Boise, Idaho: Big Skies and Colorful Characters

Idaho's natural beauty is what makes novelist Anthony Doerr feel so much at home in Boise

  • By Anthony Doerr
  • Photographs by Glenn Oakley
  • Smithsonian magazine, April 2009, Subscribe
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Anthony Doerr in Boise Idaho
Boise, says the author, is a study in paradoxes, a place "both rural and metropolitan, civilized and feral." (Glenn Oakley)

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I stand at the window, 7 in the morning, and watch snow drift across the backyard. Dawn is slow and pale. I drive my 4-year-old twin sons to preschool. The sky swirls; the roads are ribbons of slush. Fog washes between the upper stories of downtown Boise's few tall buildings.

We are passing the Hollywood Video at Broadway and Park when a doe comes skittering onto the road. The intersection is six lanes across and the Toyota in front of us flares its brake lights and 40 or 50 cars in all directions follow suit. We slide into a dangerous, slow-motion ballet. Behind the first doe come five more, radar-eared, panicky, dancing across the centerline.

A truck beside us grinds up onto the curb. A dozen cars behind us glide to a stop. No one, miraculously, appears to have crashed into anyone else.

My sons yell, "Deers, deers!" The six does reach the far side of Broadway and make several dazzling leaps into Julia Davis Park, the oldest of the string of city parks woven through the center of Boise. The deer pause for a moment, looking back, twitching their ears, exhaling vapor. Then they melt into the trees.

I breathe. The traffic realigns and creeps forward again.

Boise, contrary to the notions of Easterners I meet now and then, is not located in Indiana, Ohio or Iowa. More than 300 miles from Salt Lake City and 400 miles from Reno and Portland, Boise, Idaho, is arguably the most remote urban area in the Lower 48. The broad, sandy flood plain on which it is built forms an island in what some people still call the Sagebrush Ocean, thousands of square miles of balsamroot, sky and stillness in the Far West. Depending on the weather, Boise looks alternately silver or gold or beige or purple; after rain, it smells like menthol.

Boisé: in French it means wooded. Our nickname has long been the City of Trees, which sounds absurd to most visitors from, say, Indiana, Ohio or Iowa, whose towns' most pedestrian hardwoods dwarf all but Boise's biggest and oldest oaks. It's only when you approach the city by road, or better yet on foot, that you begin to understand how the appellations suit the place, how a thin belt of cottonwoods along a river might have looked almost supernaturally desirable to a traveler after hundreds of miles of unremitting high desert.

Imagine you're plodding through the summer of 1863, the year the city was founded. You're tired, you're thirsty, you've been passing for weeks through mountains that belong primarily to wildlife: grasshoppers the size of thumbs, anthills the size of pitchers' mounds, biblical herds of pronghorns raising dust clouds in the distance. Reefs of purple clouds gather above the horizon and the day's heat pumps off the basalt around you, and you come over a last bench to see a valley shimmering like some fabled oasis below you: a few orchards, a smattering of buildings, the silver braids of the Boise River. The 19th-century writer Mary Hallock Foote deemed Boise "the metropolis of the desert plains, the heaven of old teamsters and stage drivers crawling in at nightfall," and it's easy enough to picture. A few lights burn between the trees; a half-dozen spires of smoke rise into the dusk. The promise of rest, drink, shade—a haven, a refuge, a city of trees.

These days I can pedal past the densely built bungalows, Queen Annes and Tudor Revivals of Boise's North End into the 30 or so blocks that make up downtown Boise and eat dumplings made by Thai immigrants, buy a pair of jeans made in Guatemala and watch a Pedro Almodóvar film at an art house. Steeples rise here and there; the statehouse dome looms grandly against the backdrop of the foothills. Spend enough time in the hills, a friend who lived for several years in the Bitterroot Mountains told me, and Boise begins to feel like Paris.

