Off the Beaten Path Special

We've all seen those iconic Idaho images that fill the travl brochures, the ones that are decidedly Idaho.

But what about the places that aren't so readily accessible, that require some effort on our part to get to, that demand a willingness to wander far from the crowds and the cares of the everyday world.

HANNAH FAKE, NATURALIST: Once you get off trail you hardly see anyone and off trail is definitely not for everyone, but that's some of my favorite places to go to hike to a peak or hike up a valley and know you are the only person in that entire valley or drainage for the day or even the night, it's pretty special.

REICHERT: From the green cedars up north to the frigid landscapes in the east, Idaho is ripe with color and with character.

There's good reason to take the trail less traveled.

JON BARKER, BARKER RIVER EXPEDITIONS: And it's just a stunning gorge, its amazing geology geography, the riverbed, the rapids, you do really feel like it's something special.

There's so many special places in Idaho.

And because you can't get here all the time, this moves even higher on the list of special places.

REICHERT: Idaho is the keeper of a thousand of trails blazed across the landscape.

And we continue to forge new routes through uncharted territory.

The truth is, all who wander are not necessarily lost.

Perhaps, they're seeking something more, be it solitude, adventure, or simply traveling someplace new.

It's in our pursuit of wonder that we find ourselves taking that first step, off the beaten path.

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the Idaho Public Television Endowment.

REICHERT: It doesn't take long to realize that Idaho rewards those willing to stray off the beaten path.

Mountains and canyons, lakes and plains, all laid out in absolute splendor.

The views are courtesy of our state's peculiar shape.

We live atop a complicated and ever-changing geology that continues to stretch and build and subtract.

Many of the state's earliest travelers followed historic pathways.

The Nez Perce Trail, the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon and California trails.

All of them storied symbols of exploration and adventure.

One lesser known path, the 3 blaze trail, helped guide thousands to central Idaho's Thunder Mountain region.

The scene of the state's last major gold rush, located about 75 miles east of McCall.

Many of those who built or braved those primitive trails were desperate to find a better life.

Today there's not quite that desperation to get off the pavement and into the wild; today well it has more to do with, relaxation, or the desire to explore.

Or maybe to preserve one's sanity.

JEAN MCCABE, PSYCHOLOGIST: Nature tends to keep us focused in the present moment.

And that is so healthy and that is a philosophy we've known for centuries is a key to mental health is not focusing on the future, which is usually worrying or focusing on the past, which is, keeps us depressed.

So staying in the present, which nature allows us to do and encourage us to do is, is truly very, very good.

MCCABE: As you are trying new things and getting outdoors, it does change some of that rewiring in the brain and that, boosts our confidence, boosts our creativity and that strengthens that muscle so to speak.

REICHERT: Sometimes that journey puts us on paths that didn't even exist 30 years ago.

To the top of the tallest peaks in the state.

Or on easily accessible paths, like this one near Grandview, which offers visitors charming rock formations, a byproduct of Lake Idaho.

Or magical fairy lands of ice, hidden in plain sight, just an hour from the state's largest metropolitan area.

Our search off the main roads often means riding instead of walking.

Rafting instead of hiking.

And if conditions permit, even sledding.

Getting off the beaten path doesn't guarantee good weather.

And it doesn't even guarantee a good time.

(This is a lot of fun) But what it does guarantee is a breath of fresh air.

An escape and maybe even an altered perspective.

(flute playing) Idaho is a state awash hidden treasures just waiting to be discovered.

The important thing is to just get out there and do it.

REICHERT: Have you ever looked at something so darn pretty, you had to wonder if it was real?

Right out of a postcard, or a movie set.

The views from a yellow raft floating down the Bruneau River at the bottom of this impenetrable canyon will inspire such wondrous considerations.

BARKER: I have guided a little bit all over the world and man, I come back here on the Bruneau and it's like, this really is one of the most amazing river canyons in the world.

It holds up to, to anywhere.

I do have to say my favorite rivers in Idaho are the desert rivers.

SHANE MOSER, RAFT GUIDE: When you float the river, you get to see the change from the top to the bottom and you see everything in between.

And that's pretty unique.

REICHERT: The Bruneau river flows north through the Owyhee Canyonlands, formed by the Jarbidge river, out of the mountains in northern Nevada.

Spring runoff, transformed into a boater's playground.

MOSER: You've got the flowing walls fast, current, you know, there's not a lot of, eddy's, kind of boiley water, brown water, you know, the Bruneau is a French word for brown water.

