Salmon and Sawtooths

So last night we had supper with childhood friends we hadn’t seen in 50 years (see, I’m getting used to it–no caps :-). The youngest (Midy) was an infant when we left town, and now lives next door to their mom. I tend to drop in on the mother whenever I go through Salmon, but the last few times I haven’t been able to find the lane into her property, but with directions provided by Heather and her husband, we found it and went to see her. It turned out that her other two daughters were expected later that day, so we went back to Midy’s for supper.

The house was built by Midy’s husband and the whole family, from scratch. They literally picked out the trees for the beams and had them milled to his specifications, then did hand joinery to put them up–no nails in it anywhere. Here are a couple of pictures that show the beams. First just an overhead shot:

Then a closeup to show the joinery.

The husband is also a cabinetmaker, and they had some beautiful items around the house that he had made. He’d done a several clever jewelry holders–they look like sort of art deco wood medallions, then they open up to reveal the jewelry. Here are a few.

Closed. . .

Open.

Closed. . .

Open.

Here’s a cabinet he made, if I understood correctly, as his “master” piece (and I don’t know squat about how one qualifies as a cabinet maker, so I may have that wrong.) Anyway, he selected the wood and used the flaws in it as the handles.

Midy does a lot of sewing, including quilts, which she apparently turns out at a great rate. Here’s one she had on a bed. It’s at a catty-wampus angle–blame the photographer (me).

After the house tour, we sat down to supper, and later dessert. Here’s everyone (except me) around the table.

Here’s the two older daughters.

The one on the left was my best friend all the way through grade school, but we lost touch after that. The one on the right has spent the last 37 years in West Virginia, and has seriously picked up the accent. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been able to pick either one of them out in a crowd, but by the time the evening was over, I felt we still could be good friends if we saw each other more, even though life has taken us in different directions. I still like all these women. Here they are in a bunch.

The mom used to take care of me, along with her own, after school and at various other times. She still thinks of me as “one of her kids”. I have a lot of good stories/memories about her, but one I recall most vividly, and told a couple of times last night, is one day when I must have stayed overnight, and she tried to feed me cold mush in the morning. It may have been because I’d gotten up later than she thought I should, neither of us could remember. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve ever had cold mush, but it’s not exactly appetizing. I refused to eat it, so she told me I had to sit at the table until I ate it. I sat there all day, until my mother picked me up at 5:00 when she got off work. The flaw in her plan, if she’d intended to teach me a lesson, was that she also spent the day in the kitchen, I think canning cherries, and talked to me all day, and she’s a very interesting and entertaining woman, so I had a great time.

It did end up raining all day and most of the night yesterday, sometimes quite heavily. The river was at least 8-10 inches higher this morning than it was Monday night when we pulled in. I don’t know if you can tell from the following, but here are a few river shots anyway. The first is the same shot as the first river shot from yesterday’s post, minus the heron; you might be able to see how much higher the river was if you look closely at the bushes at the tip of the island.

Here’s a shot with the water up on the trunks of a couple of young trees.

Here’s one taken from the big island, under the bridge. I was trying to show how deep the wave created where the water hits the bridge support is, to give an idea of how fast the water was traveling.

And just because it’s a nice shot–I caught the heron while walking the dogs on the island this morning. Isn’t he(?) beautiful?

Today we headed at a reasonable hour to Stanley, which is in a beautiful valley at the foot of the Sawtooths, which I think has to be one of the, if not the, most beautiful mountain ranges in the world. My brother is staying in a motel in town, I’m at a forest service campground a few miles north (I think) of town. I’ve tried three times to upload a couple of photos of the mountains, but WordPress on the web and the WordPress app on the ipad aren’t speaking, or at least not properly, so pictures will have to wait. I hope to get some more in the morning–you can practically close your eyes, spin around, and snap and get a great shot. Just when I’ll be able to take the time to fuss with this stuff again I don’t know, but I’ll get those pictures up even if I have to wait till I’m back at my laptop to do so.