But our city remains a place where we see moose tracks on the bike trails and bald eagles along the river and—once, in front of our neighbor's house—cougar prints in the snow. A dozen miles from my house I can stand in the foothills and experience the same graveyard quiet, the same desert indifference that trappers and the Shoshone and Bannock Indians knew. And beyond the foothills are lakes marked on maps only by their elevations, velvet hillsides, alpine meadows, ice caves, lava fields, roaming wolves, a last few herds of bighorn sheep. An hour from our driveway wild kokanee salmon still spawn in the creeks and migratory bull trout still grow to 20 pounds.

This is not to suggest that Boise is a citadel encircled by wilderness. Our exurbia continues to distend, and with this comes cheat grass, air pollution and gridlock. The grizzlies are gone, the chinook salmon have to be trucked past dams, and every year the deer and elk find more winter rangeland transformed into subdivisions. Like most Americans, we fertilize our lawns, erect our vinyl fences and chlorinate our swimming pools. We forget, most of the time, about our wilder neighbors, the creatures that live out on the cloud-swept, corrugated watershed beyond our cul-de-sacs.


I stand at the window, 7 in the morning, and watch snow drift across the backyard. Dawn is slow and pale. I drive my 4-year-old twin sons to preschool. The sky swirls; the roads are ribbons of slush. Fog washes between the upper stories of downtown Boise's few tall buildings.

We are passing the Hollywood Video at Broadway and Park when a doe comes skittering onto the road. The intersection is six lanes across and the Toyota in front of us flares its brake lights and 40 or 50 cars in all directions follow suit. We slide into a dangerous, slow-motion ballet. Behind the first doe come five more, radar-eared, panicky, dancing across the centerline.

A truck beside us grinds up onto the curb. A dozen cars behind us glide to a stop. No one, miraculously, appears to have crashed into anyone else.

My sons yell, "Deers, deers!" The six does reach the far side of Broadway and make several dazzling leaps into Julia Davis Park, the oldest of the string of city parks woven through the center of Boise. The deer pause for a moment, looking back, twitching their ears, exhaling vapor. Then they melt into the trees.

I breathe. The traffic realigns and creeps forward again.

Boise, contrary to the notions of Easterners I meet now and then, is not located in Indiana, Ohio or Iowa. More than 300 miles from Salt Lake City and 400 miles from Reno and Portland, Boise, Idaho, is arguably the most remote urban area in the Lower 48. The broad, sandy flood plain on which it is built forms an island in what some people still call the Sagebrush Ocean, thousands of square miles of balsamroot, sky and stillness in the Far West. Depending on the weather, Boise looks alternately silver or gold or beige or purple; after rain, it smells like menthol.

Boisé: in French it means wooded. Our nickname has long been the City of Trees, which sounds absurd to most visitors from, say, Indiana, Ohio or Iowa, whose towns' most pedestrian hardwoods dwarf all but Boise's biggest and oldest oaks. It's only when you approach the city by road, or better yet on foot, that you begin to understand how the appellations suit the place, how a thin belt of cottonwoods along a river might have looked almost supernaturally desirable to a traveler after hundreds of miles of unremitting high desert.

Imagine you're plodding through the summer of 1863, the year the city was founded. You're tired, you're thirsty, you've been passing for weeks through mountains that belong primarily to wildlife: grasshoppers the size of thumbs, anthills the size of pitchers' mounds, biblical herds of pronghorns raising dust clouds in the distance. Reefs of purple clouds gather above the horizon and the day's heat pumps off the basalt around you, and you come over a last bench to see a valley shimmering like some fabled oasis below you: a few orchards, a smattering of buildings, the silver braids of the Boise River. The 19th-century writer Mary Hallock Foote deemed Boise "the metropolis of the desert plains, the heaven of old teamsters and stage drivers crawling in at nightfall," and it's easy enough to picture. A few lights burn between the trees; a half-dozen spires of smoke rise into the dusk. The promise of rest, drink, shade—a haven, a refuge, a city of trees.

