All of a sudden it occurred to me that our two sons, Max and Levi, had not visited the great monuments of our family: Zahnor Edwards Park, the Great Shed of Grandpa Art, the Famous Slope of Rotarun, nor the Birthplace of the Father of Modernism, Ezra Pound. It is around the holidays that I well up with sentiment and desire to point out the marks our grand family–and the Modernists–made on the earth. With full hearts, thus, we booked ourselves onto an airplane headed for Idaho.

Grandpa Ken picked us up at the airport. We were pleased by the chilly, clear sky and by the prospect of seeing the great sites of our family. We set out.

We stopped at Cat Creek to drink up the landscape and let the old dyes of home set in.

We passed the settlement of Corral and noticed the boarded-up Corral Store, where Great Grandpa Zahnor drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. He was the Deputy Sheriff of Camas County.

I planned our arrival into Fairfield such that the sun was honeying up the telephone poles and the ten or twelve buildings comprising the town. I wanted Robin, Max and Levi to be overcome when we arrived at Zahnor Edwards Park.

As we pulled into Zahnor Edwards Park we mistook the trees for trees forged out of solid gold. We mistook the snow for the magnificent lake the Mayans threw their gold fineries into when they heard the Spaniards clattering towards them through the trees. There was no mistaking the early-model tractor pulling a gigantic log that is the main feature of the park, alongside the regulation basketball court, as these are important symbols of our family.

You’ll notice the tractor and oversize log, and the basketball court, in the Harris Family Crest. Zahnor Edwards Park is basically a diorama of our family’s shortcomings and aptitudes.

While the sun scintillated at the edge of town, Grandpa Ken told us stories about Zahnor and Louise (Max and Levi’s Great-Great Grandparents) and his mother, Lorraine. Lorraine is Max and Levi’s Great-Grandmother and the headwaters of our family’s natural gracefulness. Grandpa Ken also told us about when he took my mother on a pilgrimage to Zahnor Edwards Park as part of his fascinating courting chicanery.

Max and Grandpa took a customary and honorary tractor ride.

Before bidding Fairfield a fond farewell we stopped at Zahnor and Louise’s old homestead. “So this is where they lived,” Max whispered. We considered their lives for a moment and pointed the car towards Hailey: site of Grandpa Art’s Shed and the birthplace of the father of Modernism, Ezra Pound, as well as of the Famous Slope of Rotorun.

After a restless night’s sleep at Grandma Teresa’s house in Hailey, I took the boys out to Grandpa Art’s Shed. I looked at Max and Levi looking at the rusted gold pans, sheep bells, and sun-bleached antlers clinging to the side of their great-grandpa’s shed. Nobody said anything.

In an adventurous tone, Max finally stated, “I want to hang onto Grandpa Art’s shed and not let go. “I know what you mean,” I said.

We had a beer party next to Grandpa Art’s shed.

Once all the beer was drunk we had a minor gun fight. I looked up from my shallow grave to see who had kilt me. It was the Littlest Bandito. His eyes flashed an awful flash.

And Great Grandma Teresa held Levi.

We pilgrimaged to the Famous Slope of Rotarun. Rotarun is a single-poma ski hill founded by my Grandpa Art. My uncle Tom showed me the old bluprints for the ski hill, which we found in an old box in Art’s tinkering shop in the basement. They were unbelievable. Diagrams of the poma lift and the ski runs and the warming hut.

We sledded the Famous Slope of Rotarun until the lights strung on the poma lift showed on the dry snow. We slept a tired and peaceful New Year’s Night.

In the morning we visited the house of Ezra Pound’s birth, which is a short snowy walk from my grandparent’s house. We didn’t talk about how Ezra Pound was a fascist and an anti-semite. Rather, we talked about his luminous verse.

Like a fish-scale roof,
Like the church roof in Poictiers
If it were gold.
Beneath it, beneath it
Not a ray, not a slivver, not a spare disc of sunlight
Flaking the black, soft water;
Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana,
Nymphs, white-gathered about her, and the air, air,
Shaking, air alight with the goddess,
fanning their hair in the dark,
Lifting, lifting and waffing:
Ivory dipping in silver,
Shadow’d, o’ershadow’d
Ivory dipping in silver,
Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight.

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