Moved to Boise in 1993 and our first trip to the Sawtooth Mountains was on July 4th and our 13 year old son went ahead and pelted us with snowballs....on July 4th! We followed the trail up and came upon something out of a dream and we were the only 3 people there. A small crystal clear lake that you had to catch an angle to even realize there was water in it, that's how clear and picture perfect it was. It hit all 3 of us so hard that even our usually noisy 13 year old could only speak in a whisper, afraid to stir the air and spoil the moment.
It was as if the bottom bed of this lake had been painted by nature with shades of rock I'd never seen before, it was as if we'd stepped back through time and found something unspoiled by the presence of man. We just sat down, each of us lost in the bottom of this lake but each of us careful not to leave a footprint or proof we'd been there. It was so magical, pristine and special and I have never beheld anything that just locked up my throat like that, I could barely breathe for fear of disturbing what I was seeing.
The Sawtooths are a really cool place to hike and Idaho is by far the most beautiful and picturesque place I have even lived but on that day, in that place, that was the most beautiful place I have ever seen or will see.
I took a whole roll of pictures because I wanted to share that with some family and friends and entice them to visit and when we got them back, we sat down at the dinner table and went through them and after we'd looked at all of them my wife said "doesn't work, does it? You really have to be there". She was right, I didn't even keep the pictures, what lived in my memory was far better. So far, in my life, that is the most "you had to be there" moment, nothing else could do that justice.