These days I can pedal past the densely built bungalows, Queen Annes and Tudor Revivals of Boise's North End into the 30 or so blocks that make up downtown Boise and eat dumplings made by Thai immigrants, buy a pair of jeans made in Guatemala and watch a Pedro Almodóvar film at an art house. Steeples rise here and there; the statehouse dome looms grandly against the backdrop of the foothills. Spend enough time in the hills, a friend who lived for several years in the Bitterroot Mountains told me, and Boise begins to feel like Paris.

But our city remains a place where we see moose tracks on the bike trails and bald eagles along the river and—once, in front of our neighbor's house—cougar prints in the snow. A dozen miles from my house I can stand in the foothills and experience the same graveyard quiet, the same desert indifference that trappers and the Shoshone and Bannock Indians knew. And beyond the foothills are lakes marked on maps only by their elevations, velvet hillsides, alpine meadows, ice caves, lava fields, roaming wolves, a last few herds of bighorn sheep. An hour from our driveway wild kokanee salmon still spawn in the creeks and migratory bull trout still grow to 20 pounds.

This is not to suggest that Boise is a citadel encircled by wilderness. Our exurbia continues to distend, and with this comes cheat grass, air pollution and gridlock. The grizzlies are gone, the chinook salmon have to be trucked past dams, and every year the deer and elk find more winter rangeland transformed into subdivisions. Like most Americans, we fertilize our lawns, erect our vinyl fences and chlorinate our swimming pools. We forget, most of the time, about our wilder neighbors, the creatures that live out on the cloud-swept, corrugated watershed beyond our cul-de-sacs.

But every few days a half-dozen mule deer scramble across a downtown intersection, or a fox steals a garden glove from the backyard, or a pair of sandhill cranes land in the marsh behind a steakhouse and remind us where we live. In those moments the paradox that is Boise strikes deeply and keenly: it is a place both rural and metropolitan, civilized and feral. It's a town full of settlers and wanderers, conservationists and conservatives, hippies and hunters, folks who value both snowmobiles and tiramisu, who clean their shotguns one evening and donate to the Shakespeare Festival the next.

I have a friend who sells commercial roofing and is so adept at fly-fishing he can stand 50 feet up on a cutbank and identify the shapes of brown trout holding among weeds on the bottom of a surly river. Another friend trades commodities all day but wanders off alone into the Pioneer Mountains every October with a bow and a bottle of elk urine to use as an attractant. And I know a real estate developer who's so skilled on telemark skis you can hardly believe he isn't an Olympic athlete; he'll slip down the backside of a ridge and a curtain of powder will rise up over his head, and beneath the snow his entire body will have transformed itself into a fluid, white submarine flowing between the trees.

Boise is a place with a long human history—the Bannocks, the Shoshones and older tribes, too. Not far from here, in Buhl, Idaho, the 11,000-year-old skeleton of a woman turned up in a quarry, some of the oldest human remains that have been found in North America. There are pictographs in our hills and bones in our caves. Ghosts are everywhere, wandering beneath the brick buildings of Boise's Basque Block, dozing in the ruts along the Oregon Trail, prospecting for gold in the gulches northeast of town. In autumn, you can almost feel the breeze moving them about, dislodging them from the corners of the gardens, stirring them from beneath the leaves. Here, an enterprising engineer devised the valley's grand irrigation canal; there, a Shoshone boy traded camass roots. And before humans, there were short-faced bears larger than grizzlies, giant camels and horses like zebras. Ten-ton imperial mammoths used to wander our hills.

I drop off my sons at school and help them hang up their coats. Then I walk through the park. To my right, across the river, rise the brick-and-glass buildings of Boise State University. To my left lie the art museum, the rose garden and the Boise Zoo. Beyond the zoo, patches of blue sky wink above the tops of downtown buildings. Snow sifts across the sidewalks. Seven crows land in a leafless haw­thorn. Five take off again.

