Walking the Lower Boise River (Essay #1)

Perhaps more than ever before on this river, where the Boise meets the Snake, wildlife and farmers abound. Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Red-tailed hawks, Cinnamon Teal and American Coots, Canada Geese and Osprey, black Double-Crested Cormorants, Turkey Vultures,and a pure white Pelican are as common as house flies along the lower Boise River as I begin to hike. Deer, coyotes, and wild turkeys wander through the brush; Monarch, Mourning Cloak, and Tiger Swallowtail butterflies provide elegance to the Cottonwood forest. As I walk to the confluence, a man fishes for bass or catfish. We chat and he poses for a picture. This is near where Fort Boise was originally built in 1834, but now it is gone.

Fort Boise was abandoned in 1854and built closer to the growing city of Boise, away from Indian raids. No one seems to know quite where Old Fort Boise was, although it is currently marked by a short pentagon shaped obelisk across the river from me. My guess is that it was swept away by one of the deluges that occurred before the Boise drainage was tamed by the dams and flood control developments of modern-day living.

Agriculture dominates the current landscape in the lower Boise River. Canals, ditches, drains, laterals, and creeks that are enhanced with water from the upper river drainage, thoroughly dissect the landscape to water farmlands. I found it impossible to cross an obscure ditch, not to mention all of the named canals, in mid-May as I was forced to trace and retrace its path when I headed upstream. The watercourses block logical movement for anyone walking along the river and the many No Trespassing! signs give the impression that no one should be walking beside the river at all.

I had invited a few friends to join me on this trip of the lower Boise. Some laughed it off, some wanted to go on a more scenic stretch, some had obligations, but none wanted to see the nether end of this river that was in their backyard. Eric, my good friend, put it most politely in his email

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note in response to my invitation: “Kind of you to offer! Plans prevent me from accompanying you on such an insane outing. LOL.” Even my good friend Eric deferred!

A week later I bushwhacked through 10-foot-high reeds and tough, but mercifully shorter, willows; I pulled countless numbers of cheatgrass seeds from my shoes and socks, felt bullwhipped by stinging nettles, and swore at coming, once again, to a ditch full of muddy water and mayhem. Mosquitoes swarmed, ticks snuck up my legs, and rattlesnakes hid somewhere, I was sure, beneath my feet. It was slow going and yes, I needed some other plans too! But not today because this was a cool day and tomorrow promised blistering heat.

Idaho State law provides that the land below the high water level is owned by the public and is available for people to walk upon. But that won’t count for much at high water flows as the density of vegetation and many canals along the lower Boise would stop an eager wolverine from passing where no trail has been built and maintained. I talked to landowners as I got to their property and they allowed me to proceed, without exception, on their roads and occasional levees on this stretch of the river. Where is the high water level anyhow? It wasn’t worth arguing over. I respected the wishes of property owners and they gave me kindness and good luck.

There was one man, a trainer of hunting dogs, who ran out after I had knocked on his door. I hadwaited for a time and then resolved simply to continue my trespass upriver. “Hey!” he called. “Where you think you’re headed?”

“Upriver.” I turned back and walked the hundred yards over to him and told him I could just go around his property if he wanted. “The water is high and I’m sorry to trespass.”

“Well, you’re on my land.”

“I realize…”

“How’d you get here?”

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“I walked up the river, climbed a fence, came to your property, and knocked on your door. I didn’t mean to just walk across your land.”

“But you did.” He scowled. “That takes some nerve.”

“I had no choice.” I looked at my feet.

“Did you run into anybody else on your way here?”

“Yes there was a man, Corey, who was rebuilding some pool for his cows and he told me I could walk over his land. We had a nice conversation and I gave him my card.”

“He let you trespass? He’s always been kind of strict about that. I can’t believe it.”

“He said I could walk over his land to get to the river. He pointed to the levee that I should follow. He said good luck with the next guy.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be the only bad guy that you run into.” He chuckled a little.

