After settling in at the motel for several days, we began to make forays into the local community of Dennis's friends.

The first people I remember meeting were Randy and Vicky Weaver. One thing I noticed right away about Idaho was that peole tended to drop their last names. Even children weren't much expected to call adults by "Mr and Mrs Smith". Instead, you were to call them "Bill and Barb". North Idaho was quite a bit more casual socially than other places we'd been. We drove up an alarmingly narrow winding dirt road that looked as if we were in grave danger of falling off the edge and down the side of the mountain. The road was awfully muddy and rutted, unlike any road I'd ever been on before. I would soon learn that the road was fairly unremarkable, and that the correct term for "spring" in north Idaho was "mud season". After what seemed like half an hour, we crested a hill and saw a small cabin.

Mom introduced us. Vicky Weaver had long dark hair falling to her waist and wore a denim skirt. She was tall and thin, quiet and thoughtful. Randy had a beard, and he wasn't a big man. He and Dennis talked quite a bit, and he took Dennis around the place to show what he'd made since they'd last seen one another. There were three children: Sarah, Rachel, and Samuel. The girls had long brown hair and denim skirts like their mom. Sam was dressed quite a bit like Mike- jeans and a flannel shirt. All the children were extremely composed and well behaved. At first they thought I was a boy, due to my short spiked hair and blue jeans (I was so chagrined by this that I vowed to grow my hair out again as sson as possible), and I have to say that our behavior must have been rather alarming to them. They all seemed much more mature, even though I was older than Sarah, the eldest. She acted like a grown woman. She already held a job as a waitress in the restaurant at Deep Creek, and rode a large speckled gray horse -bareback, in her denim skirt- to get there. She spoke very calmly and seemed unflappable. She wore a pistol on the belt around the waist of her skirt. We learned that this was because there were bears and other predators in the area that they might need to defend themselves from. She knew how to use it, and judging her demeanor, was no doubt very responsible with it. We were green with envy and disbelief...a gun! A job! Riding a horse all that way, alone and bareback! And she wasn't even 14 yet!

Mike and Sam were off running around exploring. Sarah continued to give us a tour of the place. They had no bathroom and used an outhouse. They had no refrigerator, using some sort of an ice box or cooler instead. In fact, they didn't have any electricity at all! The sink had a hand pump for a faucet. The house itself was rustic by design, but lovingly decorated with Vicky's hand braided rugs, quilts, and so on. Her favorite color was the same as mine- a deep cobalt blue. She had a stunning set of blue glass dishes. The home was heated with wood. Sarah showed us their bedrooms. The upstairs portion of the cabin was partitioned off with blankets. The parent's bedroom had a regular bed and a small cot. The cot was for when Vicky had her period, because Yahweh didn't want women to have sex during their periods, and there would be less temptation if she slept on the cot.

Sarah educated us as she walked around the place. The children were homeschooled just as we were. I asked her why she kept calling the Lord "Yahweh", because even though I was familiar with the name, I had never heard anyone use it so much, or exclusively as they did. She explained that "lord" and "God" were titles with pagan origins, and that His correct name was Yahweh. "Jesus" was also incorrect, the proper Hebrew name was "Yahshua". The family didn't eat pork, rabbit, or other unclean meats. They observed the 7th day Sabbath and did no work at all on the Sabbath. She liked art, too, but couldn't draw animals, because the scriptures forbade the making of images. Geometrical patterns and quilt designs were safe, though.

In the background, Dennis and Randy talked about the end times approaching. Vicky was telling my mom how she'd given birth to all her children at home, and how each of them had been born on a feast day or high Sabbath (along with the 7th day Sabbaths, they observed the biblical week long feast days, on either end of which is a high Sabbath).

We played Monopoly, and after dinner, we washed the dishes with water heated on the wood stove. Kerosene lamps cast a cozy golden glow over the cabin. As we left our newfound friends (with much waving and hoping to see one another again sometime soon) the awareness was bright in us, that we had seen a new window on life, that we were favorably inspired to live as they did. They were real country people, and we wanted to be like them.