In this very spot last August it was 105 degrees. My sons and I stepped out of our air-conditioned car and the desert heat dropped on us like a predator—a sneak-up-from-behind mugger. Our eyes teared up and our breath disappeared and the kids covered their eyes with their forearms as if they'd been stung. Now maybe 100 mallards are gathered on the ice beneath the footbridge, squirming and ruffling and chirping at one another.

I live here because I can ride my bike to friends' houses just like I did when I was 10 years old, because I can float on a mostly clean river through the center of town and look up and see people working on their computers in office buildings. I live here because I can eat a $5 lunch at Zeppole, as I did for about 400 afternoons straight while I was writing my first novel, and because every time I think I'm running quickly along the trails in the foothills, someone is always there to blow past me and make me feel like I'm not in such good shape after all. I live here because I can get in a car and head in any direction and within an hour find myself in something pretty close to wilderness, and because of the archipelagoes of clouds that float over the hills in late summer, each one a towering, big-shouldered miracle.

Boise is still so young and new—changing almost every day—and I don't think it's overstatement to suggest that our town represents everything that remains great about America: potential, youth, natural beauty, quality of life. Some 100 parks, 14 museums, playgrounds everywhere you turn: our skies are huge; our houses affordable. Hikers can still drink from a secret spring in the hills; paddlers can still go kayaking in the morning and meet with their accountants by noon. When we visit friends who live elsewhere, they ask, "Boise? Really? Why do you live there?" But when friends visit us, they say, "Oh, wow, now I see."

What all of us who live here share is the landscape, the light, the seasons, the pair of peregrine falcons that nest downtown, and the rainbow trout that swim in our river. We share the feeling we get when the unexpected skitters across the road and cracks open the insulation we've packed around our mornings—when we remember for a moment where we live.

This morning in Julia Davis Park the sky is breaking apart everywhere. The foothills shine and billow. I look through the leafless branches of the trees and see the deer, once more, dancing across the road. I see the mystery and vastness of time. I think: this is the pure world. This is the long view. This is what lasts.

Anthony Doerr is the author of The Shell Collector and About Grace.


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Comments (27)

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Good one.Idaho is a diverse state with parks and recreation from north to south and from east to west. If you are in southern Idaho and travel to the north you will have a hard time believing your are in the same state. This is the just one of the beauties of Idaho.

Posted by maria jose on October 5,2011 | 08:55 AM

I grew up in Boise in the 1970's and 1980's, and just now coming back I am both gladdened and shocked. Fortunately, our place in NW Boise happens to lie in an eddy of development, but the tract houses and strip malls have decimated many a corn field where I use to hunt pheasant. No pheasant around here anymore. Nonetheless the quality of the light is the same, at least after a rain, and though my treks north are now interrupted by that little fairy land of Hidden Springs, much is left to love.

By the way, the moose, at least in the late 1980's, was very real, though hard to believe in even back then. One young bull lived a season or two in the cornfield next door where a new school is now. We always wondered where he came from, and where he went. I know where the cornfield went.

Posted by Richard on April 4,2010 | 11:12 AM

I am new to Doerr (at the age of 79). Considering the love most of the commenters have for Boise, I, who have never been there (my itinerary: Wilkes Barre,PA, NYC (most of my life), and now Oakalnd CA for the climate), how it is that the pages of Anthony's that have moved me were the first pages of Four Seasons in Rome--could you believe they brought tears to my old eyes? Why? He describes with extraordinry clarity what it feels like to arrive in a magnificent foreign city where one can hardly speak or understand one word, the confusions, shyness, stupidity, one feels and the hope that one day things will clear up and one will know what's what. I had that experience in Rome. I had with me my 18 month old, Miriam, and whervere I took here people said "Questa bella bambina." A saleslady who had hername on a chain, Miriam, picked her up and kissed her. All that came back with Anthony. I'm too old for Boise. It sounds great. I was recently in Italy. I never had to cross a street--in the big cities the crowd just took me along. I learned enough words through the year to manage pretty

And those absolutely great kids, Henry and Owen (from Four Seasons in Rome). I'd love to see these kids and see what has happened since they were 6 months old .Anthony also followed me to Lamu on Kenyoa's eastern coast. Do you remember the donkey cemetery?