REICHERT: About 40 miles of the Bruneau is federally protected as a wild river, and wild it is, weaving its way a thousand feet below the canyon rim.

MOSER: When we're driving in here across the flat top and you can just see for miles and miles out to the mountains and it's a sagebrush desert and a pretty dry, arid place.

And then all of a sudden you drop down and get to this river.

REICHERT: That drop can spark a sense of aloneness that's hard to come by these days.

BARKER: It was always remote and it's remote today and it's so remote in the past that we stopped places where there's a moonshiners cabin and there's a bunch of parts of old barrels and his still, and the pipes and stuff for that.

Nobody in the ranching towns knows his name, what exact years he was here, what he was doing.

And that's kind of the essence of that canyon.

REICHERT: Despite being a desert river, in a desert canyon, the banks of the Bruneau are anything but barren.

MOSER: It's its own kind of desert jungle down here.

There's, you know, thick junipers and, and poison ivy, that's eight feet tall, and a wild rose and all the classic shrubs too, you know, there's service berry and choke cherry and syringa, and when the choke cherries are blooming, it's, you know, smells sweet.

REICHERT: Mysteries abound among the basalt walls and rhyolite spires, with massive caves hidden deep in the canyon.

MOSER: It lives up to the expectation.

It's a really iconic, neat spot.

The spires and the rhyolite dome.

Any place that you can walk into a cave that's 200 feet tall and walk to the back of it and look out into the light is pretty special.

REICHERT: Geologists believe the hotspot beneath Yellowstone is to blame for this landscape.

It's suspected that when ten-million-year-old Lake Idaho drained, the Bruneau River was left high above the lake's basin, thus speeding up the backwards erosion of this canyon.

Glacial melt also played a role in its creation, a perfect storm of earthly events that shaped a scene rafters and kayakers now refer to as, the Sistine Chapel of Western Canyonlands.

BARKER: It just feels extra special.

When you're here, you know, that it took extra effort to come down here and you're somewhere that you're not going to get to do all the time.

And it's just a stunning, gorge, its amazing geology, geography, the riverbed, the rapids.

REICHERT: And rapids there are aplenty, one in particular, requires rafters to quit gazing at the views, start holding on tight and let the trained professionals take over.

BARKER: Five Mile Rapids is a really neat stretch.

I'm not sure how it ever got the name Five Mile Rapids.

It's about three and a quarter miles long.

A whole number of great class four, up to like 10 class four rapids within that section.

So it's one of the more constant sections of white water at that skill level that you can find in Idaho.

REICHERT: There are only a few months, sometimes weeks or just days, each season that the Bruneau River is deep enough or safe enough, to raft.

BARKER: So you've got to have some skill and planning to be down here safely.

You have to beat your vehicles up or find a way to drive in here.

And you can only do it for a little portion of the year.

So I think that's lends itself to this river and helps it be what it still is.

MOSER: I don't think anybody understands until they've come to experience it, the power, the beauty the lushness, you know, it's just a vibrant place when the water is flowing in the desert, everything's going off.

The birds, you know, the salmon flies, mayflies, saw caddis today.

Everything's green.

BARKER: I think the most common reaction from folks coming down the river is kind of a, more of a silent awe, you know, it's, it's a place that promotes some solitude and quietness and people are just looking around going, am I really here?

I didn't know there could be somewhere quite like this.

REICHERT: As the canyon widens, opening into pastures and dirt roads, the reality of real life begins to seep back in.

A reality that for a few days was set aside, Allowing the magic of a picture-perfect river canyon to capture imagination.

REICHERT: In another era, this unbeaten path was very much beaten.

Idaho's Curlew National Grassland.

MATT LUCIA, SAGEBRUSH STEPPE LAND TRUST: Most of what is now the grassland were privately owned at one time and were farmed and ranched.

And this part of the world, this part of the state did see the same effects that we saw in Oklahoma and some of the other Kansas and the other dustbowl states.

It hit here too.

REICHERT: Years ago, this land had a ranch every 160 acres, thanks to partnerships between federal and state agencies along with the cooperation of private landowners, it's now comprised of 47,000 acres of public land.

LUCIA: Most of the restoration has been in the form of management changes and not hitting that the land is hard as it, as it once was.

So over the course of the last 50 or 60, 70 years, that grassland has come back.

Restoration of creeks in this system is very active.

Reshaping the slope of the banks.

