THE HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN

Idaho's Silver Creek could inspired Hemingway to write until he came back from Cuba just after the Communist took power. A lonely two lane highway is about the only way to get to Sun Valley, unless you fly a Lear Jet. The old wagon road heads north from Idaho Falls, through Shoshone crests into the next valley choked with cold clean spring creeks that ooze from the towering Rockies Mountains ahead. This two lane highway cuts a vast ocean of fragrant sage that ranchers have tried to eradicate but they now realize to live in balance is better than the bastards invasive annual cheat grass the scourge of the West.
Farm trucks haul sugar beets to the local refinery. They are the only reminders that this beautiful Valley was once farm land. Now it host the "aspres- ski" crowd.

Belle our aging black lab lifts her nose to scent the desert. This time of year for a week or two the sage oil fragrance infuses the air and all things are in balance.

Ernest Hemingway might write, the road well traveled took Nick Adams through the stark desert. The pungent sage flowers signaled it was time to hunt and trout fish the local creeks. It was still early in the fall and birds could be taken by surprise

Ernesto Hemingway indulged himself with wine, strong women, double guns and trout. In the end, his depression could not over come the Valley's harmony. He knew pleasures in simple things of Sun Valley, sportsman routines, or the seasons especially the Fall. He learned money made him fearful and so much like a Hemingway character, he quit his fear blew his head off.

The Fall in Sun Valley makes jaded man feel something. By 60, Ernest had nothing left. He said that when you leave in search for other beautiful places, you leave behind everything. The pleasures on return are never the same and that is excruciating

Waterfowl still seek nightly sanctuaries to escape the coyotes and trout rise to sip 24 sized midges and the spring creeks sway with water cress. I watch as they sip the midges and cast my eyes towards a lone fly fisher. His slow long cast lays the tippet on the slow moving creek with great delicacy. A quick mend upstream hopeful to produce a free drift does nothing to entice these trout who seek selectivity.The stream takes my heart away. I could be casting to huge brown trout in New Zealand or on English waterways. It seems everywhere I travel these days I am transformed to another land chasing trout and game birds. Life is good and I am not to far from the "mecca of Holy Waters, The Yellowstone Plateau, the emerald of special places. Ellen and I will move on but we savory the richness of Stanley and Picabo.

Canadian bird hunting can not be to far off after touring the Yellowstone.