Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

We’ve been arguing forever about how we became a species. Some don’t argue, true. They just believe one way or another, or accept that they will never know. These relatively rare subjects are happy to be at peace with the question. Maybe they...

As I grow older, it becomes more difficult to accept the uncaring nature of what seems to be a majority of humans when it comes to other species on the planet. From mosquitoes to redwoods, we seem bent on destroying the other biota on Earth. They get...

Life is full right now. Time seems compressed, but on Saturday, I will take a day to travel to the Colville Reservation to visit a dried-up cemetery. I have written about this place and those buried here often, including this piece — slightly...

Once upon a time, long, long ago — at least a decade, maybe more — I was enlisted by a couple of teachers from a local school to help lead a group of seventh graders into the wilderness. Their idea was to bring them back as well, not just leave...

They’re making hay in southwestern Montana, cutting record harvests in the Big Hole, Horse Prairie and the Beaverhead and Madison valleys. These water-rich bottoms are sandwiched between spectacular Montana ranges: the Pioneers, Anaconda-Pintler...

It’s the summer solstice and I’m walking through my lower briar patch. If you know me, you may know what I mean. If you don’t, you won’t. My stroll is through a place that only about .0000000012% of humans know about, roughly 100 people....

Memorial Day weekend has passed. Soggy campers weathered the weather, and cemeteries sprouted flags and flowers in remembrance of loved ones. Twenty-eight years ago last Sunday, I traveled to Nespelem in the sagebrush hills of the Colville...

Just so you know, even if there’s nobody on the ocean to experience the waves, the waves are there. From 30,000 feet, whitecaps are still visible. And there are some big ones. As we make our way at 600 miles per hour toward the Hawaiian...

My brothers and I and our significant others once stood in Grandpa Earl’s east field on a summer night, watching sunset fade away. Hanging in the sky ten degrees above the horizon was a brilliant, silver-white dot. My sister-in-law asked,...

I’ve cleaned this old joke up for “family viewing:” Opinions are like ears. Everyone has a couple. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines opinion as: “a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or...

Long ago, my girlfriend and her sister took me skiing at Schweitzer Basin. Sort of. They got me into a pair of leather boots that connected — temporarily — to a pair of Head 210s. They took me to the top of the “learning” slope and said,...

Welcome to 2023. Here in the U.S. of A., it so far looks a lot like 2022. Or 2019, for that matter. We’re still stuck in neutral, suffering a lot of noisy engine revving and exhaust fumes from Congress, and getting absolutely nowhere. We‘re held...

Several days before Thanksgiving, a collection of tracks appear in my driveway, those of a domestic cat. My neighbors have cats, but they don’t visit. These tracks are everywhere, very visible in the fresh snow. I then realize there are two cats,...

I am keeping my promise not to write about politics for a while; and it may be forever. It seems moot. We are stuck in a political and ideological quagmire, and it appears we will remain so for a while. It might be better to explore something we can...

When we were children, we played aA few thoughts on shedding an old skin. I’m two miles from the pickup and 500 feet above where I left it parked when I find a snakeskin on a rock midstream in the East Fork. It is frail and silky, and I set it aflo...

When we were children, we played an odd summertime game. We sat in the front yard of my grandparents’ trailer house/cabin within view of the highway, picked a color and kept track of how many cars and trucks of our color drove by. It was purely a...

Each year, a backpacking trip into a nearby wilderness is undertaken by certain artistic types (ATs), most often plein air painters. ATs follow “guide” Bearly-Seen Svensson (not his real name, for legal reasons) into the wild, stopping often to...

You may have heard someone say, “That person is a real character,” generally in reference to a guy or gal who is somewhat, or very — ummm — unique. Some folks achieve status as a real character without even thinking about it, but should you...

In John Prine’s song “Way Back Then,” he sings, “I am out undoing all the good I’ve done.” That could be a theme for the past few years in the United States. Environmental laws passed “way back then” are weakened, international...

My neighbor Aaron Harris showed up with his portable sawmill this week, and we proceeded to make rectangular pieces out round logs harvested from my place by Ma Nature herself: windthrown Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock courtesy of big wind events...

Spring managed to surprise me this year. Again. I walked to the river yesterday and discovered fresh-grown catkins hanging from an errant Sitka alder that has taken root in the stream bank. I have no idea what that alder is doing there, for most of...

“There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.” Winston Churchill In 2001, I travelled to the “new” Russia. The USSR had dissolved a decade before and the...

A bobcat is traveling around the homestead these days, teaching snowshoe hares and ruffed grouse to pay attention, a good and proper thing for a bobcat to do. I see its tracks rambling through my woods. I also had the good luck of a sighting a few...

At Oakland Airport, I await a flight to Spokane, the last leg home from Seattle. It’s a roundabout way to get there, but it fits the day, which has been roundabout also. I still like to fly, but there are a number of SDRs that go with flying these...

As I’ve grown older, the glistening promise of the winter holiday has become a little tarnished. That’s not to say I haven’t had wonderful Christmases, because I have, but there have been some horrendous ones, as well. I think that’s true of...