Stream restoration in arid landscapes is the key to land health and restoration.

In addition to that, active management and active planting of native vegetation, along those riparian areas to get them established and get them functioning as they should.

Reichert: Work that allows the land to continue to provide not only for ranching, but for plants, animals and recreation.

Lucia: It defines southeastern Idaho, the agricultural side of things, the wildlife side of things, this is it, this is Southeast Idaho to me.

(thunder) REICHERT: Now if the words, "Curlew National Grassland," are new to your ears, you wouldn't be alone.

The Curlew is the only designated grassland in Idaho, and just one of 20 in the entire nation.

LUCIA: It's interesting that not a lot of people know about it.

The landscape itself is different than a lot of public lands administered by the Forest Service where you typically think of higher elevation.

The grassland itself is in the foothills of the lower valleys.

REICHERT: Comprised largely of sage brush and as you can hear home to lots and lots of birds.

(bird sounds) LUCIA: It's pretty remarkable, the diversity of species and the numbers of them.

You don't expect to see shorebirds out in the middle of a grassland or in the middle of a, sagebrush habitat, but where there's water, there's wildlife.

Reichert: And where there's wildlife, there's something worth watching.

LUCIA: That's the beautiful thing about the Curlew is it provides a lot of opportunities to explore, take your binoculars, your bird book, your plant identification book, and see what it's all about.

And having that feel of solitude, you can find that just about anywhere you go in the Curlew, it's not used a ton and by the public.

And so, it provides a lot of opportunities to explore it.

REICHERT: In the far north of our state, a granite spire juts from the ground like a monument to the gods, a natural beacon.

KATIE LUTHY, CLIMBER: There's this big rock and you take this massive hike up the hill and then there's just this big feature that's sticks up and that you can see from a lot of different places.

STEVE REYNOLDS, CLIMBER: It's such an iconic feature for our region.

Anybody who travels up here, they can see it from a distance.

It's been carved out by three glaciers on each of its three different sides, the east, the west and the north sides that gives it that chimney appearance.

JASON LUTHY, CLIMBER: It's obvious as you drive up the road and you see Chimney Rock, it's kind of, oh, what is that thing?

Can I get to the top of it?

And it's got some lore within the climbing community.

REICHERT: Named Chimney Rock, the peak is north of Sandpoint and can be seen from miles away, but one should certainly not confuse the rock's visibility with its accessibility.

KATIE LUTHY: It does take some commitment to get here.

Like it's a, it's a six, six and a half mile walk in.

And it's a pretty mellow trail to start and then it kind of climbs up and starts getting up into steeper terrain.

Then you come up and you kind of pop up and see the feature at different points, which is always, always neat.

It's like, oh, that's where I'm going.

And it's just a reminder of why you're taking the walk.

JASON LUTHY: The ability to get to a summit only with ropes is rare.

There's a lot of mountains that you climb where you can walk around the backside and get to the top.

The fact that you have to use ropes to access it and have a certain level of knowledge holds people back from being able to get to the top.

And I think that keeps it unique.

REICHERT: Unique and hard.

KATIE LUTHY: It's a challenge.

It's exposed.

You never know kind of like where you're going and just like you're taking gear out and kind of moving around and so it's, it's definitely manageable, but you're climbing this big feature that like, you're just kind of hanging out in the middle of nowhere.

REYNOLDS: It requires total focus.

It's such a privilege to be able to be up here and do this and not have to worry about the responsibilities we have in everyday life.

So my focus is on when I'm climbing is on the climbing itself.

REICHERT: As it should be, the climb to the top of Chimney Rock is 250 feet up and requires multiple stops or "pitches" along the way, making it a long day of climbing, for even experienced folks.

JASON LUTHY: We did a short pitch to the bottom of the, kind of the crux or the harder move on the route.

And then we did a really short pitch to get above the crux so we could all kind of watch each other, and be careful in that section.

And then it was two more of rope lengths to get to the top.

So four total.

REICHERT: Four pitches, three climbers, two ropes, oh and one little fall.

(falling sounds) (good catch!)

KATIE LUTHY: It's like you expect to be stable and then all of a sudden your feet kick out and you're not stable.

It's like, oh, what am I going to do?

So you try to grab onto the closest thing.

And so I did.

But it is when you're expecting to go up and then all of a sudden you're going down, it's always an interesting time.

REICHERT: Interesting and absolutely worth it.