He's a man for the world obviously. With best wishes to Boise, good wishes to Henry and Owen and Shauna, and if you're in Oakland, we're in the phone book. We can't all come to Boise. As for my Miriam, she recently became the mother of Una, a baby she adopted in Korea who's the sweetest little girl in the world. As Miram wasBut they live in Brooklyn. We can't all live in Boise, but one young writer, with Anthony's humanity and talent, makes a big difference,and brings different worlds together wherever we are. Good luck. Become a better and better writer forever. Marvin 18 July 2009

Posted by Mavin Sicherman on July 18,2009 | 05:10 PM

Speaking as one born and raised for the first 21 years of my life just outside of Boise (in Caldwell), now having been out of the state for the last 26 years and looking forward to when I can move back: Sshhhhh...

Posted by Deb C. on April 27,2009 | 01:46 PM

I grew up in the Boise Valley and have lived in Washington, DC for the last five years. I have also traveled extensively in the continental US and agree with Theresa about the people in Boise. They are the kindest and most friendly that you will meet anywhere. I have to make an effort not to lose that quality living in the DC metropolitan area. But most of all I agree with Dixon, "It is home and always will be. There is no other place like it. None of the changes have been so bad that I don’t feel like I have been wrapped in the warm blanket of home each time I land there. And each time I leave, I feel like I leave just a little bit more of myself there."

Posted by Jen Athay on April 23,2009 | 12:07 PM

I believe Anthony captures beautifully the romance between civilization and nature. This romance we all can experience in Boise...where we are a CITY of culture with various art forms and restaurants, and where we are a TOWN with family, friends, trails and hills.

Posted by John Berryhill on April 21,2009 | 02:09 PM

Just back from a slow saunter up Hulls Gulch. The great horned owl who I've come to call "Blinky Palermo" (he opens one eye - sometimes - as I peer up at him) was in his usual perch. Across the creek, his mate was stationed in her nest - a cavity in the road cut where swallows swarm like bees when any kind of hatch is on. Their fledgling looks like a small down pillow with talons.

A red tailed hawk - back lit by the rising sun - settled into an old cottonwood to survey things. He didn't bat an eye - either one - as I eased past.

All the while, every bird with a voice was making it heard as the morning broke. They're well pleased with the haven they reside in. I understand their joy, and have no problem ascribing such emotions to my winged pals.

We do, irregardless of sprawl, idiot winds spawned by politicians, inversions and the like... live in an enchanted place. The 82 year old young woman who pointed out the friendliness of people who live here hit it on the head: we're blessed.

Thank you, Mr. Doerr, for your fine piece. It's a bittersweet paean for me, in that it illuminates, beautifully, things I've loved about place - this place - all my life (my people have been in the valley for well over a hundred years.) As you have, I've sung its praises up and down the world, and yet I also remind would-be transplants that its the "Tick Fever State"; and that there's myriad reasons to avoid it like the plague, at least as a place to live. Who's selfish?

When my mind's right, I let off with fretting about how many people have chosen the Treasure Valley as "their place." Instead I head for the hills and draws out my back door, up to Valley County, or simply into my back yard. And while the state of things: economic, political (there's hope in that realm), moral decay, etc. nag and often frustrate, it just takes one hit of sage, the meadowlark's refrain, a shaft of sun on a patch of phlox... and I'm back, I'm home. It's a sweet one.

John Davidson

Posted by John Davidson on April 20,2009 | 11:02 AM

Sorry, that would be "Collector," not "Seeker."

