Hello friends! Today's story is part three in our series, A Stronger Town, written by Amanda Patchin. This series explores various patterns and characteristics of Boise that make it a vibrant & beautiful city, and considers how those patterns might be expanded and improved.

​Part one explored Boise's promenades and mused on how 8th Street could be expanded and other neighborhoods could benefit from small shops & restaurants, like 13th Street in the North End.

​Part two was about the countryside, and how open, cared for, natural spaces are crucial to humans' well being.

Today's story is part three and explores high places. What are Boise's high places and what drives our human instinct to climb up to a high place & survey our surroundings? Enjoy!

In 1998, I left Boise on a small plane, traveling with my grandmother. We flew to Salt Lake City and from there we took the train all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska where we were picked up by a second cousin (once removed) to visit the old family homestead. For two weeks we drove around the southern stretch of that state staying in old farmhouses, looking at old photographs, and stopping by old schoolhouses where some of my great aunts had taught children to read and cipher.

Other than the difficulty of sleeping in the same room as a beloved, but snoring 70-something grandmother, it was an enjoyable trip. I had never flown before, never been on a train, and certainly never been so far East (for a girl from Idaho, yes, Nebraska counts as back East!). Over the first few days I had a growing sense of unease. I couldn’t shake it but I also couldn’t identify it. Was it the humidity in the air? The strong scent wafting up from the pig pen? Was it the strange way these elderly cousins seemed so removed from modern life, oblivious to the existence of Starbucks, fashion, or the fact that there were new movies?

On the fourth day, I realized what the trouble was. It was none of these, not a cultural difference but a geographical one. It was that the landscape was entirely devoid of mountains.

Everywhere I looked the land sloped one way or another, but it never rose more than a few dozen feet on any slope. The sense of unease was a kind of nakedness, exposure. I had never been, and certainly had never lived in a place where you could not see mountains. Driving up the road to the “top of the rise” only gained a hazy view of rolling land in all directions. It seemed unbelievable to me that people would willingly settle and live in such a place.

Without a mountain to navigate by, look to, or go up, how could someone orient themselves? Not just for navigation, but for gaining a view around, or for a place to go and sit and think, mountains seemed to me to be necessary.

When I first read about Prairie Madness, it seemed obvious to me that it was the very mountainlessness of the prairie that drove people mad. It wasn’t just the wind or the lack of society; it was the absence of an eminence from which to look around, a place to go if for a bit of a picnic, that drove settlers crazy. And so, Nebraska taught me to love my hometown and my home state.

Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language has given me further justification for my preference for the mountains. Of course, it would be absurd to insist that every community needs mountains, geography being a little less flexible than town planners might wish, and yet, the desire for a “high place” does not belong to me alone.

Alexander writes, “The instinct to climb up to some high place, from which you can look down and survey your world seems to be a fundamental human instinct."

We could easily theorize why, given that our ancestors needed to spot prey for hunting, watch out for invading armies, or just keep an eye out for the weather. But whatever the ancestral roots of this need, it is still easily felt despite the grocery store “providing” our food, the security of our nation, and our comfortable homes and cars that protect us from the weather.

Alexander observes that many, many cultures have high places, and the lack of geographical features simply results in elaborate high constructions. Persia, Turkey, and Italy, not to mention Rio and Athens, all have a high place that people can navigate by and look down from.

It is this double-nature that is most interesting to me. In Nebraska, I was frustrated both by my inability to get “up” somewhere and look over the plains, and by the strangeness of not having a high point to look toward and orient myself by. So accustomed to mountains on the horizon, I felt lost without them! And it is strange in retrospect to realize that much of the plains cannot have a tall building to navigate by because the area is too thinly populated. Certainly in a small city you can find, if not a skyscraper, at least a nine or ten story building. In a smaller town you might be able to find a church steeple or a granary to look toward and navigate by. Perhaps this is why climbing the water tower is such a staple of small town life (at least as it is depicted in film!).

High places offer a sense of perspective, a way to reconsider the problems of life, from a literally new point of view. As physical beings, what we do with our bodies affects our minds and moods in complex and profound ways. Puzzling through something, weighing the significance of options, contemplating a grief or a hope, can be changed, quite dramatically, by physically getting up above the daily routine and looking out over the landscape of our lives.

