Compelling Stories

Winter in Atomic City, Idaho is a never-ending and always-interesting combination of freezing cold and bright sunshine, and grey, socked-in whiteness that consumes the town and makes it feel as though our little community is all alone in the entire world.

One day last week I walked in town with Kory.

Snow and freezing ice crystals covered the road and clung to the trees.

The world was sunny and cold, crisp and silent.

The past few days we have had temperatures above freezing, and most of the snow is now melted.

But last week the world was still covered in the white that I love and the white that Kory loves to play in.

You can barely see the local resident four-wheeling through town, and I smile and simply shake my head in the realization that nobody ever walks here.

Ever.

The lady who lives in back of us drove over to the house a couple of weeks ago.

Cutting through her yard and then our yard we are all of 500 feet apart.

I heard a story recently of a woman years ago who let her dog run through town for exercise, and she drove her car to follow the dog.

Do people really DO those kinds of things?

Apparently they do, but I wouldn't have believed it until I had seen and heard about it here..........

When LC and I first visited Atomic City last April or so, we saw this structure and at first thought that it was  bleacher seating.

It is a very large, open storage building and open shelter, and is located in the middle of an empty field on the outskirts of town.

I have no idea what its original purpose was, but aside from an assortment of useless items that wouldn't seem to be worth storing or keeping, the structure is now little more than an open storage container for tumble weeds.

Regardless, it is architecturally interesting, and a focal point in a town that has few focal points................

When I first moved to this little, nothing, desert town I wondered if I would struggle to find things that were worthy of pictures.

In reality, and surprisingly, I haven't.

I have wandered every nook and cranny of this town on foot and just when I get to the point that I think I have seen all there is to see, I find something new.

When I don't find something new, I find compelling things that always look different depending on a handful of variables.

The time of day.  The lighting.  The weather.  The season.

The four abandoned silos (located only a block from the huge storage building) have always been one of my favorite local photographic subjects.

While the shelter above is on the outskirts of town, the silos are 1/4 mile outside the city limits.

They are wonderfully weathered, seemingly long abandoned, and they stand silently looking out over the vastness of the desert.

They watch over the town.  Watch over the desert.  Watch over Cedar Butte and Big Butte in one direction, and the Twin Buttes in the other direction.

They are solid and strong and unyielding, and geometrical in both their design and their placement.

Kory has walked onto the roof of one of them.

I have photographed them from a distance and up close, in the unending heat of summer and in the freezing cold of winter.............

Although Kory runs off leash often now, we continue to keep her on leash while in town.

Too many things for an energetic and curious dog to get into.

Kory chased after a snow shoe rabbit (a huge jack-rabbit that is totally white except for the tips of his ears which are dark grey) about a week ago while running on BLM land.

She ran like the wind chasing after the rabbit until (as LC said) "she put him in a different zip code", before finally returning to us.

But the point is that she DID return to us.

I have seen the jack rabbit in town and Kory would chase it.  A dog at the far end of town harassed the deer one day early in the winter, and one of them injured the dog in self-defense.  

And the coyotes.

Two nights ago the town was completely enveloped in thick icy mist.  As soon as I took Kory outside she was on alert and lunged for the trees across the road.  A minute later LC and I heard them.

The coyotes were in the trees in front of us, in the tall, frozen grasses of the property next door, lost in the icy mist not far down the road from us.

There were a lot of them in many directions, and between the howling of the coyotes and the lack of visibility from the thick fog, the world outside our front door was suddenly transformed into a very eerie place.

So going outside at night time unarmed never happens, and neither does Kory being off leash in town...........

A wonderfully geometric yard ornament leaning almost un-noticed up against the wall of an outbuilding..............

One of the accesses to BLM land...............

There is something very intriguing and beautiful to me about this entire picture.

It contains an old log building.

An old chicken coop.

An old wooden table and old wooden electric wire spool, a metal frame and old, stacked hay bales.

Nothing goes together.  

Nothing  is currently being used, and all of these things were just thrown down in this place without thought or care.

Just a place to carelessly toss items that the owners no longer care about or use, but which they also couldn't find the time to dispose of properly.

And yet..........for all that lack of caring, somehow the entire picture also tells a compelling story.

At least it tells ME a story.

Click on the picture and it will enlarge and maybe it will tell the reader of this blog a story as well.............

Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren't perfect...........Mister Rogers

Pewter Mornings, Pewter Afternoons

The past almost-week has been filled with cloud and frozen mist and ice.

Winter in the Snake River Plain of south east Idaho.

In the middle of winter life has been quiet.

When we walk with Kory the stillness and quiet of the area is stunning.

Welcome and absolute.

And absolutely welcome.