REYNOLDS: Oh my, it's hard to put it into words.

We have this beautiful environment, this alpine environment that's so unique that we have the Idaho Selkirks, with the granite slabs and the views in all directions.

I never get tired of it.

It's incredibly beautiful.

KATIE LUTHY: You just get up and then you have this wide 360 view of kind of the whole area it's stunning.

And it just kinda like, whoa, cool.

I did this.

You want to give a high five and like, hey, cool, look what we've done.

It's just so cool to untie and then to just be walking around on top of the feature, because you do get a little bit of freedom to like walk around and check things out.

JASON LUTHY: seeing, you know, Pend Oreille and you can see Priest Lake on the other side, and then the Selkirk Crest all the way up to Canada.

It's just a gorgeous section of terrain.

REICHERT: But there's only so much time for admiration.

KATIE LUTHY: I think anytime you climb a big feature where there's a significant rappel that comes down and it's like, you're not done yet.

And so you can't spend too much time celebrating.

Cause the, the down is just as important as going up.

REICHER: A big rock, that's really all it is.

But for those who summit this pile of granite, it's so much more than that.

REYNOLDS: As far as Chimney Rock goes, this has always been the iconic alpine climb.

And as far as I'm concerned, it's the ultimate of what climbing is in the inland northwest.

This is, this is for lack of a better word, the pinnacle of what climbing is about.

REICHERT: In the winter, in Island Park, you need a sled, the motor kind, for going off the beaten path.

ANN MARIE ANTHONY, SNOWMOBILER: Where we are right now is on the Henry's Fork of the Snake River.

Just below Big Springs.

The lower area is beautiful because you don't have any wind to deal with and the trails are always good."

REICHERT: Henry's Fork of the Snake River is dressed in soft, white powder around elevation 6,000.

The snow coated trees stand straight along the ribs of the river and the riding is easy.

ANTHONY: We have hundreds of miles of groomed trail which is always nice especially when you're older and you've got this ailment and that ailment and this back injury.

All the miles of groomed trail are awesome.

REICHERT: But climb higher, above 8,000 feet and those layers of soft white turn crusty, strained by severe conditions and fierce exposure, allowing humans limited time to wonder.

ANTHONY: You can get frostbite very easy.

I got frostbite riding home the other night on my cheeks so I have brand new skin on my cheeks.

Temperature drops 20 degrees when you get up on top easily, always.

REICHERT: The 'top' is two top.

A clearing on a ridgeline that looks like the top of the world with views of the Tetons, Yellowstone and Montana on a clear day, but clear is hard to come by.

ANTHONY: There's always a little bit of fog when you get up on there, but if the sun comes out there's nothing like it.

REICHERT: Two top is a weather beaten point of such high exposure, its few trees are at the mercy of Mother Nature on her worst day which is nearly every day in the winter.

ANTHONY: This time of year we get one storm after another and a lot of times its very socked in, but today we got a chance.

We had some really pretty sun for about an hour and it was awesome.

REICHERT: What stands sentry up here doesn't grow straight like down below.

It's crooked, leaning, crippled by the crush of one snowstorm after another, wind all the time and fog between flakes.

(music) ANTHONY: They are our ghost trees.

You only find them on the tops, you know, because that's where the wind and snow accumulates the most and makes those beautiful, beautiful trees.

Every one has a different shape and every one of them could be a relative of Casper, the friendly ghost, because they all take on that form of being a ghost.

And when you're up there there's nothing quite like those.

So many different shapes and so many different icicles coming off one side and the light that can shine through.

It's our number one attraction in the wintertime by far.

Everybody wants to see our ghost trees and see how beautiful it is.

I feel very fortunate to be able to live here.

REICHERT: Imagine spending weeks on a path that's been called the longest graveyard in the West.

And then to arrive here at a place an 1840's traveler described as "a romantic valley... a dismantled, rock-built city of the stone age."

This City of Rocks quickly became a landmark, a place of wonder and delight for the 240,000 pioneers who passed through here more than 150 years ago.

SPENCE WOOD, GEOLOGIST: They'd never seen anything like this before.

Well, it's a fascinating area.

The California trail went through there.

And so there's all kinds of descriptions on the rocks REICHERT: Today people from all over the country travel the dirt roads just to climb this smooth world-class granite, in what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve, managed by the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

Of course, who doesn't love spires and pinnacles and hoodoos, words often used interchangeably to describe unusual vertical columns of rock.

