The Lay of the Land That I Love

You hear people talk about Route 66 or US50.  Those highways are OK.  But it is US30 that I really love.  In southeastern ID and southwestern WY, US30 overlaps with the Oregon Trail.  There is something about the lay of the land that I love.

There are lots of mountains nearby, but who cares?  Mountains are barriers to travel.  In this racket, we are not interested in obstructing travel and freedom.  This is especially true for somebody who pedals a mountain bike and pulls a trailer.  The magic of this land is that it exudes passage and freedom -- that is, transportation and movement.  I want to pedal without losing traction or going over the handlebars.  I want to level my trailer in less than twenty minutes.  It is funny how practical issues can insinuate themselves into a person's notion of beauty.

A railroad goes through this land, as you would expect.  I am camped about three miles from the railroad and enjoy its sound.  

There are decomposed wooden farmsteads in this area.  They might only date back to 1900, but they certainly evoke the era of the Oregon Trail.

There is a soft hill next to me, with surprisingly green and lush grass.  It is redolent of that famous scene in the movie "Room With a View."  Well, the young man in the video fell in love with "Lucy".  Here, on this land, I fell in love with swales or any topography that lends itself to easy passage.

I have only camped here once, and that was three years ago.  The road looked familiar on the way in, when I saw the first real rain of the entire summer.  The tow vehicle did start to fishtail a couple times.  Then it started to hail.

I noticed something new this time:

There are clusters of maple trees here!  Usually they grow near creeks or gullies.  Sometimes there are more than a dozen trees in the cluster.

It would be nice to know more about the behavior of wild Orphic religions in order to practice them right here and right now.  It would honor this miracle of seeing a real tree in a western state.  People who are unfamiliar with the western states might not know how monotonous and uninteresting the forests are!