Sometimes it's about what you're Not Seeing

Recently, while on a trip to Idaho, I went to visit the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area (aka the Snake River) outside of Boise. I was with a group of falconers and as we stood in various spots on the rim and then in the canyon I was struck with what people notice when in a new environment. We got out of the cars and trucks on a chilly, windy morning and the falconers got right to the business at hand. They brought binoculars up to the eyes and scanned the cliffs for signs of prairie falcons and their nests. This area of the canyon is home to about 200 pair of breeding prairie falcons making it the highest concentration of prairie falcons in the world. This is what the falconers came to the canyon to see. And this is all they wanted to see.

As a result, they missed the wild flowers of the high desert:

Phlox diffusa

And the view from the rim:

Lots of geology here including volcanic activity, evidence of a catastrophic flood when Lake Bonneville emptied during the Pleistocene, and eons of river erosion.

And falconers looking at other falconers:

Storytelling in the Snake River canyon

And finally this:

What’s the story here?

Because we bring our life experiences to everything we see and encounter, I couldn’t help but construct a narrative around this tableau taped to a guard rail at the end of the parking area on the rim. It involved a car, a desperate young woman, and a final trip into the canyon. I had a difficult time looking at this vase of carnations and yet couldn’t look away. The death by suicide of my son Jack is never far from my thoughts.