New job a voyage of rediscovery

N.S.NOKKENTVED

Originally published May 22, 2001

When The Olympian launched a new outdoor recreation page last Tuesday, it was also the start of a new chapter for me.

For most of the past 13 years, I have written about natural resources in southern Idaho.

During those years I roamed the deserts and mountains, camping and hiking in the Sawtooth and the Boulder-White Cloud mountains - an area now home to a couple of wolf packs

But one of my favorite haunts was the high sagebrush plateau of southwestern Idaho's Owyhee County, where the most spectacular scenery is hidden from view.

The sea of sagebrush offers no clue to the sudden canyons that cut through this landscape. From the abrupt rim, the East Fork of the Owyhee River winds 800 to 1,000 feet below vertical ochre walls, a silver ribbon lined with green.

The canyons here appear so suddenly they takes my breath away the same way Mount Rainier does when it pops up around a turn in the road.

I remember one hot July afternoon, sitting on a lava outcropping and looking out over the wild sagebrush landscape - a place so remote an echo would die of loneliness.

Mountain mahogany trees clump together, as if for company, and stoic junipers, many of them older than the white settlements in this state, stand unperturbed. Purple mountains dance on the horizon.

The afternoon heat cut through the thin air at 6,000 feet.

I watched as a thunderhead build from nothing and soon blotted out the sun, spreading a cast-iron curtain across the land.

Boulder-splitting lightning struck nearby. Cooling rain soaked through my poncho, trickling down between my shoulder blades.

The storm soon passed, leaving the landscape washed, and the air cooler and redolent of wet basalt, juniper and the thick sweet smell of sagebrush - a smell known locally as cowboy perfume.

But before Idaho, I lived here in western Washington. So this new assignment will be a voyage of rediscovery for me.

While I roamed the wilds of Idaho, I never forgot my frequent trips on the flanks of Mount Baker, the hours of watching birds in the Skagit River delta or the grueling hike to the top of Mount St. Helens.

This country is as wet and hilly as the lava plains of southern Idaho are flat and dry.

I shall miss especially that smell of sagebrush. But I look forward to visiting some of my old favorite haunts in Washington and to discovering new ones.

"The mountains of the Pacific Northwest are tangled, wild, remote and high. They have the roar of torrents and avalanches in their throats."

So wrote the late Justice William O. Douglas in his book "Of Men and Mountains."

He noted also that "the richness of life is found in adventure." In that sense I have returned to a place of unequalled richness.

I am looking forward to getting re-acquainted.

N.S. Nokkentved covers the outdoors for The Olympian, and is always looking for a good place to put a canoe in the water. He can be reached at 360-754-5445.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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