Coeur d'Alene's Great Backyard

Fresh snow at Schweitzer Mountain Resort calls to the heart of every skier and snowboarder in the Panhandle from this wide open scene in the Selle Valley north of Sandpoint.

How do you count the ways you can enjoy this great land of North Idaho? If you made a list of all the things you, your family and friends can do for little more than the price of gas, such a list might surprise you.

What is your interest? Is it scenic beauty? Outdoor recreation? Road tripping? Boating? We have it all.

As I try to write about it, I confess that I fall into a chuckle because some small part of every aspect of the Panhandle fits into my desires, wants and needs no matter the time of year. From picking huckleberries to fishing for small but stunningly beautiful brook trout while wading in cold mountain water in tennis shoes. Enjoying wild apples from dozens of all but abandoned MacIntosh trees, the whereabouts are as secretive to me as where to fly cast for outsized rainbow trout, or browns or back-country west slope cutthroat trout.

I like riding horses as much as I like snowmobiling. And when the snow is not there, my ATV does a fine job of taking me with friends to places too far to walk; and if I want to walk, I can leave my vehicle at the end of a road and hike into any number of backcountry destinations – mountain lakes galore, headwaters of streams we all know, or mountain ridges not even named.

I like gardening too, and for that matter building to some small degree, like wood sheds, chicken coops and the like. For this reason, my rural setting is ideal. I can cut my own fire wood, watch the deer, feed the birds. These little things I take not for granted; they are immensely important to my well being as they are to so many others I know.

Want to harvest your own Christmas tree? You can here, without hindrance or interference, and you don't have to travel far. Want to watch the eagles? Go where the kokanee salmon spawn; all three of our big lakes like Coeur d'Alene, Priest and Pend Oreille have tributaries with runs of these colorful spawning salmon in the fall.

So when the snow begins to hold on Mount Spokane, Silver Valley or Schweitzer as in the photo, it's not a foreboding message of winter about to come, but an opening of the door to another season – an invite to another form of meaningful pleasure in our participation in the great out of doors of North Idaho.

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