Report from The Woods

Legend has it that Boise was named when two French fur-trappers mounted yet another bare, sun-scrubbed Western hill and saw in the distance a river valley thick with trees, "Les bois!" (woods!) they cried in relief. Other tales claim the river was named first (Wood River, now the Boise River, although in French it would have been something like Le Fleuve Bois), and the city came after. Okay then, tell me where the see came at the end of bwa/boy (for only non-residents pronounce the word with a z rather than a sibilant s). Were there two rivers? (Les Fleuves Boises?)

But I digress, before I have even properly started. The Texan and I traveled to Boise last weekend (which I discuss in another entry), to check-in and reconnect with The Family. I was impressed by the city -- it reminded me, startlingly, of Madison, Wisconsin. Now, before you go getting in a huff about the insult to Madison, remember that both cities have about the same population (around 200,000), both are university towns, and both have ugly concrete sprawl at the outer edges. (Hmm, I grant that doesn't sound like much overlap.) The Family Man said it reminded him of Tucson, where we visited last year, which also has those same commonalities, and towards which we are also fondly oriented.

The Family is living in a rented house in the residential neighborhood called North Boise, populated largely by university folk. They are centrally located: in one direction is a convenient super-market/pharmacy center, about 6 blocks away. In another direction, about the same distance, is a neighborhood hub with a couple of nice restaurants and boutiques, a locally owned bike store, and an old-fashioned ice cream fountain. The children's K-6 school is in a third direction, equally near. Unlike Portland, the streets are wide and smoothly-paved; every yard has a gigantic tree in the front, and in the back, for summer shade, and the sidewalks regularly curve around the extensive roots. Every block has an alley for garbage and garage access. Continuing unlike Portland, power lines do not drape the sky from poles to every house; virtually every residence has an underground watering system, so the grass is green wherever you go (August is a brown month in eco-friendly, eco-supercilious, Portland). They have no streetlamps in the residential neighborhoods -- at night, it is really dark.

Their house is tiny: 1-1/2 stories, in good shape. You enter into a true Great Room, perhaps 25 feet long. Here, the Family Man can sit in comfort, surfing the web or doing household tasks at one end of the room, while Boy-Child plays games on his new Playstation 3 at the other end, and Girl-Child can complete a 10-foot-long floor puzzle in the middle. Not to mention, it makes for a great setup for The Man's projector, for high definition movies.

The ground floor also houses two full bathrooms, a small bedroom for Boy-child and a larger master bedroom. At the back is a small dining room, and a recently renovated kitchen with windows overlooking the back yard. Sunday brought a fine morning; we sat and read the New York Times at the picnic table in dappled shade while the children alternated between the swing set and a more sedate bench swing.

On the half story, at the top of the stairs, The Man has a small sloped-ceiling office, and Girl-Child has her dream bedroom. Sloping ceilings, a low bunk bed next to a casement window, an arts table and storage area, a large open space for scattering stuffed animals -- and best of all, a large aquarium with her two new pets, goldfish Rex and Dynamite.

It sounds like a lot, but note the repeated use of the word "small" (except for the Great Room). But the house is graciously laid out, as well as spotlessly clean -- due in part to having been scrubbed only three weeks ago in preparation for their move in, and also because no furry pet has ever stepped in its door. It is not a Cattus Dommus. (And until Rex and Dynamite are joined by two or three more gilly friends, it won't be a Piscus Dommus, either.)

Boise is a biking town. On Sunday, we walked for a few hours along the Green Belt -- a long bike and pedestrian trail meandering along the Boise River the length of the town. Family Woman bikes seven miles to work each morning along it. Sky-blue sky, high arcing chestnut and locust trees with trunks a yard thick, lawns of green grass are the immediate neighbors of the trail. The Boise River was full of students on inflatable rafts; Boise State University sits on the other side of the river. The other side of the Belt is a series of public spaces -- a gracious Anne Frank monument, an old log cabin converted to a writer's colony, a zoo, a "discovery center" (a science and industry museum), the central library, the Art Museum, etc. This area, with its tatooed students on bikes swooping through and the families playing frisbee, was what reminded me of Madison.

Near the zoo is a canal with a pond, just the right size for paddle boats -- plain old uprights, swan or even pelican-beaked ones. We stopped and rented two swans, one for Family Woman, Girl-Child and myself, and another for The Texan and Boy-Child. The Man, meanwhile, checked out the Boise Art Museum ("BAM"), and reported it was a small, regional museum, without enough emphasis on its own region, but that it does have a couple of good traveling exhibits.

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Soooo, they appear to be settling in. The good news is that the city, while small, is pleasant and tidy. The children's school looks to be excellent (Boise ranks nationally for its high schools, which Portland does not); Girl-Child's Independent Education Program has been doubled there, to an hour of special tutoring a day (much to her distress). It has been hot, which has been hard for their Pacific Northwest bones to handle, but the nights are getting cooler, and the winter guarantees snow, a rare occasion in Portland. No matter what the long-term future holds, for now, the near-term, things look pretty good.