19-23 March 2010, Boise
Early morning on the back porch of the house of my good buddy R.H. Cold clear sunlight warming the porch boards, a cup of coffee in my hand, the house quiet with everyone off to work or school, the cat twining figure-eights between my legs as I stand looking out at the frosty blue sky. And above the thicket of leafless trees and pitched rooftops that is the North End of town: snow-white mountains, blue with pines along their ridges, buff-colored lower down where the snow-melt-soaked hills are beginning to bloom with ground flowers.
After the verdant coast, everything looks brown here, from the sage hills to the dirt alleyways to the skeletal canopies poking at the sky. But a dormant energy is rising in things. You can feel it on a morning like this, a spark in the sunlight, a sliver of warmth in the chill air, the green spears of iris pushing out of the ground at the edge of the yard. Three days ago, in Jordan Valley, I saw a wedge of geese flying north. The birds know what’s going on. And we’re not unlike them in migrating northward with the season. But it’s taking my spirit some time to cross that high desert and catch up with my body. I don’t feel here yet; I don’t feel anywhere yet. Maybe that’s because Anna and Ada aren’t here, staying as they are in Denver with Anna’s mother as I scout ahead. San Francisco feels long behind me. And Boise is a land of doubts and roaming for me, jobless and on the hunt for a house for us, waking in the middle of the night with that gut-empty insecurity that you feel sometimes when on the road, that you felt as a kid the first time you slept away from home; the anxious daring fearful dreaming feeling that is the constant companion of gypsies and children and mountaineers and migrants and I dare guess birds flying north at the front edge of spring. But I’m certain that along with those birds, and the warming days and the first blossoms softening the trees, and Anna and Ada arriving by plane this afternoon, my spirit will soon catch up to me.
_________
We are house-hunting and tired for it. Seems most of the cute bungalos around the North End are only genuinely cute if they're for sale or already under ownership. Should you want to rent one, and dare step inside with all the anticipation inspired by the rental's outward appearance (or photos on Craigslist), the setting you encounter will surely dismay you; will more likely please a ground squirrel holing up for winter, or a college student or starving artist doing the same, than it would a young family looking for a clean, decent place to let their kid roam about in. Everywhere we go we see the craftiest Craftsmans and the coziest Forties bungalows, all of which are already owned, with families outside working in the yard or kids swinging from the trees. So we’ve got house-envy pretty bad.
(I can’t believe I just wrote that last line: me, who’s lived how many seasons out the back of my truck or the depths of my backpack? Yes, life works on you, shapes you like a living piece of sculptor, and what the hand of time doesn’t get around to, the baby-fist of your first-born will smash asunder.)
On Sunday we took a break and went to a crafts fair in the Linen District. (The area was for decades where all of downtown’s laundry and linens were produced, washed and pressed.) The single-story brick and cinderblock factory buildings have innate modern lines to them, a minimalist style which has been picked up by the new shops and cafes that now occupy the two-block section of downtown. A mid-century era motel, renamed The Modern, has been sharply renovated with contemporary touches. The upper level of the Linen Building houses an art gallery, the high-ceilinged space with exposed timbers showing through the white walls and long views over town from the windows. After looking over the paintings, we toured the crafts show downstairs. While the old photo booth didn’t work, the rest of the participants in the show had some interesting products that did. We bought a bottle of good riesling from Holesinsky Wineries, located in Buhl, Idaho, out on the Snake River Plain; and a bar of oatmeal/lavender soap and lavender flowers from a nice old impeccably dressed man from a farm in Nampa. Anna nearly bought a pair of ear-rings that looked like they could've been hanging from a tree in San Francisco’s Candy Store. The young jewelry-maker belongs to the Visual Arts Collective, located in Old Boise, which is where we promised to find the artist and her wares once we had a little more money to spend.
After the show we wandered over to the café next door. Big City Coffee, with all it’s black and white photos and vintage signs on the walls, feels more like a roadhouse on the way out of town than a big city café. The place was lively and crowded with a mix of young and old, newspaper readers and onliners, hipsters in pegged jeans and ancient geezers in worn Wranglers. We shared a massive sandwich of thick slices of honey-glazed turkey and peals of green-leaf lettuce and tomato, sipped our coffees, and watched with hands-free delight as Ada, lodged in a highchair, made friends with three young girls who had gathered round from the next table to play with her. The girls were very sweet with her, fawning over her and twirling her hair. Ada loves other kids, is fascinated by older girls, and being a rough-and-tumble girl herself, she was in hog heaven as the girls became more courageous in their play, taking her hands and hugging her and pressing their funny faces into hers. She was so thrilled she about danced and howled herself out of the high-chair. We apologized to those nearby for our daughter’s obnoxiousness, but nobody seemed to mind. It was great to be able to sit back and eat and let the village kids do the baby-sitting. A similar experience happened a few days earlier when we were at the playground and some kids came over to play with Ada, all of them having a ball while their parents took advantage of the time to relax and relearn their English.
So despite our uncertainties and mid-night anxieties over whether we've made the right decision, it feels, most of the time, good to be here. Our apprehensions are mostly of the mind, while our bodies are beginning to feel at home here. Just as spring is meandering it's way north, so our spirits are catching up with us.
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