But before we descend we must shoot I-84 through Glenns Ferry, Mountain Home, and finally Boise, where we plan to eat at Bar Gernika, a friendly tavern just a few blocks from our bed & breakfast and the old grey fortress of the assay house.
In this we are not disappointed; after an interminable series of May, Gordon and Swift semis, RVs, horse trailers, Sinclair stations, exit signs and Flying J billboards, we reach the exit for Broadway and merge into the traffic headed towards the squat brown rectangles of Boise State. We turn on Idaho, pass the old assay office and park near a town square of grey pavers and cornerstones of 100-year-old buildings. This time the café tables are on the sidewalk and covered with napkins and half-empty glasses of iced tea.
The place is half-empty; it is an off day, an off hour– there's a couple by the window and a row of three men at the bar, all friends, talking with the bartender. A lightly-built guy with a deadpan expression takes our order and I bask in the air conditioning. The walls are covered in rough plaster and false half-timbers, to give it that old inn feel. Above our table are some old photos– one of a row of sharp-eyed, dark-haired men at a bar, the other of a pretty thirty-plus woman in a cotton dress, dancing next to an old man, whose left foot is kicked high in the air and whose face is turned to the camera with a comically serious expression.
Celeste tries a new cider; it is refreshing with a tang a bit less yeasty than the more powerfully-flavored Isastegi and a hint more sweetness. We look for it in a tiny Basque market across the street but are disappointed. We lunch on hot lamb sandwiches and fries, which are good in the way that a hot meal is good when you've been driving for hours and are tired in your bones.
We easily make the last sprint into Caldwell, fueled as we are on hearty Basque fare– and turn there onto another rural route, U.S. 20/26. The sun is westering and picks out the gentle contours of the farmlands and broad swaths in the wheat. At the sight of the gold stubble I think ahead to the black columns and smooth hills of the Gorge, and, beyond them, the tall firs and parkways of home.
But there is one more rugged, dry land to cross before we can camp– the plateau and gorges of the Owyhee River.
North of Parma we finally turn west again and cross the state line at Nyssa– then drive through a series of food crops– sugar beets, onions, alfalfa– when suddenly we leave behind the man-made rivers of pipes and ditches to confront the ancient original: the Owyhee, in its deep bed of stacked rhyolite and valley floor of willows and nettles. The road balances on the very edge of the bank, and the closer we come to the lake, the more precarious does it seem.
At one point the road rounds a shoulder and threads through a rough tunnel one lane wide. For the first time in my life I'm forced to honk before I enter. It occurs to me: just exactly where would I go if my warning was returned?
Just before we see the dam the road climbs into a series of 15-mile-an-hour turns and the bottom of the gorge descends to an irretrievable distance below. Around a shoulder of yellow/orange rock the dam appears, a tremendous, streaked wall in the yet more tremendous "U" of the canyon. The road continues to climb, mountain goat-like, above the flat profile of the reservoir. We pass a weathered 1933 pumphouse and several boat trailers returning from the launch down the road.
Eventually, down a convolution of the canyon jutting into the lake, we see the first campground: a thick growth of cottonwoods screening a long, terraced loop of RV sites. Pushed to the water's edge are the tent sites, with broad, gravelled pads, small iron firepits and picnic tables. These sites are occupied, several of them, and I can't hide my disappointment at the sight of the jumble of pickups, boats and gear. The drive up had taken us deeper into a country so openly hostile, so rugged– and here we are back in the city again. I tell myself for the hundredth time: "Sure, but you're here, too, aren't you?" but it doesn't help. We drive to the twin campground down the road, but here there are no tent sites, all given over to RV hookup. It is easy to underestimate the pervasiveness of this "unfashionable" mode of travel.
Tired and ready to take any kind of site, we make our way back to the first choice and squeeze in by a big full-sized pickup and van. I pull out the firewood but I can see that now, at any rate, there will be no fire– the wind is gusting and threatening to blow our folding chairs into the next campsite. Luckily, the tent is well-staked and it flexes and crouches under the blast but there is no flapping, no dangerous straining.
We put on our swim gear and walk down to the beach. There is a mild shock but soon we're cooled and facing the vastness of the reservoir and the darkening terraces above. I look again for my big cat, but there is nothing except the endless battlements and niches of rimrock. I dunk my head in the brown water and let the last of the grime and vexation float away.
We give up on the idea of cooked food and eat sandwiches among our bins. The chairs are folded and stowed under the table. I watch a certain cottonwood, bent permanently like a dew-heavy stalk of grass. It stands over our tent and nods and bows alarmingly when the wind comes up.
When we're laying in the tent the wind picks up again, this time even more sudden and threatening– it is the culmination of a storm that began to darken when we pulled out the cider– the sky turned a deep red and the wind fell off. Later it would pick up again, but it is so violent as I lay there in the tent that I pull the cider bottle and glass out my boots and crawl out of the tent. All of our gear is just as it was, but the cottonwoods are bending and trembling like wheat in a breeze and the lake is rough and angry.
No comments:
Post a Comment