THE POTATO STATE. The “Gem State”. Since the name “Idaho” was fake anyway and was originally meant to refer to Colorado*, let’s just call it for what it really is: North Utah.
Light-hearted mockery of our beloved northern neighbors aside (we did help settle you, after all), it’s past time that I share something about my first trip to the state since becoming old enough to appreciate it. My friend Kedric returned from Denmark at the same time as I did, and I wanted to meet his family and hear him talk in church, as well as experience exotic Idaho for myself, so a couple of weekends ago, I decided to make the journey.
The familiar scenery of the 100-mile urban-suburban stretch of I-15 along the Wasatch Front, home to four out of five Utahns, faded into empty desert and bare, low hills that continued for miles. Messages like “no services for 10 miles” and “freeway oasis” began to adorn intermittent freeway exits, and the numbers on the signs that showed how many miles were left until the next major settlements climbed dramatically. After a few hours in the car, I made my first stop in a larger town called Burley to get some fresh air and use the necessary facilities for the car and myself. The town’s visitor center was closed, so I wasn’t able to learn anything about it while I was there, but peering through the glass doors at a flyer advertising a public raffle for a variety of guns (and having just passed the first billboard in Idaho, a woman disdainfully holding a medical mask under the slogan “Freedom is the cure”), I was assured that rural Idaho’s political culture was little different than rural Utah’s.
In fact, the whole trip was an odd fusion of familiarity and unfamiliarity. I chuckled at the sheer familiarity of overhearing the announcement of prizes at an outdoor community event in Burley: “And the Swedish Fish go to Nephi†!”, at the universal secondary-school humor of a high school announcement board that was arranged to read “YEE YEE HAVE A GREAT SUMMER”, even at the caricature of the criminal on the “Neighborhood Watch” signs I hadn’t seen since my childhood in West Jordan, Utah. On the other hand, I was surprised when I turned on the radio to my parents’ default 80s music station, 103.1 The Wave–or that was what I thought, until the song finished and the radio announced I was listening to “103.1 The Edge”, which was most definitely not 80s music. It wasn’t bad, until halfway through the first song when I realized it was just as edgy as the name suggested.
I arrived at my destination in Boise early. It was near an Oregon Trail historic hiking path, but after checking it out for a few minutes and deeming the weather too hot, I resolved to drive into town and experience the city for an hour. So naturally, I drove the complete opposite direction and ended up on a gorgeous mountainside highway that snaked along beside a wide river, with no cell reception. After I became convinced that my intuition was not leading me any closer to downtown, I parked the car on the side of the road and took a few pictures. In the river far below, a motorboat drove by, blasting “Party in the USA” at a volume to raise the dead. I like Boise.
Before long, it was time to meet up with Kedric and his friends and hike Table Rock, a mountain near the city. (It’s telling that Denmark calls its hills “mountains”, while the American West calls its mountains “rocks”.) Regrettably, my phone had died at the end of the car ride, so I didn’t get any pictures of the giant cross that towered over the city at the top of Table Rock. (The signage made great pains to indicate that it was built on private land, an apologetic gesture that came off half-hearted, given, well, the giant cross that towered over the city.) The view of the city from the base of the cross was breathtaking. I marveled at how green the area was, despite its location in the middle of the desert. Apparently the name Boise means “forested”. It’s fitting.
I was glad I could make it to the next day’s church meeting. Kedric’s remarks were an honest and familiar reflection of the Kedric I knew in Denmark, a good reminder that taking a missionary tag on or off isn’t a fundamental change in character, just a change in the role one plays.
After the meeting, Kedric offered to show me around the city, since I didn’t manage to make it there the previous day after my Miley Cyrus-accompanied directional mishap. Boise exhibited more tension than rural Idaho (as cities often do). Churches and universities existed alongside clubs, theaters, restaurants and office buildings–though the atmosphere was generally one of organization (especially in contrast to the asymmetrical spread of the European cities like Copenhagen, where I lived for over a year; I was reminded of my first impression of an American city after a long time away: “Seattle looks like it’s built out of legos.”) Gay pride flags hanging over businesses downtown and a Don’t Tread on Me flag hoisted over suburbia proclaimed curiously similar messages from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The absence of graffiti over most of the city was forgotten at the turn of the concrete corner to Freak Alley, the biggest display of street art in the northwestern USA, painted in bright layers of slogans lurid and loving: Focus on the things that bring you joy! Float on! You look lovely today!
Farewell time came too soon. The next day was my first day of school, so I couldn’t stay and linger as long as I would have liked. I found myself really liking Idaho–perhaps it was the verdant scenery, or the beautiful highways, or the good company, or the feeling of being free. (Freedom really is the cure, I thought to myself, though maybe not in exactly the way the billboard intended.) We’ll make it North Utah before too long. ■
*True story. Etulain, R. & Marley, B. (1983). The Idaho Heritage: A Collection of Historical Essays. Idaho State University Press. https://digitalatlas.cose.isu.edu/geog/explore/essay.pdf
†Nephi is a major figure in the Book of Mormon.