I had looked up weather stats for the area before we bought the house, and wondered how there could be so much more vegetation here (particularly on BLM land) than there was on BLM in and around Cody Wyoming.

After living through a good part of this winter I think I know the answer.

The frozen mist.

From early in October the nights have wavered between very cold and very freezing cold.

By morning the world around us would be completely white.

Every sage bush, every tree branch, every piece of every type of grass that grows in this desert area would be covered with frost.

During most days the frozen ice crystals that covered everything would melt into the ground, only to be repeated the next night, and then the next.

For months on end.

The frozen world around us was unexpected.  Before we moved to this area of Idaho I had thought that winter here may be filled with snow (as it had been over some winters) but may very well also be nothing more than endless grey days and endless brown and beige terrain (as still other winters of the past have been).

It had never occurred to me that Atomic City would be trapped in a wonderful and unending world of frosty ice crystals.

It hasn't snowed in well over a month but every morning the world is white again................

Even on days when the world is consumed with frozen mist so thick that the sun has no hope of piercing it, there are small shots of color all over Atomic City.

Shots of color like the one below.

A picture of a small, bright red rooster yard decoration, found hanging from a tree in a front yard..........

I haven't seen the doe who limps recently.

I am hoping that she is surviving this winter.

Through the warm months our city deer roam on BLM land and only wander into town late in the evening, when it is almost dark.

Through the winter they are almost continuously seen within the city limits.

Now that mating season seems to be done the herds have again broken into two, instead of the one large herd that we saw a couple of months ago.

I love them.

I love having them here.

And the funny thing is........even though some residents curse their presence during the summer because the deer eat their vegetables and trees and bushes and flowers, residents also feel protective of them.

They may be a pain in the rear, but they're OUR pain in the rear.

So seems to be the general consensus............

The empty and old school house...........

I snapped these pictures one early morning as I was wandering with Kory.

It was freezing cold and the world (as it always is on these kinds of mornings) was grey, socked in, cold, and silent.

As we wandered just a little, and as I waited for Kory to do whatever Kory needed to do first thing in the morning, I absently snapped random pictures of our white world.

Looking up at the sky I could see pale shades of red and purple and I knew that the sun was trying valiantly to break through the mist...............

Kory had finished her puppy-business but suddenly I was not in any hurry to walk back to the house.

I was dressed in pj's and wearing slippers I had bought in Alaska, as well as a winter jacket and wool hat.

I knew that I must have been quite a sight, only there was nobody to see me and so I didn't care.

Instead, I walked up and down a piece of property that was actually part of the county, mesmerized by winter sights and a continually changing sky................

My very sweet and wonderful dog covered in ice crystals.

After first being afraid of the snow and ice, she now loves to play in it.

She is a sweet spirit.  Fast as the wind.  Protective of the house.  A dog who loves to run wildly over and over, up and down the hall inside the  house until she exhausts herself.

In less than two months she has become a beloved member of our family..............

These pictures were all taken on Christmas morning.

We had only been awake for a short period of time but Kory was insistent.

As I watched her wander between me and LC I could see the silent pleading in her eyes.

My dog needed to run and she would not be deterred..

The temperature gauge outside the front window told me that it was 10 degrees.

As with so many other mornings, Atomic City was mired in thick and frozen mist.

Unlike the pictures above though, the weather forecast told us that THIS mist was not going to lift.

On Christmas Day there would be no sunshine, or warmth, or melting ice crystals.

This mist would stay with us all day.

I'm not sure what LC thinks of these kinds of days, but I love them.

There is a beauty and stillness and solitude to these kinds of days that you don't see when the sun is shining and the sky is completely blue.

With pups' boundless energy trying to burst out of her long, lean body I hurriedly got dressed and bundled up in preparation to head outside.

It was a beautiful day.

A day best enjoyed from the comfort of my warm living room, while still wearing pajamas and drinking an over sized mug of hot coffee, but that was not to be.

A picture of my guy and my dog heading towards BLM land............

As soon as we hit BLM we set our puppy free to do what our puppy loves so much to do.

She needed to run free, and LC and I smiled to each other as we watched her.............

We didn't stay long.

It was just too cold, but we stayed as long as we could stand it because our pup was having a wonderful time doing what she needed and wanted to do.

Merry Christmas Kory Jean................

The shed of leaves became a cascade of red and gold and after a time the trees stood skeletal against a sky of weathered tin. The land lay bled of its colors. The nights lengthened, went darker, brightened in their clustered stars. The chilled air smelled of woodsmoke, of distances and passing time. Frost glimmered on the morning fields. Crows called across the pewter afternoons...........James Carlos Blake, Wildwood Boys