The autumn color is stunning this year in Idaho, and after two-plus months of looking at the landscape through a shroud of forest fire smoke, it is especially welcome. These are from a recent shoot in the Sun Valley area.

Weiser Fiddle Festival

The Weiser Fiddle Festival officially begins the third week of June, but for a lot of musicians the festivities begin a week earlier in an adjacent plot of dry, scrubby land known as Stickerville. It is here where musicians return each year to set up camp beneath the thorny black locust trees and play music until the wee hours of the morning. By the time the official festival reaches its peak, Stickerville is largely empty, and will remain so until next year.

Muzzie Braun, Where Music Lives

For the past 36 years Muzzie Braun has lived along Slate Creek in the White Cloud Mountains of central  Idaho, where  wolves, mountain lions and bears outnumber people by a wide margin. Despite – or perhaps because of – its extreme isolation,  Braun has created a  musical life that extends far beyond his mountain home. He tried his hand at Nashville, but says, “either I didn’t get them or they didn’t get me.” But his father was a musician, “so I knew it could be done.” In the 70s and 80s he performed with his brothers Gary and Billy as the Braun Brothers. He created  a band with his four sons, Muzzie and the Boys, which played  on the Late Show with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno.  And he has recorded a dozen albums. Muzzie organizes and plays the annual Braun Brothers Reunion, a 3-day music festival in Challis, Idaho, which headlines national recording artists, including Reckless Kelly, fronted by two of his sons. “We were lucky enough to find a special place where we could raise our family, I could write my music and conduct business from the comfort of our home.”

More images from the series "Where Music Lives" can be viewed at my website under Projects.

Jaguar and Turtle Tracks -- It's a Jungle Out There

Along the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica rare and critically endangered leatherback turtles are coming ashore at night to lay their eggs in the sand. Jaguars patrol the beaches hunting them, able to flip the 350 pound turtles on their side and then rip them apart with their claws. We came across these hours-hold turtle and jaguar tracks early in the morning. The jaguar was late too -- the turtle had gone back to sea.

Boulder Mountain Tour

Elite men race through Prairie Creek 20  minutes into the 32-kilometer Boulder Mountain Tour race, Saturday, Feb. 5.

Snow!

Welcome back winter.

Waiting for 'da snow

Never has a snowstorm been so anxiously awaited as this week in Boise, with Bogus Basin Ski Resort still barren and closed in mid-January, the worst snowpack in its 69-year history.  Up in Sun Valley they've been skiing since Thanksgiving, making snow on Baldy and maintaining what they do have quite well on the nordic trails north of town. We skied the 32-kilometer Boulder Mountain Tour trail Saturday and returned the next day to ski around Galena Lodge. Hey!--are those storm clouds on the horizon?

League of Extraordinary GentleWomen (& Men)

Each year the Jones clan, of which I am a member by virtue of my sweetie being the eldest of 5 Jones sisters, gathers for a post-Christmas Christmas, usually in the Ozarks of central Missouri. They are individually remarkable people -- Paul the Methodist theologian turned Trappist monk and prolific author; the twins Suzanne and Elise, both environmental leaders  and now becoming political leaders in addition; Wendy, a bilingual educator who emerged from recent cancer treatment with a sense of equanimity and gratitude for life; Amy, a gifted calligrapher and artist who also has a pretty sharp left brain too; and of course Katherine, a photojournalist, columnist and printmaker. Then there's the nephews and significant others, like Karl the rocket scientist. A pretty diverse lot, but what they share in common is a focus on living intentionally, something that is reinforced at these annual gatherings through family rituals and ceremonies. This group portrait was made at the end of the last gathering.