They seem to pop up in the strangest places, almost like, well, geologic mushrooms.

Many of them just off the beaten path, like these at the Little City of Rocks, not far from Gooding.

WOOD: It's a beautiful area full of fantastic hoodoos, there's one that looks just like Mickey Mouse.

And all sorts of strange spires and rocks, but it's very different; it's rhyolite.

These are volcanic rocks that swept across the plain about 8 million years ago, eruptions from the Yellowstone Hotspot as it was traveling through.

As they've eroded away, they've formed fantastic spires that are really fun.

REICHERT: And maybe the most famous of these volcanic rocks is near Castleford.

WOOD: It's a rhyolite, it just apparently a harder part that's up above that never did wash away.

And underneath, it's a little softer and more easily attacked by water, which breaks up the minerals.

And so far it's still there.

And I suppose it may last another several centuries, but one cannot be certain.

REICHERT: Spence Wood says he wouldn't tempt fate by camping underneath Balanced Rock.

WOOD: And that's probably because I'm a geologist.

Earthquakes bring mountains down and certainly bring fragile spires down.

(rocks falling) REICHERT: Like the earthquake of 2020, near Baron Lakes, a 15 mile hike into the heart of the Sawtooth Mountains.

(YELLING, DUDE THE ROCK IS SMOOTHIE'S GONE OFF THE TOP SMOOTHIE'S GONE!!)

And yes, Baron Spire, (YELLING, SMOOTHIE IS GONE!!!)

also known as Old Smoothie is definitely gone.

(YELLING, SMOOTHIE IS GONE!!)

WOOD: That was a big earthquake.

That was a 6.1, I think.

That was a pretty good shake.

REICHERT: Along historic Goodale's cutoff near the town of Fairfield, these spires have been standing for tens of millions of years.

And by the 1860's, many of the wagon trains heading to Boise traveled right through this rock garden.

WOOD: They're granite.

They're certainly part of the Idaho batholith and they are about 70 to 90 million years old, also cooled way down, four miles deep in the earth.

REICHERT: The emigrants likely prayed or cursed as they had to negotiate their wagons through this difficult, uneven terrain.

So Castle Rock was a pretty familiar area to early pioneers.

Today, not so much.

Even though a dirt road off Highway 20 makes it relatively easy to get here, few people seem to know of the existence of this charming link to the past.

REICHERT: Sometimes getting off the beaten path isn't so much about where you go, JIMMY GABETTAS: It's starting to warm up now.

REICHERT:as it is about how you go.

GABETTAS: It feels really good.

REICHERT: There's a road along the South Fork of the Snake River, but rowing down the middle of it in a drift boat with a fly rod is even better.

JIMMY GABETTAS, JIMMY'S ALL SEASONS ANGLER: My best fishing partner is my wife Milli.

We spend a lot of time out recreating.

That looks like really good water there Milli.

Yeah we're gonna go on to that, on this nice seam.

REICHERT: Jimmy Gabettas owns a fly shop in Idaho Falls.

He's 30 minutes from office door to boat ramp where ribbons of water curl through a canyon that turns into nature's pot of gold in the fall.

(MUSIC) GABETTAS: Without cottonwoods, I can't imagine.

I probably wouldn't come here.

That's what I'm attracted to.

In the fall, the trees start to turn.

You've got the colors of orange and yellow.

You've got the mahogany up in the foothills.

Contrasting it with the dry farms and natural areas.

It's just gorgeous.

The sun is starting to come thrh and light up all these yellow and green leaves and it looks like lampshade especially when you get certain angles.

It just jumps out at you.

That's cool.

REICHERT: The South Fork of the Snake is the largest cottonwood gallery in the West.

It's also one of the most popular places in Idaho for wildlife, especially raptors.

GABETTAS: Lot of wildlife.

Lot of eagles.

Lot of ospreys.

The value of the South Fork, you can't value it.

It's just, beyond value.

A lot of old timers say it's not as good as it used to be, but people come here and see it for the first time and they just go, wow.

(MUSIC) I've been fortunate to fish in a lot of places, but I would say my favorite area to fish is definitely Idaho.

This fall the water is crystal clear.

I rarely see it this clear.

There's usually a little bit of turbidity coming out of the reservoir, but this year it's just been a goldilocks year for water.

The whole river corridor looks good to me.

How pretty?

On a scale to 10, it would definitely be a 9 plus.

We'll have this color here for another 10 days and then it will be gone.

