West Side Castle, Part I "Lewis & Clark"

Named for early explorers of the West (Lewis and Clark, of course, and others such as John Charles Fremont), the streets in Pocatello run up the steep foothills that border the town on its west side. These asphalt namesakes, so vigorous as they pass by the bank and the land title office and the public library, lose steam when they reach the hills. They turn listless and spindly, their energy trailing off into graveled driveways. Weighed down with heavy cement curbs and sidewalks, they stop abruptly against a fence or in someone’s front yard.  

      Late this cold Thanksgiving morning, the thickset figure of a woman toils slowly up one of these narrowing byways. She pauses at the end of each block, drops the three heavy knapsacks she carries, and tightens a woolen scarf around her neck. She pulls her knitted hat lower over her ears, tucking escaped tendrils of silvered hair away from her face. Swallowing large gulps of icy air, she again picks up her bags, readjusts them from shoulder to shoulder and hand to hand, then resumes the climb toward her destination: the last house on the street, set off to the left behind a low wall of crumbling stone. 

      When the woman finally reaches the end of the street, she pauses, panting, in a yard where scruffy grass shows between splotches of trodden snow. An ancient Chinese elm crowds the driveway, heaving cement up under the wheels of the battered truck parked there. The house is large and made larger by the addition of newer sections to the original structure. Chimneys sprout from bare circles in the thick frosting of snow on the roof, and icicles hang from the many corners and cornices. The front door sits at a slightly skewed angle, as if the Feng Shui advisor knew that the house had been built on the back of the dragon and had tried to make amends.

The woman drops her bags by the front door and walks gingerly around the side of the house on a snow-shoveled path. She glances at each frosted window as she passes. No two window casements are the same: here, one is angular and modernly tailored; there, one is beveled and set in an ornately-carved frame. The first window is crowded with glass bottles that glint greenly or with rainbow hues.  The second opens onto a double pane of stained glass lilies.  The woman pauses before the third window and peers at the overgrown foliage of an enclosed greenhouse filled with ferns.

      The path ends in stone steps that climb over a berm and down into a sunken garden behind the house. Brushing the snow from the steps with a gloved hand, the woman sees that each stone offers a single word carved in heraldic letters:

JOURNEY

EPIPHANY

VISION 

The woman mounts warily. To step is to commit, she thinks. 

      On the west side of the garden, the foothills rise abruptly. A heart-crested arch woven of willow branches frames a narrow path that climbs the hill, winding around clumps of sagebrush, heavy with frost, and clutches of tall, dry grass. A low shed of pale sandstone blocks is set into the hill on one side of the path. A litter of pottery in various stages of completion lines the sill of the shed’s single window.  Next to the shed is a kiln pasted together with bricks of several colors and textures.               

Another branch of the path curves back toward the house, where mist rises from a deep, rock-rimmed pool set into a wooden deck and guarded by stone gargoyles whose fantastic expressions are ready to alternately menace and delight bathers. The odors of sage and cinnamon lure the woman across the deck to a pair of French doors. Peering through their rectangular panes, she sees that a feast is being laid inside. Three oak tables on sturdy legs and pedestals have been pushed together to form one long board. Delicate lace tablecloths drape and sway across this banquet table, anchored with stoneware basins and gleaming cutlery. Chairs and short benches are crowded around the table.  Like the windows, each chair is different from its neighbor; each is carved or painted or cushioned uniquely. Beyond the table, human figures skate and scurry, moving plates and ladles and wineglasses from cupboard to counter to sideboard.  Four children--two young boys, a long-legged girl with hair the color of newly-ripened wheat, a cherubic toddler--dart amongst the working adults. 

      A slender, middle-aged woman sits at one end of the table on a padded window seat. Her dark, thinning hair hangs forward from her sloping body, shadowing her face. Her fingers and wrists are burdened with heavy silver rings and bracelets that are sculpted lavishly with Celtic designs. With avid fingers, the woman plucks a cracker from a carton, spreads a cheesy, greenish mixture onto it, and then, sweeping her hair over her shoulder, she places the cracker carefully in her mouth. She chews and pauses, chews again and nods to a tall, younger woman standing at her side. The younger woman, whose darker-wheat hair declares her the mother of the leggy girl, smiles and scoops the rest of the greenish mixture onto the plate.

      By pressing a cheek against the cold glass of the French door, the woman outside can see, at the far end of the dining room, a massive cast-iron stove with porcelain fittings. It stands, like some ancient pagan altar, on a raised tile platform. A young acolyte hefts a covered kettle from one burner of the stove to another, dexterously switching hands and rearranging a steaming teapot and a metal dishpan full of potatoes. Taking up a sinuously-pronged utensil, he pounds and thrashes the vegetables into foam, pausing only to add generous dollops of cream and salted butter. Steam rises from the frothing pan and clouds the pane of glass through which the woman looks.