Small Memory In Idaho #5

This was either '89 or '90. I'd gone camping--alone--down in Idaho from Missoula. I spent the night at the Craters of the Moon National Monument, where I'd walked around among the fossilized lava floes and went in the caves and such--it was nice. But the next morning I woke early. Had not slept that well, but wanted to get going as I wanted to take the long drive back, through Sun Valley and Stanley and the Sawtooth (instead of back through Arco), then back up into Montana. So I was sleepyheaded. I was discombobulated. I was hungry and wanted coffee.

I took off driving the thin road out of the park, headed west to southwest. The sun was just up, everything was fuzzy and surreal, the light dusty upon a dry landscape. And I had the highway all to myself. And then I just admired it all, became amazed at the small mountains hills and the color of the sage and the smell of the very Idaho air and I pulled the car off the road and got out and, more or less, just exalted in the moment.

And, again, like many of my Idaho moments, that was it. A moment of realization, of living in the very now, of appreciating the small and the grand in the same second.