The excerpt below was written by PLT’s Executive Director, Craig Utter, to accompany the poetry of CMarie Fuhrman in the book “Writing the Land: Currents”.*
The Huffman Property
The story of PLT begins with a property, the Huffman Property, that helped to establish our organization. In 1991, Dr. Phyllis Huffman M.D., better known as “Phyd,”, entertained the idea of committing her property on Potter Lane to the idea of conservation. In a bequest, Phyd arranged for her property to be gifted to a Land Trust. The property was to be held in perpetuity by such an organization for the purpose of preserving the open space. It would take two more years for Payette Land Trust to gain its charter in 1993. In 1997, she finalized a trust in which PLT would be the beneficiary of her two properties. Phyd passed in 2002 and the Huffman property was transferred, becoming the second property endowed to Payette Land Trust.
The Huffman Pasture resides along Farm to Market Road, an ever-growing area of Valley County, Idaho. The 70-acre field is home to a fantastic collection of erratics. These glacially deposited boulders give testament to the massive power of ice, which carved through the area, creating majestic lakes and sprawling valleys. On warm summer mornings, from the boulder field, a pair of Sandhill Cranes can be heard calling for their young and reminding us of the wild in our own backyard.
The 35-acre Huffman Forest quietly conceals a stretch of Lake Fork creek in a stand of Lodgepole pine and Aspen. While sharing a boundary with the Carefree subdivision to the west, the property’s character transports you to the wilderness. As the herd of fifty elk rise from their beds on a cold crisp fall morning, they agree and say thanks to Phyd. Thanks to her forethought and commitment to conservation, they know this place will remain open and available for all time, even as the world develops around it.
“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free.” Aldo Leopold –Foreword, A Sand County Almanac.
Through the unselfish embodiment of Leopold’s words, Phyd’s commitment to the idea of conservation back in 1991 helped cultivate the organization which would become today’s Payette Land Trust.
*PLT is honored to be featured in Currents, a book from Writing the Land, which includes the work of 11 land trusts and 24 poets who wrote poems inspired by their adopted lands across the country Published by NatureCulture LLC, this creative collaboration features poems by CMarie Fuhrman for the South Fork Ranch and Huffman properties.
Purchase a copy of Currents