It’s early-morning in Quicksand Meadow near the headwaters of Big Boulder Creek on the east slope of the White Cloud Mountains, and Ed Cannady is the only person stirring. His tripod is perched beneath a giant lodgepole pine, his camera lens trained on a large unnamed peak that’s ringed with mist and cast with soft light.
    “It’s my favorite drainage in the White Clouds,” he says. “The number of peaks, the number of lakes, the open alpine tundra. You’re just ringed by alpine peaks. It’s just an amazing place.”
    Congressman Mike Simpson is still asleep in a nearby tent that’s standing, though not proudly. Someone forgot tent poles, and the Congressman concocted a way to string the tent up by threading a rope between two trees. Also asleep are the Congressman’s staffers and a crew of PBS reporters that have come here to learn about the art of compromise as it’s being played out in these mountains. Cannady looks up from his viewfinder and scans the mountains. It’s a gentle gaze from a man who knows this country as well as anyone alive. Cannady has been nurturing a love affair with the mountains of Central Idaho for three decades. It’s a give-and-take relationship that’s shaped his life. “I wasn’t born in this place, but I was born for this place,” he says. “There’s never been a doubt.”
    As the Sawtooth National Recreation Area’s backcountry recreation manager, Cannady has what he calls “an intense 30-year relationship with the backcountry of the White Clouds and the Sawtooths.” There’s not a mile of trail in either range he hasn’t hiked. He’s climbed Castle Peak—the highest point in the White Cloud Mountains—eight times, and he plans to scale the massive monolith at least eight more.
    He’s explored many more basins, peaks and creeks that are off the beaten path, and 75 to 80 percent of his time in the mountains has been spent by himself. “The Boulders, my God, there are places in the Boulder Mountains that are stunningly beautiful, and they don’t have trails to them. There’s one lake—I go there, and there’s no evidence that anyone else has ever been there. It’s so primeval. My greatest pleasure is the off-trail places.”
    There’s a flash in Cannady’s eyes when he speaks of the wild wonders of Central Idaho. But there’s more to his relationship with the mountains than a simple passion for remote and rugged environs. His alliance with the mountains is partially out of necessity. In his formative years, life was difficult, and the mountains gave him the strength to look inside to answer difficult questions.
    “In a lot of ways, the Sawtooths and White Clouds saved my life,” he says. “I did my best to escape into the mountains, and the Sawtooths were the finest mountains I found. When I go there and find a nice spot with a view or flowers or whatever, I’m able to slow down, breathe and slow my pace a little bit. There’s a magic quality to that. These places make me want to be better than I am.”
    When life was difficult, Cannady said he dabbled in detrimental avenues of escape. The backcountry, beginning with an extended excursion to Alaska, helped to change that. Following his graduation from high school in Parma, Idaho, Cannady went to work in the Alaskan bush. For extended periods over the course of two years, he had very little contact with people. “I had a lot of time to look inside. I was well on my way to feeling sorry for myself,” he said. The time in the bush turned his focus around. He looked inside for the strength he needed to become a better man. “That’s what spending that time in the bush did for me. I was the answer to my problems.”
    Though he lived until his sophomore year in high school, in Oklahoma, Cannady discovered the mountains at an early age. “My earliest memories, really, were getting any book I could get my hands on with pictures of mountains.” In 1971, he was 14 years old, and he was driving through the Northwest with his father. That’s when he saw the Sawtooth Valley for the first time. It was June, and the wildflowers were blooming. He recalled that they were purple and blue and swept the valley floor in a giant turquoise mat.
    “It was like a love-at-first-sight thing. I turned to my Dad and said: This is where I’m going to live.”
It was like that with his wife, too. “What more do I need?”
    Cannady is also the man behind the all three of Congressman Simpson’s White Cloud Mountains backcountry trips. The ranger says he is impressed by Simpson’s eagerness to hike under his own power. He says it is also evident that Simpson truly appreciates the wild heart of the wild White Clooud Mountains.