Posted by Stephanie on April 19,2009 | 10:10 PM

I'd like to point out one more thing that illustrates how special Boise is: when my book club decided to read "The Shell Seeker" by Anthony Doerr, I called him and asked if he'd come talk to us about his book. I don't know the man--he was listed in the phone book. I left a message and he called me back. Where else would that happen? : )

Posted by Stephanie on April 16,2009 | 11:47 PM

I am surprised at the detractors of this article. They must live in Meridian. :)

For me, Boise is the perfect city. I have lived in small towns (4K) and large cities (2M). Like Goldilocks, I find Boise to be just right for me. We have many amenities found in a large metropolitian area, but the feel of a small town... where you still bump into your neighbors at the grocery store and shovel snow off each others walks.

As with any city, there are certainly more "neighborly" pockets than others. When I moved from west Boise into the East End of Downtown, my lifestyle changed dramatically. My day, which one consisted of big box stores, long commutes, and "planned communities," now includes leafy, wide streets, charming markets, small schools, and a 5-minute bike ride from the foothills to a downtown coffee shop or wine bar. Deer nibble the tulips in my yard.

Minus a few hot summer inversions, our air is clean. Our streets are safe and our schools are good. From skiing to rafting to cycling, recreation opportunities are minutes away. If I have one major complaint, it is the inexplicable lack of public transportation. I have faith that with enough pressure on our legislators, that too can change.

Posted by Stacy on April 16,2009 | 03:16 PM

Yes, Boise has problems just like any other city in this country. Yes, we battle with urban sprawl and limited public transportation. However, no other city has our particular foothills and the constantly changing image they present with the play of sunlight, shadows, clouds, or clear skies. When the clouds lifted today - April 15 - new snow was on the foothills. But, a walk through my neighborhood highlights trees turning spring green, more daffodils, tulips and pear trees blooming, and gardens and yards going through winter clean-up. Doerr described the essence of the daily beauty, natural wonder and sense of place of the little city I have called home for nearly 30 years. I stopped my car on a busy road the other day to let a couple of ducks (surprised it wasn't geese) cross in front of me. This afternoon I smiled at the beauty of the foothills when the clouds lifted following a dreary wet gray morning. Living here always brings little thrills of daily pleasure - in spite of urban growth, sprawl, and those larger worries of the larger world and their impact on our lives.

Posted by Alison on April 15,2009 | 08:49 PM

Yes, I have to say that the article speaks of romanticism and granduer, however, having lived here all of my life, it's not all that great. Yes, I whole heartedly love the Treasure Valley and all that we have to offer. I love that you can drive an hour and be some place completely different from Boise, whether it's the mountains or the desert. However, we have not become immune to the layoffs, the down housing market and the like. In fact we seem to be right in the thick of it all. The Treasure Valley is an amazing place to live and I can't imagine living elsewhere. It's why when I have lived other places, I always come back to home. But, we certainly are not perfect. Thanks to the writer making us sound as if we are though.

Posted by Denise on April 15,2009 | 04:50 PM

Idaho is a great state, anyway you slice it. The same can be said for the City of Boise. Thanks, Doerr, for a great love song for our beloved city!

Posted by Timothy Barren on April 15,2009 | 04:27 PM

Marti...how wrong you are! Check out this article from the Idaho Statesman:

Loose moose uses mountain bike trail
Submitted by Zimo on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 10:41am.
If you're riding your mountain bike on the Corrals Trail in the Boise Foothills, don't get in a head-on collision with a moose. Hey, it's possible.
I got a call from Rocky Church of Hidden Springs who was riding up there Saturday morning. He spotted a moose. What luck.
"On Saturday morning we left the Corrals parking lot at 7:30 a.m. on a mountain bike ride.
When we got down into the Hard Guy draw, there was a moose!," Church said.
Church said the moose looked like a young female and that she was in the Hard Guy draw and was headed toward Bogus Basin Road.
It looked like, by her tracks, that she came all the way down Hard Guy, Church said.

Posted by IdahoGirl on April 15,2009 | 04:18 PM




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