Over the river and through the woods....

I still get excited about visiting my grandma. She's my favorite person in the world, my 79-year old grandma. 'Over the river and through the woods' pretty much explains where she lives - Stites, ID...around Grangeville, past Kamiah, literally on the side of a mountain and down into a gulch. My pop was raised in the little brown house my grandma and her husband, Doug still live in tucked back off the tight corner of Luke's Gulch. That house is still the same brown color its always been, with the same fence around the outskirts of the yard it's always had, the same carport filled with three Toyota trucks just off the kitchen, the same thin windows by the front door looking into the dining room, and the same front door that sticks just so.

When I was a kid grandma had a few horses in the barn around the back of the house, a chicken coop full of chickens and an annoying rooster, and a garden about 10' x 20' in the front yard. Unfortunately the wandering deer overtook the garden enough times to make grandma throw her hands up and throw in the gardening gloves on that idea (now there are hanging tomato plants by the carport). There has always been a big dog roaming around the property. There have been at least two or three hounds, back to back in my lifetime (all with the same name, of course).

25 years later, there aren't any horses in the barn, the chicken coop has long since been replaced by a food storage shed and there is a fat, round black lab mix named Digger - definitely not a hound. The area is still as secluded and beautiful as ever. I couldn't ask for a more serene drive from Moscow to anywhere but grandma's house to clear my head and rejuvenate my mind. I wonder, though, if it's the tantalizing scenery filled with excited anticipation of going to grandma's house or the thought of grandma's homemade pies, warm cookies and endless hugs and kisses that get me there today.