Sweat trickled down my arms and dripped from my fingertips, and my growing girth stretched my shirt against its buttons. I shall be thin(ner) again: I have signed onto the galactic S.U.G.A.R. treaty (I cannot remember what the acronym represents) and have foresworn all things donut-cake-cookie-candy.  Ice cream once a week is an important negotiated exception.  Breaking for breath, the trumpeted cackles of sandhill cranes float up from the Snake to where I stand on the rim of the world’s largest tuff cones, the Menan Buttes, ancient volcanos formed by magma boiling upward through groundwater.  A pair of red-tailed hawks screech overhead, circling each other on warm currents, the same screech TV commercials ascribe to the mighty magisterial bald eagle because it sounds cooler and more mighty and magisterial than the eagle’s pinched laughter.  On this high Idaho desert my four sons have struggled at university, jogged in fifteen below zero Fahrenheit wrapped and bundled, set climbing routes at the gym, served smokey sauced meat at Blisters BBQ, rafted class 4s on the Salmon, discovered the spirituality of a stone labyrinth laid out in the sagebrush, found dear wives and seen babies birthed, and graduated.  They make me proud, because I love them, come what will. And when I walk through the front door to shouts of “Welcome Home!!” Mom and Dad have me sit right down to tell them about it all.  They will not remember what I tell them.  Dad commented to Mom last week, “I’m having trouble remembering peoples’ names,” and she answered, “Whose name?”  “Nobody’s name!” he retorted: “I can’t re-mem-ber….”  They won’t remember what I told them, but they will remember my pride in my sons’ personalities and my happiness in my sons’ successes and how beautiful were the photos of the high Idaho desert and the Snake River and the alfalfa pivots and the views from “R” Mountain.

The core of the volcanic tuff cone.

Views of the Snake River to the North and South