You know, we've got the South Fork and then in Eastern Idaho there's some other rivers that are equally as beautiful, but this is my favorite.

CHRISTINE PLOURDE, ST. JOE RANGER DISTRICT: When I'm in the cedar grove, I feel much smaller and it puts things in context.

REICHERT: The Hobo Cedar Grove is not simply a roadside attraction.

PLOURDE: I get to just appreciate the sounds and smells and the subtle breeze and the ferns when I'm down here.

Yeah, it gives a different perspective.

REICHERT: If you give it time, the trees will turn you inwards, evoking undiscovered emotions and conjuring up feelings of wonder PLOURDE: It's pretty magical, to me the sense of beauty is beyond the visual, it's more of an experience to be in here and be surrounded by things that are ancient and timeless.

It has a very peaceful and protected feeling to it, which is very appealing, to get away from the busyness of everyday life.

REICHERT: The 240 acre grove is a secret garden of 500-year-old Western Red Cedars, preserved initially because of their tendency to fall apart on log drives, making them poor candidates for clear-cuts.

And preserved now by the Forest Service, with a mission to safeguard rare botanical habitats.

PLOURDE: I hope that when people see the grove they are inspired to care for their public lands and protect special like this, because they're really unique to what we have in this part of the country.

REICHERT: The trees in this grove can live more than 1,000 years.

Even at 250 years old they can be up to 160 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter, towering above the flora that covers the forest floor.

We have some pretty cool plants in here.

One of my favorite plants in the area is the wild ginger.

It has these really subtle heart shaped leaves and when you see it and you look under you'll find these really beautiful 3 point reddish color flowers underneath.

It's just this little surprise.

PLOURDE: So cedars are a climax species, which means that are shade tolerant, and they can basically out-compete other trees in this setting.

The reason this pocket has survived for so long is that it is in this wetter, cooler situation.

By nature of cedar trees they are really rot resistant and disease resistant so without some natural disturbance such as wind or fire they could stand in perpetuity.

REICHERT: And in our unpredictable and impermanent lives, unchanging and perpetually standing trees serve as a big sigh of relief.

PLOURDE: I think it allows people to step back and appreciate what nature has to offer for their wellbeing.

And, just set down the cell phone.

It's pretty nice to be in a place without cell service, I think.

It's very peaceful.

I don't know how else to describe it.

This is a special place, for solitude and reflection.

REICHERT: Sometimes all it takes to get off the beaten path, or highway, is to slow down and look around.

REICHERT: In late spring, the high prairie of Central Idaho near Grangeville becomes awash in bright yellow.

But most people just speed by.

This is the flowering season for canola, the seeds of which are crushed to produce one of the world's most popular cooking oils.

Farmers who grow the crop, like Cliff Tacke can see subtle differences in what seems like an explosion of yellow.

CLIFF TACKE, NEW CENTURY FARM: I look at the exact hue and that tells me, "ok, this is pretty good crop, or this is not as good a crop because it's not quite as bright as it should be.

REICHERT: For the rest of us, though, the vivid bloom provides an opportunity to pull over and capture scenes that seem straight out of the Land of Oz.

SISTER BARBARA JEAN GLODOWSKI, MONESTARY OF ST. GERTRUDE: Actually you need sunglasses to look out at it.

REICHERT: For 60 years, Sister Barbara Jean Glodowski has admired the prairie's changing landscape from her vantage point at the Monastery of St. Gertrude.

She still remembers arriving here as a young woman.

GLODOWSKI: I got up here in June and it was so beautiful up here.

And all I could do is just weep for the beauty.

(CHOIR SINGING) REICHERT: The century-old monastery, with its unique blue porphyry stone, sits on a high point near Cottonwood.

Each year, 20,000 people meander off Highway 95 to visit the site.

Some check out the monastery's unique historical museum, or attend its annual raspberry festival.

Others enjoy seminars and retreats at the Spirit Center run by this Benedictine order.

But for many, the draw to St. Gertrude's is simply the peace that surrounds it.

GLODOWSKI: If you quiet yourself, you can feel the breeze.

You can hear the birds.

We have about 23 variety of birds around us.

You can just get a sense of how sacred the ground is.

So when people, come, they come to take this big sigh of relief for their soul.

SISTER CAROL ANN WASSMUTH, MONASTERY OF ST. GERTRUDE: To me it's also the forest and the woods that adds just a lot of beauty to an area.

