A New Start in Idaho

Create your own nature experience wherever you are.

I left a land I nurtured, loved, and watched come to life to start anew in the mountains of my heart. I’ve literally put down new roots. This is how I came to love this new place and find my wild spirit on these five acres.

My husband, two dogs, two cats, and I arrived in North Idaho on a sunny, blue-sky, 60° March day. In the last ten miles, I saw a large elk herd in a meadow along the highway. I was delighted with the welcome from these new neighbors. Three years later, I have never seen another single elk along that highway. What a special welcome! A way to say, “You are where you are meant to be.”

Our house had sat vacant for six months, creating the perfect invitation for the local wildlife to move onto our quiet, safe land. The dated, empty house rings hollow, echoing the coldness of the bare floors, bare walls, and bare windows. It will be another week before our furniture arrives.

But outside, the locals are warm and welcoming. Snowshoe hares, white coats lingering from their winter camouflage, were a delightful surprise, standing out starkly against the dull browns of early spring. They leave the safety of the dense woods to feast on the fresh shoots of turf grass, bounding in grand leaps as they move.

A  trio of whitetail deer and a rafter of wild turkeys also visit the grassy opening. I discreetly watch from the second-story picture window.

The twenty-year-old woods are dense with deadfall, spindly new pines, and dead low branches (ladder fuels). This acreage is a tinderbox. Rewilding this land seems an insurmountable undertaking. Every day, I cut, pulled, and broke off low branches, dead trees, and saplings. I cleared existing trails blocked by fallen trees. Every few days, I burned the immense piles that I was making. After one week, I could see that I was making a difference. I was buoyed by the hope that bubbled up inside me. Maybe it wasn’t insurmountable.

I hung a hummingbird feeder, filled birdfeeders with black oil sunflower seeds, and set a water trough out in the woods. Almost immediately, rufous and black-chinned hummingbirds were feeding. I hung two more.

The adorable, chatty pine squirrels empty the sunflower feeders between red-breasted nuthatch and chickadee visits.

Over time, I successfully implemented some squirrel deterrents and placed a trail camera at the water trough. Feeding wildlife is tempting (food is love) but fraught with trouble for the wildlife and people. Water is a valuable resource that is mostly void of those problems. When I added a drip to the water trough to broadcast its presence, the numbers and kinds of wildlife visiting increased ten-fold!

The second spring, with the woods more open and sunlight reaching the previously shaded forest floor, the seed bank surged to life. New plants sprouted, and new species revealed themselves. I learned all I could about this emerging flora.

A family of wild turkeys calls our woods home. They frequent the yard often through the winter, cleaning up spilled seed from the birdfeeders, but I only occasionally see them in the summer. Our third summer brought a lone hen almost daily. She must be nesting. (She will lay an egg a day for two weeks while she gorges on insects to prepare for the coming weeks when she needs to sit on the nest). I looked in vain for her nest. The following fall, she and her six chicks regularly ate insects and birdseed on our property.

A family of deer also lives here. The matriarch has been here longer than I have. In our second summer, two does had their fawns here (one singleton and one set of twins) and hid them in our dense Oregon grape shrubs for their first month of life.

In our third winter, I still see the adult twins around. The young buck has spikey antlers and still hangs around with his sister and mom, although I’m also starting to see him with a bachelor group. These white-tailed deer live here with me, although I seldom see them anymore, I know they see me. I enjoy their tracks, rubs, and camera-trap images.

A pair of coyotes live near here. I see their prints and scat along our trails. In the summer, I hear them calling at night. The trail camera mostly shows just the couple, but occasionally, there’s a whole family. When we arrived here three years ago, there was no evidence of coyotes on this land.

The cameras catch occasional elk wandering through, striking in size compared to the more frequent sightings of white-tailed deer. We even had a bull elk last year!

Our third summer brought camera captures of a pair of moose! They were close enough to the house that had I been awake at 6 a.m. and known where to look; I would’ve seen them from the house. A few months later, I caught this moose on camera in the same location.

Of all the wildlife that has come through here, moose are the only ones that give me pause. My dogs are free-range, mostly staying on our property while occasionally visiting the neighbors. They are relatively respectful of wildlife. They ignore turkeys and chickens but will bark and bounce at deer. They don’t chase. But to a moose, my dogs are wolves. And moose do not tolerate wolves. Currently, they keep different hours.

My plantings are beginning to take hold. My first priority was to plant aspen trees and deer-resistant native flowers.

Each year, I’ve added more plants. Gardeners say of perennials, ” The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.” I’m ready! It’s been a learning curve to keep them alive until they can take hold and thrive independently. They need protection from deer, gophers, and snowshoe hares. In the drought of summer, they need daily watering. We’re figuring it out together.

Every year, I see new species—birds, plants, and mammals—and I’m excited for what the future holds.

It took me twelve years to make my Illinois home a homegrown national park. I’m trying to be patient, knowing that transformation takes time—time for the inside to feel like my home and time for the outside to feel like a comfortable home for the wild. I also know that if people get out of Nature’s way, she will heal herself.

This is just the beginning.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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