Living In Idaho Back Country (Caldwell: dangerous, store, cabin)

[mistyriver]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg6RBXmj0Y4#t=27

[Cnynrat]

Thanks for posting that Misty, very interesting.

[Native Idahoan]

That was so cool, Misty. Thanks for sharing that.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Yep, really cool. Get to your daughter's place by walking 32 miles, only takes you 10 hours! 250 miles by car! That puts things in perspective...

[mortgageboss]

That's a cool video. I wish I could live the back country sometimes, but making a living pretty much ties me to the Treasure Valley. At least the back country is nearby, relatively speaking. At least in Idaho, you can still live in/near a city and be only a hour or two from the back country.

Hunting season takes me to the back country and its a very relaxing experience. I wish it was 6 month long.

[banjomike]

Living out that far is a very romantic thought for lots of folks, but the actual life lived in that remoteness isn't what it seems.

It takes a very special family to live that far away from civilization. For every pioneer family that made a go of it, there were 20 or more that didn't.
Living in complete isolation for many months at a time either brings people closer together or tears them apart. Cabin fever is a very real thing; seeing the same face day after day can become very tiresome, especially if there are two or more strong personalities involved. Love can turn to hatred pretty easily, and small resentments grow large when there is no distraction coming in from the outside. Read some Jack London stories; he wrote about this phenomenon a lot.

Living an extremely remote life is also dangerous. Anyone can break a bone living in the outdoors, or suffer all kinds of injuries. A small injury can become as dangerous as a major injury, and getting emergency help can be severely limited by the weather or any number of other factors. A landslide on the only road into a place could become lethal by it's blockage.

Making a wrong choice in severe weather can also be lethal.
Many years ago, I read a report of a hired hand who was living on a remote ranch in Jordan Valley, a huge empty space in E. Oregon, lying very close to the Idaho border.

The man, who was around 60, wanted to drive into Caldwell, about 90 miles away, to spend the holidays with his family. It was 60 miles of dirt road to the nearest highway; there was a little country store at the intersection, and the ranch owner had a 2-way radio there, so the store owner could relay info to the ranch.

When the hired man decided to go back to the ranch, he reached the store late in the day, well after dark. He called the ranch on the radio, and the owner advised him to stay the night, because the wearer was going to be bitter cold, but he decided to drive on anyway.
His truck ran out of gas 20 miles into the drive. The night was clear, the moon was out, and he must have thought he was closer to the ranch than he was, because he began walking. The temps went down to -45º that night, and there was a steady breeze.
The ranch owner found him frozen to death the next morning when he went out looking for the guy. He had made it to within less than 5 miles to the ranch before he finally wore out and stopped for a brief rest. Once he stopped, he never got up again.

This is happens in the wilderness. The guy knew the country like the back of his hand, but he made one big mistake, forgetting to gas up his truck at the corner store, and a small mistake, failing to fully recognize where he was in the dark of night.

That incident was over 40 years ago, but the realities haven't changed. Cell phones often can't help a person in a timely way, and preparedness cannot cover every little thing ever.

Most urban folks are so accustomed to lifelong habits that came from being surrounded by constant human presence that they simply cannot foresee the physiological and psychological problems that arise from living way out there. When driving, the countryside flies by, but when on foot, it suddenly becomes huge. Seeing the same faces either brings intense affection in time or total disgust with the other.

And in either case, it requires a massive amount of work to build and sustain a place. The ranch in that video has had one family living there for 3 or 4 generations. Each passed on the knowledge gained from a lifetime to the next, and every new generation was born into the lifestyle. Things are always easier for the current generation, but life is very hard for all, from first to last.
A rank beginner would have to rapidly acquire skills of the 19th century to make a life, and those skills have largely faded away now. The greatest problem of all is you don't know what you don't know, and that's the thing that can bite a person like a rattlesnake. A life in the wilderness is not a 2-week survival course.

[mistyriver]

Way too far out for me.
My nearest neighbor right now is almost 3 miles away but we do have the county road running by our property. That's plenty out there for me.
When we attempted our first off-grid cabin in the wilds of the Coconino National Forest in northern Arizona(on a small pocket of private land), we were 8 miles from the nearest paved road, had to park the cars at the highway and snowmobile in and out (we were at 8000 feet so lots of snow) and had no phone access at all. It was a little remote for me. That was where we made all of our mistakes in preparation for eventually being successful here in Idaho, and it was a good thing when we finally gave up because a wildfire came thru the following year.
But it was beautiful and a wonderful experience.