REICHERT: For more than 30 years, Sister Carol Ann Wassmuth has managed the thousand acres of forest land owned by the monastery.

WASSMUTH: What I feel up here in these woods is at home.

I think I know every tree almost by name.

REICHERT: Logging some of the trees provides needed income for the sisters.

But the forest also gives back something more intangible.

WASSMUTH: To me, it's also a place of peace, of reflection, of tranquility, and of energy.

Trees give off an energy, and if you're close to a tree, you actually absorb energy from the trees.

So it's a place of revitalization for me.

Many people do come up here and find god here in the woods.

CRAIG GEHRKE, CAMAS PRAIRIE LANDOWNER: The absolute silence is a rare commodity.

REICHERT: Once a month, Craig Gehrke drives four hours from Boise to do maintenance on the century-old ranch where he grew up, not far from the monastery.

The routine tasks provide him a chance to leave behind the pressures of his job as the Idaho Director of the Wilderness Society.

GEHRKE: When you repair a fence at end of the day, you can see something.

Versus, you know, public policy, which takes a generation to accomplish sometimes.

REICHERT: As a child, Gehrke would ride his horse to the top of Cottonwood Butte.

There's also a road that goes to the top, where you can enjoy a vista that takes in parts of three states.

It's an expansive view that led Gehrke to dream big as well.

GEHRKE: This completely inspired me.

I wanted to see those places protected.

REICHERT: In summer, the long light illuminates the contours of the prairie.

It's pass-through country for many.

But those who live here hope you'll take the road less traveled and enjoy the place, they call home.

TACKE: The expansiveness is one of the things I like about this area.

There's only really one road, so that makes this fairly isolated.

Definitely off the beaten path.

GLODOWSKI: This land has a beauty, all its own.

You know, one of the, the beauties of the world right now is that it's caused people to take time to breathe and not be in such a fast pace world.

I pray that this time becomes a reset button for us, that we can move ahead and be more in touch with nature and ourselves.

Because every leaf, every, every blade of grass has a spark of divine.

REICHERT: Three sides of basalt walls surround an Eden of earthly hues.

Lush greenery and Turquoise waters are an oasis in a seemingly barren high desert plateau.

The Caribbean clear water may have spent 350 years weaving its way through underground channels in the eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, before bursting into the light of day.

CLIVE STRONG, FMR.

NATURAL RESOURCE DIVISION CHIEF: What we walked through is what's now called Earl Hardy Box Canyon Natural Preserve.

It is a state park.

It preserves the 11th largest natural spring in the United States.

The one thing about the central part of the state is people will drive through it and all they'll see is the sagebrush and a cheat grass occasionally.

And think that that's all there really is to this area.

But once you get off the road and you start looking around the canyons, it has tremendous amount of treasures, flows are marvelously clear where you can see the bottom of the stream.

Just a marvelous place.

And it's untouched, I guess, is what I'd say about it.

Well, my first memory of box canyon is when I was growing up as a boy and Wendell.

And when I was in high school, I'd come out here in the afternoon and sit on the canyon rim and looked down at a Box Canyon.

And the stream flows are going through the canyon.

It would have been when I was about 15 years old and, uh, just after I got a driver's license and was able to get around on my own It was kind of a sanctuary.

It was a nice place where you could just come out and enjoy nature, look at the falls as they go down through the canyon.

And, uh, just not be bothered by the troubles of the world at the time or the troubles of high school.

This is a great place to kind of look at what Idaho was and what Idaho can be.

We use a Box Canyon as a gauge to see how we're doing.

What's the state of the aquifer?

Are we declining?

Are we improving?

And that's going to continue to be a very important part of our overall management of eastern state clean aquifers.

This should be a resource for people on into infinitum.

REICHERT: A hidden spring, birthed from a hidden river, tucked below a canyon's rim surrounded by farm fields and protected by the state, a place with value that extends beyond the visual.

REICHERT: On occasion, stillness can be found hiding in the busiest of places.

MARTY MCCAIN, KAYAKER: The benefit is the peacefulness.

It's very quiet and, even though there's chaos in town, it's very quiet once you get down into the bay.

You're just one with nature.

You hear the highway noise a little bit, but you can kind of block that out when you're just enjoying everything that nature has to offer.

REICHERT: And the offers are plentiful.

This 240 acre nature preserve is home to 34 rare animal species, including 24 species of birds, the songs of which can be heard as night falls and morning rises.

DWIGHT MCCAIN, PRES.

