In the Conant Valley nearer Wyoming, things turned lush and alive. For single ladies, there may be no better place in the US to see beautiful men than Swan Valley, Idaho, on the South Fork of the Snake River. The Snake here is liquid art. Broad and bending, light sage green, it rushes with small white water, and drifts in silvery ripples. Fingers of treed islands and peninsulas cut and divide it, and wader-clad fishermen cast their arcing lines into its flow, lit by a movie set sun.
Swan Valley's population is 260, and it seemed to me a good percentage of that number are fit, gorgeous men, many young, many blond, all quite stupendous. Sit a spell in South Fork Outfitters (where fish-shaped bottles hold the bathroom soap, and a poster above the sink reads, "For Those Who Appreciate the Finer Things in Life, Like Hands That Smell of Fish"). Pick yourself out a fetching paid of hipwaders. But, before you cast your line, for fish or man, you'd better know your way around a driftboat and how to tie a damn good fly, because these boys aren't about looking pretty. They're about serious flyfishing. Looky-loos and dilettantes might earn five polite minutes of their time.
Copyright Lori Hein, 2004. Excerpted from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America
