Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Contrast

(For a friend from the UK who asked about Idaho.) Looking across a park with the foothills in the background. The park is landscaped and watered, thanks to the Boise River, irrigation canals, and the aquifer that runs under the valley. The foothills are au naturel.   (Click to enlarge the photos to see the detail)  

Here's a closer view of the foothills. They're green now because of the spring rains. But in the summer it's very hot and dry, so they turn brown, as in the photo below.  

Can't you just see a cowboy riding over the ridge? :-)

6 comments:

dive said...

Wow, Ms.M! That's not at all how I'd imagined it. It's stark and beautiful and a lot like Yorkshire (only much higher up). I can indeed picture the Marlboro Man riding along the skyline, though I'm more used to seeing our own version of this landscape dotted with sheep and nature documentary crews.
Thank you so much for opening up your part of the world.

Ms M said...

Thanks, Dive. It's fun to see what other parts of the world look like. I enjoy your photos, too, as I've never been to the UK.
BTW, they used to run sheep in the foothills here in the late 1800s-early 1900s. Boise has a large Basque population, and many of them began as sheepherders when they first came to the US.

dive said...

It certainly looks like good sheep country, Ms.M.
Like the Irish, you probably have more Basques living there in the States than live in the old country.

Ms M said...

I think this area has one of the largest Basque populations in the US. Our current mayor is of Basque descent.

dive said...

That is truly weird. A fish-mad folk from a tiny coastal strip on the Bay of Biscay move en-masse to a high desert plateau hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. There must be a story in there somewhere.

Ms M said...

You're right; there must be a story there. Maybe some of it has to do with political oppression in the "old country"....