The True Terrain

When I tell people I’m originally from Idaho, those who know of it but only at the most basic level, will often assume that the winters must be so much harsher than here in Pennsylvania where I live now.

While this is true up in the mountains, the Treasure Valley, where I grew up, was actually quite mild. It surprises many that, in twelve years of public school, I never had a single snow day.

Lord I wanted one, but my feelings about school are another matter.

When I have returned to Idaho via airlines over the years since I moved away in 1980, there has always been a comfort, a familiarity, that overcomes me when we begin to descend, and I see the familiar brown soil and scrub vegetation of the foothills that lead into Boise airport, and this most recent trip back to Idaho was no exception.



Despite the fact that the population is growing in leaps and bounds, and vast stretches of land are being gobbled up by developers, the unique desert terrain remains in effect outside these influences.

There is a smell, a rawness, that comes when a rare measure of rain hits this soil. We were treated to a very brief rain on my second day in Idaho, as if just to underscore my love for this scent. A wonderful, brief, resonant moment.

Visits with family, meeting my brother’s granddaughter, the first born of the next generation of our family line, and a total character, right in line with the Sorensen way.



But the trip at hand was about three brothers, reconnecting. The brother three lives in western Oregon, so after some family meals and a few drives around the Treasure Valley, we started out for the long drive through the state that borders Idaho on the west.

We enjoyed the Coen brothers movie, True Grit with popcorn and root beer on the last night in Idaho for this trip, then got to bed early.

We would start early.

To be continued…