While we may seek a “high place” alone or with friends, it is important for a city to acknowledge the communal need for such things. High places have historically been associated with a culture’s gods. Churches, ancient temples, and sacred groves, are often either built up to be tall or set on some prominent place. Alexander notes that such perspectives, at the very least, offer both visitors and residents a way of seeing the whole of a place and therefore giving them a sense of the layout of their surroundings. Such an opening of the mind to the larger view seems to be practically useful as well as spiritually enriching. Rather than looking down, with hunched shoulders and narrowed gaze at a map on a phone, we can look up and out and all around from a high place.

The earth itself is not the only possible object of our gaze from a high place. Our sunsets are, of course, legendary. Low humidity and low pollution are the key components of bright, saturated sunrise/set color. At dusk the air is usually a bit drier than at sunrise, although here in the high desert, humidity is never very high. Because eastern Oregon and southern Idaho are so little populated and have so little industry, we have clear and unpolluted air (except for those winter inversions and late summer fire seasons). As the angle of the sun’s rays changes, the sunlight has to travel further through the atmosphere and so the brilliant reds and oranges show as the blues and violets are scattered. The sunset is easy to see from almost anywhere in Boise. Even my home, low and sheltered by the Bench, enjoys the brilliant colors on cold winter afternoons, but from an eminence? The sunsets are overwhelming in the best possible way!

Contemplation, orientation, and beautiful views? What is not to love? Boise has a charming variety of high places to look out across the city from. A summer evening drive (or hike!) will take you to the top of Table Rock, from which you can see the green of the treetops punctuated by all the striking and beautiful buildings. A shorter hike, although it is quite steep, will take you from the Camel’s Back Park to the top of the eponymous hill and the view which stretches away to the south and west is well worth the mild breathlessness. Likewise, a short drive up toward Bogus Basin offers several good views of the valley. Although you can drive the full sixteen miles up, there are many stopping places just a few miles up the road. An early morning coffee offers a great view of the sunrise lighting up the valley and a late evening picnic on a tailgate will be well rewarded.

Blessed by geography, Boise also has a number of buildings that offer perspective as well. The Depot is certainly a beautiful building in its own right, with landscaping and architecture both in harmony, but the height of its tower together with its position on the brink of the Bench make it doubly useful as a high place. If you ever have the opportunity to attend an event there, be sure to go up the tower if it is open.

Of course, the Capitol Dome offers an excellent view of the city, though unfortunately it is not open to the general public for safety reasons. However, even just the stairs of the Capitol offer a slight rise to look back down Eighth Street and contemplate downtown life. Christopher Alexander asserts that there is a “freshness or exhilaration” that comes from exerting yourself on your way up to a high place. He says that even just a few steps will help create the sense of perspective and prominence that you are looking for.

Boise has a few rooftop bars, though we could definitely benefit from more. In downtown Boise, The Reef has a summer seasonal rooftop bar, Barbacoa has a summer seasonal rooftop bar, Zee's Rooftop Cafe has incredible views though it's only open for breakfast & lunch during the week and for events, Residence Inn has a rooftop bar, and in Eagle, Crave Kitchen & Bar brought a new rooftop bar to the area. Coming this summer, Treefort Music Hall will add a rooftop lounge called Hap Hap Lounge.

“High Places” is pattern number 62 in A Pattern Language and it is one of the patterns the authors agree is genuinely universal to human experience. It is, I think, good for us to contemplate this pattern in order both to recognize what we have as a community and to better understand our own desires. Sometimes a restlessness can come over a person rooted in this kind of hunger for perspective. I can sometimes feel a little “trapped” by the network of streets and obligations surrounding me. Something as simple as a short walk or drive, or a visit to a rooftop somewhere, can shift my emotional weather and improve my mood as well as my ability to think and be creative. It is quite wonderful to realize that physically moving myself “up” can emotionally move me "up" as well!

It is wonderful to realize what opportunities we have for wholeness simply available in the physical environment! Sipping a drink, lounging on the Capitol stairs, nibbling on a picnic lunch, or exerting ourselves for a good long hike, we can create opportunities to see the world afresh, to reconsider our own ideas, and to appreciate our community more.

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

Marissa

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This story was written by Amanda Patchin. Amanda has a monthly-ish newsletter where she shares her booklist, selections from her fiction, and updates on what books she has for sale in the Zed Bookshop.

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