Boise, ID

The incessant fog, a.k.a. inversion that has been plaguing the Treasure Valley and hiding the sun for the past two weeks finally seems to have blown off to some other unsuspecting location, but never fear. At some point it will be back, and when it is, you may be able to soak in a little Vitamin D for an afternoon without jetting off to Arizona. My family is not into downhill skiing, but almost every year we find ourselves making the trek up the mountain to Bogus Basin in search of the sun. Such was the case a week ago, when my husband declared he couldn’t stand it a minute longer and loaded us all up to climb through, and hopefully out of, the fog.

As we motored up that curvy road out of Boise, I remembered once again that I don’t particularly care for that drive, what with its many twists and turns and real possibility of slippery spots. However, I tried to relax and enjoy the scenery. Although gray and bleak as far as general atmosphere, all of the trees and plethora of sagebrush captured my attention. Every branch and twig had crystallized with freezing fog and shimmered, as much as anything could shimmer without visible sunlight, in icy beauty. Soon though I noticed that rather than getting thinner, the fog seemed to thicken and swirl around us like a charcoal gray shroud. I mentioned this to my husband, who assured me we just had to get through it and would soon break free. Sure enough, by the time we reached the top, all of the foggy dreariness lay below us like a blanket, while above, the sun shone radiantly in an azure blue sky.

Looking out over the valley from Bogus on a day like this one is a surreal experience. That blanket of clouds and fog looks like an ocean, with the various mountain peaks and rocks that poke up out of it appearing as islands. It was already well into mid-afternoon by the time we arrived so the sun had definitely begun its westward descent, gleaming through the pine trees and sparkling off the snow.

Lots of people had taken to the mountain that afternoon and the parking lot was full. We finally found a place down near the Nordic lodge and let the kids out to explore and watch the cross-country skiers and snow-shoers. They soon made a game of jumping around in the snow and even sliding down a little—very little—hill into a large “hole.” My husband went inside to see if he could get any info for future reference about rental prices for cross-country skiing and the trails, but wasn’t very successful as he didn’t feel like bucking the crowds. We figured we could look it up online when we got home as it seems like something we might be interested in trying sometime. Meanwhile our very sanguine daughter met another possibly even more sanguine little girl just as we spotted some other friends who had come up to do some cross country with their three girls. One of their daughters has the same name as the newly met friend so my kids thought it was pretty funny to introduce them to each other.

We visited a little while but soon had to be on our way as our daughter had a piano recital to play in. We rounded up the kids, finally got situated in the car, broke out the snacks, and headed back to the land of Drab. As we exited the parking lot we stopped to watch the tubers on the tubing hill. Our son was fascinated both with the chairlift for skiers and the tow line for those inner tubing. Our daughter is convinced she needs to learn to ski. At 6 ½ it’s beyond all comprehension that something can be harder than it looks, not to mention much more expensive!

Descending back to the valley, we literally came upon a line—one side, no fog. The other side, nothing but inversion. Oh well, at least we had proven the sun did still exist, as I pointed out to my doubtful mother later that evening by showing her the pictures on my digital camera. Maybe it would be enough to carry us through seemingly unending dreary days to follow.

If you want to hit the mountain but would like to actually do something while you are there, check out the website: www.bogusbasin.org. And one disclaimer—you don’t ALWAYS find the sun up there. Some friends went up to ski this past Friday while we still endured the inversion, and the storm was starting to move in so they skied mostly in fog, disappointed not to see the sun. Maybe sometimes you really do just have to catch a plane to warmer climes when things get too desperate.