POWELL

When we moved to Powell, Idaho, we came lock, stock and barrel. We arrived also with a trunk load of preconceived notions and ideas of how rugged and rustic the place and the people would be. For myself, I had this romantic vision of a ranger as a logging jacketed, jodhpur clad figure in calf high laced caulks, topped, of course, with a Smokey the Bear Stetson. They would commandeer huge four wheel drive vehicles when not on horseback and lead pack strings of mules into the wilderness to aid stranded campers and hikers. I could see the ranger riding on horseback into the compound with a rifle and a deer or a quarter of elk across his saddle. On weekends, they would gather around the pot-bellied stove in the lodge or the main office and spit and chew and tell stories. Rugged housekeeping in crude cabins, with the barest of amenities was what I had conjured up.

NO WAY! We had a rude awakening watching tiny Honda Civics navigate snowy and icy roads without chains or studs, inveterate shoppers who incessantly cruised the Mall in Missoula and comfy mobile homes equipped with every electronic gadget available to modern man. Sports attire-clad denizens could be seen jogging at all hours of the day and night and I have never seen so many and so elaborate TV aerials and dishes. True, there were some old-fashioned aspects to the ranger district. There was a pack string and an honest-to-god blacksmith that was charged to keep the mules serviceable for trips into the Fish Lake wilderness area. My class spent a wonderful morning on a “field trip” watching him shoe the mules, creating shoes from bar iron on a forge and dipping the red-hot shoes into cold water with a huge sizzle. Pete Dean was a real six-gun toting cowboy cop, riding horse back into the back country to enforce regulations and limits. I did go elk hunting with my antique 1894 Winchester rifle…and got nothing! One morning I baked loaves of Tiger Bread and then hopped up on the roof of our mobile home to tar the seams and stop developing leaks. That was a real pioneer feeling.

The students and I cross country skied or snow shoed to school and many times we’d watch elk that would come down and feed on the lawn by the play areas. Our recesses could get a little LLOONNGG since we had over a million acres to play Hide and Seek in. Some mornings, after school had started for the day, I would get a call from Kate and watch at the window for Cece to arrive. Soon I’d see a little, parka-clad figure walking slowly down the side of the main compound road. As she got to the building she would see me in the window and beam a happy smile in my direction. Soon door would open and close slightly and there would be two little thumps as she kicked off her galoshes in the entry hall,/mud room. In she would come, shyly smiling because she loved to be at the school with the big kids.

There was no end of entertainment for little ones and big ones too. These Powell’ites were rugged and resourceful people and no one who lived 100 miles from the nearest real amenities could be anything but. They had a real sense of adventure and spirit. The Pine Cone Cuties was a women’s group that got together to have fun and go into town. The men were left babysitting then. There were many little ones in the families that lived at the ranger station and also the Idaho State Patrol officer a few miles down the road had a family with a little girl. Many times groups of kids got together with moms. There was so much to do: nature walks, playing by the river, watching the activity at the station as equipment came and went (Dan loved that), picking millions of dandelions in the spring, watching moose, elk and other wildlife, going up to the lodge, watching the blacksmithing and mules and horses at the corrals, regular kid play…the list is endless.

There were some very modern juxtaposed events there too. Our trailer was in a great location for excitement. Many times a little blur in plaid pants would head to the heliport at the sound of an incoming chopper. Dan loved to watch the helicopters come in to the Powell heliport during the early and late fire seasons. Jim Bougie and his huge front loader once pulled our Chevy van out of a ditch that we had inadvertently turned into. That huge Caterpillar monster plucked our large van out like it was a toothpick.

Memorable times were many. On the way to the Lodge we saw a pair of river otters playing in the Lochsa, chasing each other over rocks and through pools. One VERY cold, frosty November night, I remember getting up and scraping the ice off the inside of our dual paned bedroom window. The full moon gleamed mistily through the frost wraiths. From somewhere far away we heard wolves howling. Instinctively, I leapt back into bed to be safe and warm and I am convinced that Becca began that night. The winter was such a combination of sunny (-16 degree) days and cold weather that the icicles reached to the ground from the roof. We all had fun breaking them off and spearing them into snowdrifts. At Christmas, the school teacher masqueraded as Santa Claus. Our Christmas tree, that year (1981) was free. We found it only seventy five feet away from our front door. Talk about convenient!

Miraculous times happened as well. One day I lost my keys on the way home from the schoolhouse. Looking everywhere in both places, I was beside myself since I knew that Jim had scraped the roads very recently and if I had dropped them on the road I would never find them or if I did they would be a twisted mass of metal. After many prayers to St. Anthony, and following Kate’s suggestion that I look one more time along the route I had taken, I found them, intact and safe, at the base of an immense pie of snow that the front loader had scooped up. They were in plain sight on the ground and I do not know HOW they escaped being crushed, being a hundred yards from any place I had walked.

My superintendent, Mr. Eimers came to evaluate me in the Spring and after a 10 minute discussion and a glance around the room, asked where the best fishing was found on the Lochsa. I never saw him again. Not long after we had a going away party that was very heartfelt and poignant. Our gathered friends gave us a beautiful hand made quilt, a Powell Cookbook of favorite recipes and advice (both of which we still have to this day) and a Forest Service uniform shirt. The last was a joke on me for always complaining that being the only state worker on the compound, I did not have a uniform to match everyone else.

***********************************************************
HISTORICAL NOTE: Powell Ranger station, elev. 3441, was built in 1910, on a site that is recorded in the journals of Lewis and Clark. They camped there on Sept.14, 1805. Highway 12, which goes past the ranger station was in times past a Native American trail of great importance. The Nez Perce used it to go from their homes in Idaho to hunt buffalo in Montana. The Kootenai and Salish (Flathead) came from Montana and used it to access salmon fishing streams feeding the Columbia. Lochsa is a Nez Perce word meaning “rough water.”

(Once a school teacher, always a school teacher!)