Book’s A Gem Of A Work Painstaking Effort Captures State’s Regions In Words, Pictures

They tramped through Idaho’s forests in search of waterfalls, biked across Idaho’s ridges, floated down its rivers, skied through its back country, camped in its wilderness.

Writer Steve Stuebner and photographer Mark Lisk explored caves, hiked through sand dunes, watched the light on farm fields. They boated on sparkling lakes and sat atop high mountains waiting for just the right moment, just the right light.

The result: “Idaho Impressions,” a colorful new coffee table book. Two years in the making, the book profiles the seven regions of Idaho, both in Lisk’s stunning images and in Stuebner’s prose.

The book, with its hauntingly tranquil scenes and its dramatically beautiful ones, leaves a reader with the sense of having just toured the state.

“We hear a lot about the divisions in Idaho and the regionalism, north and south,” said Stuebner, a Boise writer whose work appears regularly in publications such as The New York Times, The Oregonian and High Country News. “I think that’s been said.”

In this book, “It’s more like: This is the way Idaho is.”

Stuebner’s essays about each of the regions draw parallels between the lay of the land, the people who live there and their history. They also put you at the scene with vivid description, share carefully researched historical tales and convey a sense of wonder at the natural beauty.

Lisk’s pictures haven’t been enhanced or altered; the remarkable colors they show are real.

To get them, he and Stuebner used patience. They waited, sometimes for hours or even days, for just the right light. They visited a spot on the spring day where the flowers burst into bloom, or on an icy winter morning at sunrise, or when golden leaves blanketed everything in the fall.

As a result, the book captures not only the regions of the state, but also its seasons.

The two Boiseans are outdoorsy types who enjoy backpacking, back-country skiing, mountain biking and whitewater boating. They drew on all those skills in their work on the book.

Stuebner recalls finding places like Snow Creek Falls southwest of Bonners Ferry near Harrison Peak. Spongy green moss 6 inches deep coated the rocks around a deep-green pool. “Then there was this water misting into it,” he said. “It was just magical.”

On a stretch of windswept sand dunes in southeastern Idaho, Stuebner watched Lisk set up a large camera on a tripod, and then put an attached cloak over his head - which happened to be the same color as the sand that stretched for miles around them.

“It made me feel like we were in Arabia or something,” Stuebner said.

“Only it was really cold,” Lisk added with a laugh. It was February.

The two hitched a ride on a snowcat to the top of Peaked Mountain at Grand Targhee Ski Resort near the Idaho-Wyoming border, on the cat’s last run at 4 p.m. Then they stayed there to photograph the Tetons at sunset, and skied back in the dark.

Some of the photographs in the book are from hard-to-reach vantage points, but others are from more accessible spots people can reach by car.

“There are little pockets of Idaho that not many people see,” said Lisk, who was born and raised in Nampa, Idaho. “Hopefully this book will encourage them to go check ‘em out.”

Stuebner said it’s widely reported that when surrounding states’ boundaries were drawn, Idaho got the leftovers.

“But you think about it,” he said, “I think we got the best stuff.”

Former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus wrote the foreword to the book, focusing on how Idahoans must balance the need to earn a living with the need to preserve what nature has given them.

The book’s photography and commentary articulate Idaho’s heritage, Andrus wrote. “It is my sincere hope that we are up to the challenge of preserving and enhancing it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IMPRESSIONS “Idaho Impressions,” published by Graphic Arts Publishing Co. of Portland, sells for $39.95. It is available in bookstores throughout the region.