God’s Country

Where I live is God’s country. You’ve heard that about other places, but this one is for real. Although all of them are God’s, He has especially blest this little section. So far, we don’t have problems with hurricanes and tsunamis. We’ve had only a few small earthquakes, one in which two small children were killed as they walked to school. Flooding is scarce and minimum. Humidity is low. My house is in a river valley in the northern desert of the Rocky Mountains, a fascinating combination, and a day’s drive to our inland seaport, and a shorter drive to the tall timber. Map-wise, we should be on Pacific Time, but no, we’re on Mountain Time. We could use more rain sometimes, but our farmers haven’t suffered too much from the lack of it. You still can get your Idaho potatoes in stores.

But we do have range fires and forest fires. My late husband worked as a smoke jumper during the summers while he was at university. One time he parachuted to fight a fire and was on the job for 72 hours before the relief team showed up. Sometimes he slept on the ground in snake country with a tarp over his head. He didn’t have claustrophobia while I had enough for both of us, but I didn’t know him then. (The other nine months of the year he took care of the white mice in the science lab.) But few homes in Idaho have been destroyed in these fires, mainly because we have a relatively small population. When I see nice homes burning in California, I think how fortunate Idaho is in this regard. Really, it is God’s country. And sagebrush smells good! The only way to smell it is to roll a bit of it in both hands, and smell your hands. John taught me this the very day I met him.

♥