God's answer grew clearer to us by the day. The sight of Dennis and my mom kneeling beside their bed praying fervently became almost as frequent as their hints and comments about a place i'd never seen, thought of, or been to before: Idaho. Idaho was like Lake Tahoe before it was discovered (what was Lake Tahoe? I didn't know. Someplace nice, apparently). Idaho was a wilderness with bears and cougars and elk and moose and deer running wild everywhere, with wolves and coyotes and caribou and mountain goats and bighorn sheep and real eagles flying in the sky, not in a cage, like the only eagles I'd ever seen before at a zoo. There were Canada geese, wild ducks, grouse...and according to my mom and Dennis, many of these animals were edible, which was a revelation to me.

"Deer meat? Gross! I'm never going to eat deer meat!"

My mom laughed easily..."Oh, you'll like it. It's good!"

I made a face, unconvinced.

"In Idaho," she continued, "there are lots of trees!"

"There are lots of trees here", I said.

"Oh, you haven't seen trees like they have in Idaho. There they have forests of trees."

"Well, when I get there, I'm going to run through the trees!" I was getting excited at the thought of a raw, untamed wilderness to explore.

My mom started laughing hysterically and saying that I could never run in the trees there, they were too thick. My pride hurt, I silently vowed that I would.

She told us about here friends up there that they'd met in the Idaho panhandle. Randy and Vicky Weaver were so neat! They lived on top of a mountain and were true country folks. They homeschooled their kids, too. We'd like them a lot. Bonnie and Lowell had horses and a big farm, Dennis had known them for years, and Renee had lived with them for a time. John and Jan, the pastor and his wife, truly good people... Idaho sounded like a wholesome, exciting place to be. There was a definite Little House on the Prairie aura to the whole thing.

She watched a movie about the Wilderness family or some thing, with people who crash land in Alaska and make friends with the grizzly bears, and said that Idaho was like that. Dennis talked a lot about Alaska, too. Idaho was great, but maybe Alaska.....

Somehow, moving to Idaho had imperceptibly gone from being a fantasy to a sure thing. The Lord was leading us to move there.