The Daredevil and the Fisherman

So Spake Mo… Once there was a man who—despite being on record as having broken nearly every bone in his entire body over the course of his illustrious career—managed to secure all the necessary permits from the city of Twin Falls, Idaho to stage a media extravaganza!

Before a crowd of spectators and media, Evel Knievel strapped into his X-1 Skycycle, preparing to make a leap of approximately 1,500 feet…over a 486 foot deep section of the Snake River Canyon.

He made it.

Sort of.

The rocket car’s parachute deployed prematurely, dragging Knievel back over the river, then further still to land on the launch-side riverbank. A few more feet to the north and he wouldn’t have walked away with minor injuries; he would have drowned. His parachute wasn’t the only thing to malfunction. His harness failed to release, trapping him in the Skycycle until help arrived.

Strip away the newsmen and the elaborate machinery.

Bring on the lower-budget daredevils: the fishermen. Approximately a quarter of a mile from the site of Knievel’s jump stands an abandoned platform overlooking those dizzying heights. Feel like dangling a line in the waters of the great Snake River? Grab your gear and your pole and join in your mind’s eye the fishermen of yesteryear as they shimmied down a ladder that hung from this platform in their quest to catch The Big One.

Funny, but the city of Twin Falls, Idaho decided to shut that one down…

So Spake Me…

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Evel (formerly Evil) Knievel was the stuntman rockstar of his day. His Snake River Canyon jump has been called Woodstock with out the mud and rain.

Yes, hard to picture that in Twin Falls, Idaho.

My folks actually saw the jump. They were stopped on the Perrine Bridge that spans the canyon on their way to pick up some peaches. They watched him nearly land; they watched the wind sweep him back into the canyon.

And then there’s me.

Who snaps a picture of the fisherman’s platform as fast as she can and scurries away from the railing before the vertigo can pitch her head over heels into a picturesque death on the rocks…way…down…there.

PS—Did you know the Shoshone Falls (right next to these two historic sites) is taller than Niagra? Oh yeah, it’s WAY down there.

PPS—I, obviously, didn’t take the Knievel picture, having been less than a year old at the time, but I couldn’t find the name of the photographer who did. So, my apologies. On that note, the photo of the Perrine Bridge, a favorite haunt of base jumpers, was taken by my father.

Twin Falls Trolley

So Spake Mo…

Below roared the thunderous waters of the Shoshone Falls like a scale model of the great Niagra filling the space between sheer canyon walls with billows of fine mist.


Such a contrast between the violent beauty of the water, the implied threat of the deeply cut bedrock and that ethereally soft spray… and then came the rainbow that ricocheted from it. A beautiful moment.

As we backed away from the viewing platform, we came to another contrast: the naked heat and drought of the Idaho desert mere feet from so much water. Three generations of us climbed the path up the canyon wall taking refuge from the sun in the occasional shallow cave scraped out by those waters so very long ago.

Absorbed with the vivid colors of the desert, my father and I eventually fell behind the rest of the group near an unnatural arrangement of rocks along the path. That, said my father, was one of two staircases that once led down to a tidy little park with a series of small pools overlooking the falls. He said that in the distant past, the city of Twin Falls had had a trolley running from the county courthouse to this remote spot. Parties with picnic baskets in hand descended these stairs to take their easement while enjoying the natural majesty of the falls.

The park and the stone steps have since returned to nature. But every once in a while as the city of Twin Falls grows and evolves, reminders of the old trolley are found—bits of track unearthed as new roads replace the old, little memories of life as it was.

So Spake Me…

Alright, I know I promised this space would be dedicated to more information regarding the legends from Spectre, but sometimes you just hit tasty gems in places you’ve been a thousand times and you’ve just got to share them.

The Shoshone Falls were on full blast when the family and I journeyed back to Idaho last week and my husband, who had recently been to Niagra, couldn’t believe I’d never taken him to see this before! How do you tell a guy who is looking at this triumph of nature and engineering that the Shoshone Trickle is more what I was accustomed to finding down here.

Of course that is not the only tasty tidbit my parents had to relay, so stay tuned for more…

On the space elevator side, just a quick note: National Geographic recently conned me out $5.71 with promises of an article on space elevators. Nrgh. A picture and puny little paragraph. Repeat after me: Impulse buying is bad. Impulse buying is bad!