River of No Return

I had never set foot in the state of Idaho before the day I moved here. The “Welcome to Idaho” sign near the end of steep, winding, still-snowy-in-April Teton Pass was my initiation. Did I mention that I was riding in an RV with 4 cats? 

I had carefully researched our move online though, every detail of it. I already knew that I wanted to work at Earthfire Institute, and had sent them a cover letter with my resume.  I already had plans to be a workshare at a local organic farm to ensure that we at least had a food supply for the first 6 months in case nothing else worked out. 

But I knew no one in the town I was moving to and had never seen the town in person until the day I moved there. I had also never seen my new home in person until our RV parked in front of it. In some ways, it was a leap of faith. In other ways, I was just that sure about this.

The doors to the house were unlocked when we arrived, because that’s how things are here. To me, it was like a passage in time back to my childhood growing up in a small town where feral children still played outside, and no one locked their doors. It’s still like that here. 

And it’s quiet. And I can see the Milky Way in the sky at night. 

Idaho hadn’t even been on our radar until Max and I happened to see a PBS special called River of No Return. Who knew that the state of Idaho contained the second largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states?! Not I! I had been told it was all potato farms. Shortly after watching River of No Return, we stopped searching for homes near Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Wyoming, and started looking at Idaho. And then it wasn’t long until we were on the road to our new home.