The American Spectator

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Special Report

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SALMON IS certainly remote. Missoula, Montana (population 75,000) is 140 miles to the north; Boise, Idaho (population 200,000) is 250 miles to the southwest and over mountain roads. Yet Salmon is a modern town with good schools, a small hospital, Internet and Cable TV service, a good public library, microbrews and fancy coffee.

There is a vibrant downtown economy because -- at just 3,300 people -- it's too small to attract big box stores such as Wal-Mart, but that's good and bad. The river chugs through town, keeping a dozen local river rafting outfitters busy all summer. And packtrip outfitters get tourists on horseback to probe the "Frank Church" on weeklong jaunts. I plan on quite a bit of trailhiking there myself.

I also plan -- to paraphrase Voltaire -- to "cultivate the garden" of my "working retirement." Writing, of course, and doing God-knows-what-else to make a living. After 30 years of wandering around the American West whenever I could, Salmon may be the last stop on the trip, so to speak.

So I bid my Cody friends adieu, with invitations to visit and promises to return yearly over the mountains myself. Small future interregnums from my last hurrah on the River of No Return.

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Oil