writing about idaho

What is it about Idaho that is so poetic?... Maybe not just poetic but worth writing about. I was thinking all last summer while I was swimming in glacier lakes, running, hiking, backpacking in those magnificent Sawtooths that there was something so neglected when it came to Idaho. Everyone liked the Napoleon Dynamite version but when it came to finding a place for vacation, no one believed a place called "Stanley" could really be that great. Well I tell you what, there's more to Idaho than Rexburg and Pocatello.

But also, there is something to the Idaho that is the stereotype. Not just the Idaho of podunk towns filled with suburbia sprawl and guys with strawberry blond afros. I mean, what about the sage brush stretches near the Utah border that always seem to be windy and every exit reads "no services"? With so little to describe itself I can't help but fill it in the way poetry would dictate for a place that barren. T.S. Eliot must have seen South East Idaho in a Wasteland dream or heard tales from Ezra Pound. There are also those town names you can pass along the way like "Burley" or "Rupert". What could be more worthy of words than towns like that?

There's also this special place I've found. Somewhere between Shoshone and Twin Falls the landscape gets dark and rocky much like the surface that the Mars pathfinder would navigate. Nothing breaks that post-apocolyptic scape until you begin to site those who have tried to make a living off the surrealistically disfigured nature of that earth. Here, one man has done it with a cave he found and claimed to be of "Mammoth” proportions. From his road signs and the 2 mile dirt road commitment it takes to get to the cave, it is clear that this is a cave that would put Idaho into the Rick Steve’s archives.

I finally took the trip because for once I found time to diverge from my journey to Stanley and I had always felt fleeting curiosities about the mammoth cave. The road snaked back and forth. Occasional arrows pointed where to turn next placed at the last moment before you decided to turn around because of disorientation and the frustration of losing so much time and energy on what should be a quick road trip thrill.
The cave place emerged from the dirt like a large beast rising from sleep. And there it was, a junky pile of trash supporting the edges a wooden shack placed over the cave. The heat and the entropic desperation of the place were sublime to anyone who had been introduced to this wonder by highway 84. It was unbearably marvelous. After photographing all but would make me obnoxious and examining a stone outside resembling an ancient Olmec head I walked into the museum/cave entrance.

Inside was so dark my eyes struggled to adjust to the dark entry. It was hot and musty. I squinted to see a sweaty 20 year old boy with a lopsided goatee sitting behind a counter. It was like I was getting my cave vision. The fee was overpriced at $8.00 a person. I though maybe hanging around a bit with no one there but us would start some kind of fold or bargain between me and the sweaty goatee boy. I looked around without being able to see much until Mary started to draw attention to this 12 foot alligator in a diorama-like bed on the opposite wall. “whoa…cool” I thought for a moment as I began to approach it. I guess we don’t have to pay the fee for this.
Then I thought a minute longer…so there’s this alligator…hun…
I saw a picture on the opposite side I had walked around to with a picture of this massive animal in the back of a pick up truck struggling to break free like a Snowy River horse from a rope around its neck.
“So…” I began, directing my attention to the cave keeper. “Where did the alligator come from?”
“Florida”
“Hun…” hmmm.
“My dad had it fedexed from Florida.”
“Really.? And so” pause pause “what is it doing here?”
He didn’t seem to find any inconsistency between a stuffed alligator from Florida and an Idaho mammoth cave. “What do you mean?”
“Wull, so what’s the connection between the alligator and the cave here?”
“Oh well” he said like he understood me this time “my dad is a taxidermist.”
Ahhh…I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that answer. I think that is as far as the two of us can go with that one. At that point, the room became illuminated in full view of dead taxidermed animals hanging from walls and ceiling, others resting against wooden stands. Overhanging the entrance were African masks attached with animal hair and leather. A price tag demanded $2000 for the masks.
“And the African masks?” Mary asked.
“Oh my dad has traveled the world.”
Hun.
Just then a stout, white-haired man drove up in a truck. Perhaps the truck that had carried an alligator four months before?
I really wanted to leave then. There was too much desperation building for one day. When the cave man came into his museum with a giant watermelon and a case of a dozen donuts I ducked out quickly before his eyes could transition from the desert sun to the cave entrance. One day though, I will go back and pay that entrance fee in full.