“I don’t mind. I can just go around. I’m really sorry.”

He laughed. “Didn’t look like you were going around. OK? Nah, you can trespass.” He shook hishead. “I won’t make you go the long way around.” He looked sideways at me like a guy who was taking aim with a small bore rifle. “You know you’re about the only person this year who’s crazy enough to try to walk up the river. You’re just nuts. People don’t even raft down that river.”He stood with his hands folded across his chest wearing a white t-shirt. Now I laughed as he continued. “Well, so take the route beside the river, and be sure to close the gate. You have to lift it up on one end and latch it afterwards. It’ll take some kind of a move.” He pointed to a white house at a distance that seemed to be in the wrong direction. “You’ll end up by that house over there with bunch of dogs and the guy may not be as nice as I am.”

“Thanks. I am forewarned. I’ll take the road after that. No,” I added in response to his further comments, “I don’t like drones and I am not a US Forest Service agent.”

No landowner much cared for me to trespass across their land. So I went quickly, never looked back, nor did I ask twice. I did a move and got the gate closed properly. Pulled on it to make sure. The man at the house with barking dogs wasn’t home so I slipped by and took a road beyond that house. One dog was friendly, another barked incessantly, and a third just followed me suspiciously for a bit and left. A small herd of cows followed me beside the road; curious, and hungry, they were.

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And what was I doing there on this silly quest to know about the whole Boise River from bottomto top? I decided that I was tired of going far away for each vacation when there was much beauty right out my door. I wouldn’t waste gasoline or time or money. I had been a conservationist for many years working with local and statewide environmental organizations, and working on federal and state agencies and a few stakeholders like ranchers, farmers, landowners, and developers with the aim of improving the water quality of Idaho’s rivers and lakes. I am a hiker, fisherman, an occasional hunter, a has-been boater, a writer, and I’m just plain curious about the Boise River that is just outback. There is a great deal to learn here and I could travel much without going far. So I resolved to learn more about the Boise River, not by what I’ve been told but what I could see firsthand. For that I went walking.

The lands that are not easily accessible to people are often the very places where wildlife prosper. That is as true in the maze of inaccessible places in the Boise bottomlands as it is in the Sawtooth Wilderness or in the nuclear research landscape at Idaho Nuclear Laboratory near Arco. It is also true that much wildlife will congregate where there is adequate water and food when both are scarce elsewhere. That water is more widely distributed in the Boise Basin since dams and canals have been operating. Every canal leaks.

White people like me have taken land that was only good for a few wildlife and turned it into productive habitat for people. We’ve spread water in time and space to places where it didn’t naturally occur and some wildlife have gained. Sage grouse, pigmy rabbits, and anadromous fish however, are among the losers as the use of land has changed. Cottonwood forests, some of the most productive of forests, have managed to prosper in the wet and dry lands of the lower Boise River but the yin and yang, the give and take, in this life and death scenario define what we have.Native Americans who took the least from the land, have lost the most.

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I walked upon an Hispanic man who had just that day begun to irrigate a piece of land for the season. He directed the water with his shovel to make sure that every furrow was wet. He seemed the epitome of efficient water use as he widened and narrowed the path of water to get it to thirsty corn seedlings. In other places I saw the big machinery that had been used to work the land and make it more productive, mostly plows, planters, and harvesters.

The nearby towns of Parma and Notus are indisputably agricultural towns. In Parma, the Crop Production Service seems to have sprouted within a tall silo and beside tanks of undisclosed chemicals; a post-and-pole manufacturing plant, making poles for fences, lies nearby along with hauling and harvesting machinery that are stilled and waiting for crops to grow.

