These Knees Were Made For Walking

Right now Jack and I are camping in Burke Canyon just outside of Wallace, Idaho. It’s in Northern part of Idaho and incredibly beautiful. Pine trees up the sides of the mountains on both sides of a narrow stretch of road. There are houses on both sides of various sorts. Small, big(ish), some in good shape, some in need some work and some are getting improvements as we speak. There is remediation work being done to get rid of contamination from a coal mine that is at the end of the road. I don’t know when it closed but the pollution left behind is still there. I am told this is the second remediation project for this area. I hope it works for them.

A creek runs along the other side of the road from where the work is being done. It is a quintessential creek: clear running water over rocks smoothed by centuries of the same. Shallow and narrow, not much wider than about 12-15 feet in any one spot. A person can certainly make their way across it without problems. I don’t know if there are fish now but I imagine that there were at some point. I can hear it at night when it gets quiet. I wonder what it looks like and how big it gets when it rains a few inches in a few hours.

It’s Huckleberry season. This is a big deal here. People can go out and pick wild huckleberries and earn $80 bucks a gallon. That is a shit done of money for a bucket of berries. Moms do it for school clothes, others for fun and who knows what. I intend to check it out in the next couple of days. Would love to have some for my breakfast cottage cheese.

Someone asked if there were bears near by. Apparently there are but they stay higher up in the mountains. The proprietor of this campsite has been here 20 years and he has never seen one. Or coyotes. But he does leave out field corn for deer. elk and moose (I think). Jack and I heard something “peeing like a race horse” outside the tent on our first night. We both perked up our ears….and stayed inside the tent.

This area was (and still is) mining country. The historic downtown area reflects this in the many shops with silver and gemstones featured. Also, there are several antique shops, dining establishments and old hotels that embrace the same theme, A very wild west sort of feel. I have talked to a couple of shop owners that have lived here for generations and know the history of the area. I am going to explore that some more.

There are at least 2 of the trails that are on the Great American Rail Trail here. Trails of the Coeur d’ Alene and the Centennial Trail. I am going to walk along the first trail tomorrow, for about 8 miles. I will start in a little town called Mullin, population 946, and end in Wallace, population just a little bigger. My host, Lisa Burke, is going to take me to Mullin after I park my car in Wallace. It’s sort of nice to be able to go one direction for a walk. The Burkes immediately understood the concept and offered to help while I was here. I am definitely going to stay here again, when I am walking next year. And if anyone else wants to explore Northern Idaho this is a great place to camp.

It’s about 7:30 and Jack is pestering me to go to bed. It’s also getting chilly even with a decent fire. This morning I got up to 49 degrees. I think it’s going to get cold again tonight but I am prepared. And putting Jack under the covers keeps me and him warm.