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The night before, I had pulled off the highway to a pitch black landscape under a bright starry sky. I was in for a surprise when I looked out the camper that morning. As I pulled the shade, the morning sun reflected off a sturdy crust of icy snow with a vengeance for my corneas. I had parked in an expansive meadow with timber climbing the ridges on either side. After making coffee, I glanced out again and could see that I had parked in a popular cross-country ski area. The l

Tucked away in one of the furthest reaches of the Yankee Fork, miles up an isolated gorge, lies the ghost town of Custer, Idaho. As I roll into town, the dense evergreens on either side give way to wide, open swaths of snow, dotted with aspen and willow trees. The town is quiet, with numerous structures boarded up for winter, their roofs blanketed in a thick layer of snow. Not another soul is in sight as I park the truck and step out to walk through this slice of history. At

With clear weather forecast for the next few days, I ventured deeper into the mountains toward the ghost towns of Custer and Bonanza. Following the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River north, I passed a tall cottonwood tree standing by the roadside. Its trunk, gnawed halfway through, must have been no match for the local beaver population. The notch was on the roadside and a few inches wide, suggesting that the tree would soon fall at some random moment. It almost felt as though t