OF CDA CANOE AND KAYAK CLUB: Redwing blackbirds, herons, osprey, saw all those today.

But you know, we didn't see any exotic birds.

I was hoping for an eagle.

Sometimes we see eagles in here.

MARTY MCCAIN: And there's some yellow ones down there.

My mom could tell you who they were or what they were, but I can't, yellow warblers!!

REICHERT: Situated on the Northwest shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene, Cougar Bay provides a sneak peek into the past for those who frequent its waters.

DWIGHT MCCAIN: So it's really a chance for somebody to see a natural environment, what it looked like before the people started settling.

(MUSIC) This neat thing about the lake is that there's very little boat traffic.

It's the no wake zone.

So nobody goes down there except to fish.

And since it's kind of weedy, most people with propellers don't go down there because they get their snags snagged up.

So most of the time you're there by yourself when you're there self-propelled.

DWIGHT MCCAIN: I like the weeds.

I like the, the maze, where's this go, where does this go?

Can we get through or not?

MARTY MCCAIN: It's nice to be able to get out on the water and just kind of release all of your stress and it's just very calm and you find your balance down there, your Zen I guess, you know, it's just very peaceful and it's just nice to be out in nature, and the fresh air and sunshine and be able to do that.

REICHERT: And it'll stay that way, the bay is protected from development.

Ensuring that plants and animals can continue to live here, undisturbed.

And humans can continue to enjoy their presence.

REICHERT: The Sawtooth Mountains, a range that needs no introduction.

It's perhaps the most photographed region of the state.

In part because it's so accessible.

In the heart of the summer, expect to see hundreds of hikers enjoying the trails near Redfish, Petit and Stanley lakes.

Making this wilderness one of the most visited in the nation.

When the Sawtooth Wilderness boundaries were drawn in 1972, the Forest Service excluded a mining claim, the Greenback Mine and this jeep road to it.

The mine eventually proved unproductive, but mountain bikers can still ride several miles into this canyon on the old road, since it's not in official wilderness.

And that's something Hannah Fake likes to do.

But once she parks her bike, and prepares to climb, things get a lot harder.

That's because there's not much of a path and it's pretty much straight up.

HANNAH FAKE, NATURALIST: The first time I came up here, I remember stopping about every 10 feet.

Like this is so steep.

This is so hard.

REICHERT: As the lead naturalist at the Redfish Lake Visitor Center, Hannah has seen the best that the Sawtooths has to offer.

Part of her job is to offer suggest places where people can visit.

But, this is not one of those places.

FAKE: It is steep and loose and rocky and makes this place inaccessible to a lot of people, which is part of the reason why it's so quiet and beautiful.

And there's no one else up here.

This place is special.

I've been here more than I've been to most places in the Sawtooths.

I've had multiple trips here.

Coming up, I love getting off trail.

It's a hanging valley, so that's why that trail is so steep.

When you have hanging valleys, it collects water generally in lakes up above, and then just drops down in a falls.

(MUSIC) It's all year round pouring water, which is pretty cool up here.

And you can really get pretty close to it and get some really nice views on that trail up.

And if you could continue to just a little bit further, you can find the lakes that feed it.

REICHERT: Just about every lake in the Sawtooth range is postcard perfect and the lakes above the falls are no exception.

FAKE: This place is special.

It's beautiful.

The trail in is first time I ever heard a wolf howl, which is pretty special.

I think almost always in the Sawtooths, the little higher you get the better reward it is.

The further you go out, the less people you find.

So the three different lakes at Hanson, the bottom one and each one gets a little smaller as you go up and get a little better view looking out across the valley and the mountains.

This year definitely has been busier than last year with the number of people here.

And it's great that people get out because then they care about it.

They see these beautiful places and want to protect them and come back, but, it's got to be recreating responsibly.

REICHERT: Today, we're the only ones here.

FAKE: Once you get off trail, you hardly see anyone.

Just a quick scramble up from the trail and you're at these beautiful lakes where no one's around.

And off trail is definitely not for everyone, but that's some of my favorite places to go to hike to a peak or hike to a valley and know that you are the only person in that entire valley or drainage for the day or even the night is pretty special.

REICHERT: And in this wild world where sometimes it seems, every spot is taken, every trail trodden, it's good to remember that, there's are still places, to step off the beaten path.

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the Idaho Public Television Endowment.

To find more information about these shows, visit us at IdahoPTV.Org.