What is there to say about Idaho that hasn't already been said?

Much.

But it's a place that seems to actively defy description. It's a place between two places, sandwiched somewhere between the ragged mountains of Western Montana and the high desert of eastern Washington and Oregon.

The rivers are likewise unsure of their identities. They flood, dry up, and flood again. I've only been on a handful; the Lochsa, the Payette, the Middle and Main Salmon. But I've read about them, watched them in videos, and heard about them. My first impressions have always been glazed with the excitement of new friends and adventure, but the rivers are always at the core. 

They are true rivers, flowing with the combined rush of many mountain streams. Somehow, they constrain their volume into narrow, boulder choked riverbeds. An ocean in a streambed.

Even the rocks can't seem to hold still. I'm no geologist, but I know someone who is, and if I had a dollar for every time she said "woah, these rocks are so WEIRD" or just stared at the canyon walls slackjawed on the Salmon, I might just come out of this trip breaking even.

What I saw was admittedly just a jumble of rocks, but a jumble of rocks that shifted in hue and texture , until one day on the Main, there was no more jumble, just a big blank face of dark rock.

In Idaho, you drift, or the world drifts around you. Time stops, or passes by too quickly. Alpine meadows, burn zones, and austere high desert. Wildflowers, sage, and ponderosa.

It's a place to be surrounded... by people and canyon walls.

By waves and nothingness.