Ammi Midstokke: Exploring your own backyard

It’s been a long time since being invited on an expedition was en vogue, but that’s what I assumed it meant when I was asked to to join an “exploration of the Clark Fork delta.” That’s how it was written on the birthday invite at least, which had me wondering what Meriwether and William’s birthday invitations looked like back in 1804.

I was fretting about my supplies and wardrobe – I don’t own a muzzleloader and I’m fresh out of pantaloons – when the hostess said she’d be wearing a sundress. The word “explore” has become as watered down as the word “unprecedented.”

I guess I wouldn’t have to turn on my out-of-office reply for the next 862 days after all.

Most of the exploring we do now seems to be toward the back of our fridge to discover what path of evolution the outdated salsa is taking. One can only guess how many potential cures to disease I have grown and discarded in my vegetable drawer.

There is an argument to be said that geographical exploration is spent. Once undiscovered shores now boast homes listed at $13.2 million. For that price, you also get an island and a claim to the place where famed fur trader and mapmaker David Thompson established one of the first trading posts of the West, the historic Kullyspel House. The chimneys, said to have stood for nearly 100 years, have long returned to the soil somewhere beneath the downstairs cinema.

If that’s out of your price range or you want less historical context to your dwelling, there’s one for $5.2 million next door, but it’s only a four-bed, three-bath, zero-island. Maybe that’s where Finan McDonald pitched his tent. And before him, who else explored those shores?

One cannot explore there anymore. Most of the land has been turned into manicured lawns and other forms of ecological wasteland, because the most important thing about owning a slab of nature is taming it, of course. The shorelines are marred with docks that look like crooked teeth, giant boats with their matching bumpers bobbing softly against them.

Our own boat (the kind that carries a gaggle of party-goers and their catering) chug-chugged past the timber mansions and their 3,000-square-foot guest houses, beyond the edges of the lake, and into the sprawling delta of the Clark Fork River.

The Clark Fork River is responsible for bringing 80% of the water (snow melt and such from the Rockies) to Lake Pend Oreille. The force of the river slows as it reaches the large body of water, leaving sediment and sand build up and forming the fanning, shallow spread of the delta. The delta itself turns into a system of waterways and low islands, a watery maze of sorts.

From the vantage point of the water’s surface, one is immersed in the shimmer of verdant foliage, it’s reflection, and the soft noises of breezes and creatures. It smells lush and wet here, and while some sounds disappear into the trees, others are amplified. Coasting through the waters quietly brings a sense of reverence and wonder.

There are still places that feel like exploring. So much in our backyards has not been seen by us as individuals. Having grown up in North Idaho, I am amazed and rather embarrassed at how little of my backyard I have actually explored. This was my first time into the delta, or even on the Clark Fork River!

While it is true that many wild places are now settled and that first explorations are of limited availability, it is also true that there is much we have likely not explored for ourselves.

So as I make my list of summer adventures this year, I’m going to make a point of staying close to home and wandering the places here that I have not been.

Maybe eventually I’ll even get to Yellowstone or Glacier, but for now, the surrounding wilderness wonders offer plenty I have never seen.

And I am a firm believer that our appreciation of these places is how we foster a culture of preserving them.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com