Thursday, March 28, 2024
 
Click HERE to sign up to receive Eye On Sun Valley's Daily News Email
 
Sawtooth Society Celebrates Silver Jubilee-Still on a Mission
Loading
   
Monday, August 8, 2022
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Susan Perin looked past the lodgepole fence that surrounded her home in the Sawtooth Mountains to the field of sagebrush and purple mountains majesty beyond.

“This is a place of peace,” she said. “We wake up in the morning and see a herd of pronghorn antelope crossing the flats. That’s followed by elk, wolves and an occasional sandhill crane. In the early summer you have wildflowers sprinkled throughout the land. And there’s all these wonderful people. How fortunate I am to live here in this place I’m standing, and how fortunate we’ve been that this has been preserved.”

Perin and her husband Rueben Perin opened their property near Stanley to 200 people this past week as the Sawtooth Society celebrated its 25th anniversary with a Silver Jubilee Sagebrush Soiree.

The Sawtooth Society was founded in 1997 as a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization by Bethine Church, the widow of the late Sen. Frank Church, and 31 others to help maintain and preserve the 756,000-acre Sawtooth National Recreation Area in the face of dwindling Forest Service budgets.

Society members negotiated an end to what would have been a highly visible 160-acre subdivision that threated the beauty of the area and successfully got Congress to appropriate $17 million to purchase conservation easements. Its members have continued to advocate on behalf of the SNRA, which turns 50 this month, to keep development from spoiling its scenic views and wildlife habitat.

“Bethine said: ‘Take up a cause you believe in and fight the good fight. And when you reach my age in life, you will look back with no regrets,’ ” Kathryn Grohusky, the executive director of the Sawtooth Society, told those attending the gala fundraising dinner.

Those attending the soiree were greeted with Roadbars’ Blueberry Rickey cocktail made with vodka, blueberry syrup and lime juice. The Haven concocted a variety of tasty hors d’oeuvres, including grilled halloumi cheese on a stick, and a melt-in-your mouth Beef Wellington.

Jay and Gretchen Basen of Hailey were attending their first soiree, while Charlotte Unger had been to many.

“We support the wilderness, the beauty that’s all around us and the wilderness that’s so good for the environment,” said Gretchen Basen as she and her husband enjoyed cocktails amidst the sagebrush. “We love the view of the mountains from the Elk Mountain bike trail and decided it was time we demonstrated our support.”

Charlotte Unger recounted numerous memories of time spent in the SNRA, including the time she and Rueben Perin hiked nine miles into Imogene Lake, climbed Imogene Peak and then arrived for the Soiree just as dinner was starting, their clothes sweaty and dusty from their adventure.

Another time, she, the Perins and another friend spent two weeks horsepacking from Grandjean to Atlanta when it snowed the second week and the guide fashioned gaiters out of the horses’ feedbags.

“It’s just such an iconic area, a magical place. I want to do what I can to support it,” said Unger.

“It’s just a beautiful environment, and the higher you get the fewer people you encounter,” added Rueben Perin.

Harvey Dale who lives near Boundary Creek had been coming 30 years from New York before settling near Boundary Creek.

“I love the glory of the mountains. But, also, the heartlessness of Mother Nature,” he said. “It keeps one alert—and that’s a good thing.”

Auction items included a midnight tour of the Idaho Capitol Building, and photographs and paintings of the Sawtooths donated by James Bourret, Thad Gerheim, Broschofsky and Kneeland galleries and others. Far and Away Adventures donated a trip for two on the Bruneau River and the Christensen family’s villa on the Mayan Riviera went for $12,500 twice.

Ann Christensen and her late husband Doug, Helen and Ted Pardo and Bob Hayes were the first to join Bethine Church in founding the Sawtooth Society.

“We discovered the area when Doug led a 10-day ski trip for the Sierra Club here during which we didn’t see the sun until the last day. It’s so beautiful and much of the area is still what it used to be, and we need to keep it that way,” said Christensen.

The Sawtooth Society honored U.S. Congressman Mike Simpson with its inaugural Champion of the Sawtooths Award designed to honor an individual for outstanding work to preserve, protect and enhance the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.

Simpson spent more than a decade championing an act that designated the 116,898-acre Jim McClure-Jerry Peak Wilderness, the 90,769-acre White Clouds Wilderness and the 67,998-acre Hemingway-Boulders Wilderness. The bill passed Congress without a single “no” vote.

Now, said Grohusky, he’s exhibiting the same leadership on the Columbia Basin Initiative designed to help restore the migration of salmon between the Pacific Ocean and their historical breeding grounds near Redfish Lake.

Simpson described how he spent summer vacations at Redfish Lake in the 1960s “when you didn’t need reservations to set up camp.” He recounted trying to climb Mount Heyburn as a 12-year-old and getting up to a place “that was too steep to go up and too steep to go down.”

 Idaho salmon will go extinct if we don’t do something,” he said, and today there are multiple ways to replace the energy that is generated by the dams.

“It takes all of us to do what we can do in for the Sawtooths,” he added.

Monica Church, the granddaughter of Frank and Bethine Church and Cecil and Carol Andrus, agreed that wilderness needs more defenders. She related how she’d gone fly fishing every summer of her childhood, in addition to skiing at Park Creek and mountain biking at Fisher Creek. And that she had seen the area become overused and abused.

Her goat plate features the numbers 72 and 97 for the creation of the SNRA and the Society Society.

“I remember my grandmother’s tenacity looking for support and money on behalf of the area. She was a powerful woman, my role model,” said Church, now the executive director of the Frank Church Institute at Boise State University. “She never stopped believing a goal was impossible. She never stopped asking for your help.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Last year alone a Sawtooth Society trail staff of three cleared 143 miles of trails, removing 918 trees and maintaining 462 water drains with the help of 300 adult and 90 youth volunteers.

The Sawtooth Society recently raised the millionth dollar through the sale of its Goat Plates—license plates granted to benefit the SNRA. That money has funded 230 recreation projects on the SNRA to date.

To learn more, visit https://sawtoothsociety.org

~  Today's Topics ~


Lou Whittaker Leaves Behind a Legacy of Mountaineering and Storytelling

Free Range Poetry Society to Hold Second Gathering Tonight

Easter Bunny to Begin Hopping Friday
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Website problems? Contact:
Michael Hobbs
General Manager /Webmaster
Mike@EyeOnSunValley.com
 
Got a story? Contact:
Karen Bossick
Editor in Chief
(208) 578-2111
Karen@EyeOnSunValley.com
 
 
Advertising /Marketing /Public Relations
Leisa Hollister
Chief Marketing Officer
(208) 450-9993
leisahollister@gmail.com
 
Brandi Huizar
Account Executive
(208) 329-2050
brandi@eyeonsunvalley.com
 
 
ABOUT US
EyeOnSunValley.com is the largest online daily news media service in The Wood River Valley, publishing 7 days a week. Our website publication features current news articles, feature stories, local sports articles and video content articles. The Eye On Sun Valley Show is a weekly primetime television show focusing on highlighted news stories of the week airing Monday-Sunday, COX Channel 13. See our interactive Kiosks around town throughout the Wood River Valley!
 
info@eyeonsunvalley.com      Press Releases only
 
P: 208.720.8212
P.O. Box 1453 Ketchum, ID  83340
LOGIN

© Copyright 2023 Eye on Sun Valley