Mountains on my Windshield

At the end of a lonely concourse at Nashville International, I ate breakfast. Taken from a distant angle, a lone man in the expansive place might have made an artsy movie shot, but the cameras gracing the terminal were all business. I landed there partly to escape the cell conversations and smart-phone soma which are especially concentrated when waiting for flights. But mostly I wanted to watch the sunrise. After seven days of murky dray beginnings, I got a sunrise brimming with colors worthy of the West. Purple, lavender and magenta layers all opened into thin ribbons between the light blue and the orange.

A sunny day would take a snowy turn in Denver. It took the next plane nearly an hour to leave the ground. Blue skies seemed impossible after watching the ground crew at Denver International douse the wings with de-icing fluid. Not having flown from Denver in inclement weather, I wondered whether it would carry across the mountains.

At least until we landed. For two hours, Gail From Boulder and I discussed everything from the Dushanbe Teahouse to healthcare to why she likes what Tom Tancredo says but not the way he says it. Then, the clouds broke to reveal a landscape of craggy, snow-packed peaks, hundreds of miles of them. A pristine river dug a canyon through them, its wider spots calmly reflecting their majesty.

Yeah, I was back in the landscape I love the most. The worn hills of Middle Tennessee are no match for the monsters of the Mountain West. As Judd at the brewpub put it, you can ski or golf within about 10 miles of each other (I plan on neither).

But I got here, circled the hotel because my room couldn't have been ready, and headed for the Basque block. Basque immigrants from northern Spain have established quite a presence here, with a half-dozen restaurants, a cultural center and a tiny hotel in the middle of downtown. Bar Gernika had the reputation, so rather than settle down with a mixed drink at Bardenay Distillery, I gorged myself on a lamb grinder, sweet potato fries and a glass of tannic tempranillo.

Belly fully of wine and lamb, I took a stroll through the recently renovated State Capitol, perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen. Its marble chambers hardly seemed justified for a part-time legislature, but most state officeholders also work from the building. I could have passed the top lawmakers in those marble corridors. Not being a print journalist anymore, I was more swept away by the marble construction.

(Trivia: Why do several state capitol buildings constructed before the Civil War lack domes? Lots of soldiers who passed through Washington during the Civil War ran for office when they returned home, and capitols constructed further west reflected that design).

After a brief happy hour at the Modern Bar, with its lineup of tapas plates and Mad Men-inspired cocktails, I needed community, and I needed to see the local beer selection. Idaho lacked the brewpub proliferation of Montana, but it held its own. Boise has more brewpubs than Nashville, if you can believe it. Online I found in the Boise Coop, and in line, the Life & Limb brew I hoped for had long since vanished. But the suitcase will again return full, thanks to a Boulevard Saison Brett and Sierra Nevada's 30th Anniversary Stout (and possibly a Stone collaboration if time and space allow).

But the real gem of the visit was Allen, the gentlemen stocking the shelves. You can break down any six-pack for singles in Idaho, and can sell wine but not hard liquor in the grocery store (as good it gets in a Mormon state, he informed me). Then I discovered their wine shop across the street, the largest in the Northwest. When a Rothschild that received 100 points from Parker got released, they had a enough to sell at $900 a bottle. This store positively smoked the one where I work, with an intimidating stockpile of Chateauneuf-du-Papes and staggeringly diverse displays.

Too much alcohol to fit in the suitcase in hand, I decided I needed human contact and fresh brew. After a brief wron turn through a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired neighborhood built into the mountains above Boise, I found the Highland Hollows Brewpub, the least commercial and most inviting of the three brewpubs I visited in Boise. Fate put me next to Judd from Minnesota (but 3 decades in Boise), who filled me in on the places to see around the region. Plus, we talked college basketball and surveyed the legion of upsets that destroyed bracket after bracket. Their ginger wheat was immaculate, their blonde Spoon Tongue ale was light and fruity.

Judd and the bar contingent cleared out, but Dave the bartender told me his tale; he had never traveled east of West Yellowstone (for the uninitiated, that's still pretty far west). His daughter was college age, and he wanted her to pick Montana State over the University of Idaho - as he said, "I'd rather spend parents' weekend in Bozeman than Moscow." Amen.

Following dinner, it was time to crash; I had an early morning drive to undertake if I wanted to hit Washington State wine country on schedule. I hunkered down for one more at the Modern Bar, an Oregon porter I took among the torches lit in their courtyard which a small swimming pool probably occupied for families motoring across the country five decades ago.

Tomorrow: Walla Walla World (I won't be punching any moose, in case you got your hopes up).