A little background about what propels me into the canyons, the hills, and the land where the little red-legged devils live. The landscape is rugged and mostly intact. It has soul, it will harden your quads and soften your eyes. Chukar country reveals itself as the one that has stood the test of time. These canyons don't care about the status quo, they are sturdy and weathered with features and scars dating back 40,000,000 mile years.
Within this wild place is stillness, color, and life, a community with character and grit.
You will find a piece pure Idaho, zoom out and it's a small spot on this big ol' rock but tethers, and breathes life into the whole enchilada. Don't just visit the canyons in search of the birds, work to unlock the community the birds live within. You may come to the realization, that when tapping into the roots of a community you can thrive there, enriching your life with life around you.
It's at these moments we can realize we are no longer are visitors. We are participants in our environment, surviving, learning from, and being intensely aware of our surroundings. Integrating into a wilderness community never comes easy, it is floppy, can be dangerous so we must do our best to lean into the process.
Once we lean into the process, the quest for knowledge becomes clear and the dust from hard-earned wisdom settles. In that nanosecond, we may find ourselves with a perishable quiet mind. In these moments we are free, the soul is warm and the mind at ease. The unfolding events that lead up to a quiet mind are a function of the focus and drive set in motion from the intentions set at an earlier date. At the end of the day, let’s not be visitors, but focus on immersing ourselves in community.