Me and my sister traveled to Idaho, which is our natural home, to invigorate our health and to visit our large and fascinating family. Max and Robin and Levi waved goodbye from the door of our little house in Oregon. We were sad we would not see them for a few days.

I am known to get a stupid and wild glint in my eye when I enter into Idaho and come upon a slope of Idaho’s quick, arid snow. The sort of snow that sparkles like a contagious diamond.

We were overjoyed and we stopped pretending we couldn’t care less about the magnificence of the world and our extraordinary luck. We dove into the snow like cartoon divers and blinked our eyes at the blue, blue sky.

We played a few halfs of basketball at Zahnor Edwards Park in Fairfield, which is an important tradition. Zahnor is our great grandpa. Sometimes I talk to Zahnor even though he is long dead. “This is some fix we’re in Zahnor,” I say, or “what in hell kind of sparrow is that, Zahnor, lolling on that long pine branch?” My mom wanted us to name our first-born child Zahnor. We named him Max instead.

We got hungry from cherishing the arid snow and playing so many traditional halfs of basketball. We stopped at the Wrangler Restaurant to eat some hot dogs and hamburgers and drink some cokes.

I pointed out my favorite special sites in Fairfield. My sister almost died when she saw this private wooden saloon. “You know what will make you almost die again?” I said. “What?” she said. “There’s a Scandinavian hot dog cart inside an old weigh station tunnel I know about,” I said. “Bullshit,” she said.

“Behold,” I said. The Scandinavian hot dog cart was parked inside the weigh station tunnel just like I told her. We poked at it like it was a body that was maybe dead or maybe not dead. I liked watching my sister finding out about the hot dog cart and coming to grips with it.

The next thing we knew we were nearly to Hailey. We knew we were nearly there because of the old Basque sheep wagon that is parked next to the highway.

I asked my sister to take a photo of me posing next to the sheep wagon.

This is what you get when you’re a Basque sheep herder: A neat green bench. A stove. A sleeping bunk.

First things first, I climbed up old Buttercup to have a look around.

This is Hailey, Idaho, my mother’s home town. My grandmother Theresa arrived in Hailey in 1953 with my Grandpa Art. Art wrote to Theresa from Hailey a year earlier to say he had found a very beautiful place for them to live.