In Notus, a town which is little more than a speck beside the railroad tracks, piles of new woodenpallets and shipping crates rise to three stories and line the tracks. A metal silo is empty and ready to store crops. The Giant Produce sign reads with hope: “Onions and Potatoes-Russets, Golds, Reds—Now Available.” Neither a potato nor an onion is available at the moment, but the

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beauty shop is open, Apple Lucys is serving, well, I guess, apples, and good coffee is flowing in the Garage Café. The Senior Center offers a brunch. Quesadillas are sold in a downtown joint. Ten Commandments are listed on a fence. Cows are outstanding in their fields, and pivot sprinklers dampen the rich, dry, valuable land. The water has already been brought in and the work on fields is getting done. It’s spring in the lower Boise River drainage and it’s all Go! Go! Go!

But none of the water diversions from the river appeared to have screens to protect fish. I saw two large carp stranded in a narrow irrigation watercourse, their corpses picked to the bones by vultures, coyotes, and flies and the harsh sunlight cooked their skin to leathery toughness. What I thought this meant is that the carp were able to swim to the smallest tributaries of the irrigation system before it dried up. That doesn’t bode well for other fish in the Boise River!

I went into the Anglers Habitat, a beautifully appointed fly fishing shop in Caldwell, a day beforeand asked about fishing in the Boise River nearby. Wayne, the owner, said he didn’t know much about that river, but he would surely like to. It was within spitting distance from his store but nobody much fishes there, he said. I’ll have to tell him not to expect to catch many fish despite the great flow in the beautiful river. But I guess he already knows that. Several other big fish were trapped, flopping in irrigation canals. A rookery of snowy egrets was alive and writhing with eerie wailing sounds in the tops of 10 or 12 cottonwood trees beside that canal. A red-tailed hawk screamed at me as I walked beside its nest. I realized that they and ospreys and coyotes would be beneficiaries of the irrigation system designed to killed fish. Isn’t that fine?

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Eventually I walked on the railroad tracks because I couldn’t find a place to stroll down by the river. The canals and brush wore me out. I walked beside sewage ponds marked with warning signs and through a marsh cut by the railroad and finally trespassed off the tracks through a massive gravel pit closer to the river. Mountains of gravel were headed out of the river basin on trucks and as my fortune had it, no one was there to catch me. I took lots of pictures and Mulberries grew on a tree beside a field of freshly cut hay, which smelled so wonderful, beside the gravel pit. I ate Mulberries by handfuls!

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After a while I was on the levee again. It was a good levee, a great levee, the first really good levee on this river, and I was glad to be upon it because I was exhausted and it provided easy hiking. I read another sign that warned me not to trespass. I stopped and thought about how much public money had been spent creating upstream dams, the network of canals and levees that were built by the US, the price that native Americans had paid, and the price paid by farmers and ranchers in the lower Boise Basin and then I ignored that sign saying No Trespassing! and walked on. It was outrageous to tell people to get off land that they had paid for to be productive. But I understood and hoped thata cop would too. I walked along the levee a bit and over the railroad tracks and I was back at thefinish of this harrowing day beside the Rotary Park in Caldwell.

Then a freight train came so I set myself beside the bridge to take a photo of it coming over me. Iwas in the viewfinder as the massive train came at 60+ miles per hour with its horn blasting, bright headlights rambling, and dust streaming away. It was running over me. Click. Perfect shot!

I fell away, swept back by the force of the wind from the train and my sudden fear of this galloping machine that implied so much. I was six feet away from this screaming train that could have mashed me like the most miniscule bug. I dusted myself off, shook my head, and regained my senses. This ending was the beginning of the six day trip up the Boise River. Perfect. Perfect! Now all I had to do was to get on my bike and ride through the darkness back tothe point where I began.

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This was certainly a nice place to be a farmer; it was OK for the river to be like it was with all of the policy flaws that no one was motivated to fix. Who was I, anyway, to be concerned, when so few even cared to look at this fine river? I’m the fool! My friends are out playing in the cool mountains. Others are working out on the land making money for their families. This is the life for a gypsy, dodging from place to place to get by, and this time I avoided capture.

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