the fiery penumbra of the rising moon that still hid behind Earth's curve, behind the hill. We waited in the field, as the light grew blush-colored, then the white of candlelight, its brightness piercing the fretwork of the near horizon's treetops. We waited until the moon had risen, full and round and factual above the ridge, the field, the life together we have chosen here.