Sawtooth Range
I had been wanting to visit Idaho ever since hearing it is what Colorado used to be like before its small mountain towns were swallowed by boutique storefronts and neighborhoods lined with vacation homes occupied for a handful of weeks each year. Where during the slow season it might take 3 minutes to drive from one side of town to the other, but in peak season you could find yourself on the same road sitting it stop and go traffic for 45 minutes. I’m no Colorado native, but there’s a difference between shopping at City Market and Patagucci or seeing the wildlife vs feeding the wildlife and im pretty sure those bald tires are not going to make it up that hill.
The sawtooths of Idaho contain not one Starbucks nor a single fast food restaurant and the biggest town is Ketchum, with a whooping 3,000 residents and home to the only ski resort, Sun Valley. The rest is silent mountains, winding rivers and forests that could give a shit about you.
We took our time crossing from Boise to Arco, a quiet five-day journey without hurry or agenda. We stopped where it felt right, from slamming sourdough flapjacks at a roadside café, The Sourdough Lodge, to soaking in natural hot springs hidden along the bends in the river and watching the occasional rafters and kayakers bounce their way along the whitewater.
Our first night in Idaho was quiet, until it wasn’t.
Just as we were beginning to slip into sleep, a sound sliced through the stillness. Shorter than a fart, but long enough to detect. It was unmistakable: the crisp crinkle of a wrapper being nibbled. My ears perked up like a startled dog. I held my breath, unsure if I’d really heard something or if my brain was simply weaving stories in the dark. A long, peaceful silence followed, enough to convince me I’d imagined it. But then, again, the telltale the pucker of plastic packaging penetrated the peace once again. A rhythm ensued, silence-noise-listen.. silence-noise-listen…silence-noise-listen. Over and again, until I eventually fell asleep. I went through my morning rituals thinking about it, unsure whether I was hearing things or not.
However, the next night erased all doubts. Just as we were falling asleep, the mouse noises returned only this time frequent enough that it was brought to the surface.
“You hear that?” i asked nicole
“Yes, i heard them last night too”
“Fuckers”
Headlamp on, i scrounged beneath the bed and rifled throughout the car, looking for a mangled hole in some wrapper, a tiddly droplet of turd or tiny trail of crumb. Nothing. I laid out some sacrificial crackers and found my way back under the covers, holding my breath and the silence of the night. And then, right on cue, just as sleep began to pull me under, the scurrying returned. Louder now. Purposeful. This wasn’t a passing-through. They were scouting, staking claim, sending a silent, whiskered declaration: we’re here now.
With nothing left to do, I slid in my foam earplugs and let the sharp rustling dull to a distant murmur, drifting into a shallow sleep somewhere between irritation and surrender, wondering, not without a hint of humor, just how many of us were sleeping in that vehicle.