    “On the first trip (to Middle Chamberlain Lake in 2004) it snowed. It was the wildest weather you could imagine, and he got caught up in the drama of it. it was fun to watch him stand out in a storm and appreciate the power and ferocity of it. he appreciates it enough that he wants to deal with it. he doesn’t fish. He doesn’t hunt. He’s doing it to come and appreciate the place, and I have to appreciate that.”
    Although he respects the congressman’s zeal for the omnipresent wilds and his willingness to confront a contentious thirty-year dispute, Cannady says wilderness designation in the White Clouds probably doesn’t change management in the area a whole lot.
    “Wilderness designation here shouldn’t change anything,” he says. “It would probably increase our chances for getting trail funding, funding for wilderness rangers. It would give us more leverage, but as far as the day-to-day management, it wouldn’t change much here. What it would do is ensure it is always managed this way.”
    Though he often composes words about the mountains, Cannady usually doesn’t write them. “It seemed such an act of hubris to me to put it on paper,” he says. “That would indicate that it’s worth reading.” He appears, however, to have a good grasp on literature and can readily quote from any number of classic authors. “Wallace Stegner wrote that the West is the ‘native home of hope.’ Well the Sawtooths and White Clouds are the native home of beauty and peace.”
    Another example emerged when he talks about looking inside for the strength to move in positive directions. He quots William Ernest Henley’s poem, “Invictus:” “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” It’s a mantra he discovered as a boy in Oklahoma, and he says he remembers the lesson in the words when times are difficult.
    But rather than words, one of Cannady’s most passionate creative outlets is photography, which he took up when he began visiting the wilds of Idaho. He says he used to take print photos without a good idea about what he was doing. But the art of photography wasn’t his goal. “In times when I couldn’t go, I could look at those photos and be there,” he says. As the years in the mountains mounted, his photography progressed, and he now possesses a collection of slides, some of which have been published in magazines and featured by some of Idaho’s outdoor-oriented organizations. “I really enjoy helping other people have the same kinds of experiences I have,” he says. “My photographs, as amateur as they are, can help other people have a good experience there.”
    Cannady says that, out of his passion for the mountains of Central Idaho, a sense of obligation to the place has grown. Any relationship needs to be reciprocal, he says. “We take from the land incessantly, but we rarely give back. We are obligated to give back.”
    Cannady says he is excited to share his love of the mountains with others, though he rarely offers up a secret, secluded location. He frequently receives telephone calls from people looking for a special spot to visit. Helping is rewarding. “Most of the time, they’ll call and say, ‘That changed my life. I realized what was important.’ They’ll send books, photos and say how special it was. That’s the best payment I can get for what I do.”
    Pondering the freedom of thought the mountains afford, Cannady offers another quote. “Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that a great man, in the midst of a crowd, can enjoy the greatness of solitude. Well I’m not a great man.”
    As the orange glow of the sunrise washes into a soft yellow pastel he snaps a final photograph and then packs up his camera and tripod. It’s time to cook breakfast, and the Congressman will soon be awake.
 
    No, destroying hope entirely doesn't make sense. Life is long, and anything can happen. But somehow it is still living within me, and I have to rid myself of it. I have to hope that hope will wither and somehow fade. I have to hope that hope will not grow as long as there is love to begin with. Because as hard as I've tried, hope lives on inside me.
    I delete all of the words from my life, her words for me, and the manuscript I began for us. One after the other, I delete the chapters and stories until I encounter the story titled "Power of a River." It is Marie's tale, the story of how she'd been hiking with her husband in Colorado's Collegiate Peaks and how she'd likened life to climbing a mountain. The story doesn't have a direct bearing on Araxie and me. In fact, the seed of it germinated long before I met her. But its meaning is poignant and as true in any life situation as it had been for the two of us.
    Life is like climbing a mountain, one step in front of the other with faith in our hearts that there is a summit up there somewhere. And water does carve stone, the same massive monoliths that draw down snows, which feed the river to begin with. And, yes, rivers do eventually flow away from the mountains they carve.
    It is, after all, who we were. I was Aaron, the mountain that refreshed her flow. She was Araxie, the river that inspired poetic vision.
    Power of a river indeed.