Is Mountain Home a Good Place to Live?

I saw this question in a recent Google search. Is Mountain Home a good place to live? Clicking the pull-down menu, I found this answer: “It is a great area for someone to work on their schooling. There isn’t too much going on…”

I laughed. While living in Mountain Home, I was one of those individuals who commuted to Boise State to complete my teaching degree. However, for our first five years in the desert, life held higher priorities.

My husband, Randy, and I arrived in 1979 with our daughters. Heather was four, and her sister, Virginia, was two. My spouse had been diagnosed with cancer a year earlier and had been given only three to five years to live. Our move was one of necessity; we lived too far from medical facilities.

I bit back bitter tears at having to be uprooted from our rustic home in the logging town of Pierce, Idaho. My husband, on the other hand, had lived here as a teen playing baseball and being part of the school band. He thought it was the perfect place to live.

With our move, Randy’s cancer was fought aggressively. Our life revolved around his chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In some cases, tumors were also removed surgically. Everything was done to buy him more time. Life was a precious gift, but always uncertain.

My husband was deemed unemployable by the VA; however, with his disability rating, we were informed, I could go back to school on his GI bill. It was a long and difficult journey, but Randy remained my biggest cheerleader as I embarked on what would become a 19-year teaching career at Base Primary and East Elementary.

Many stepped up to offer babysitting as I played the roles of mother, caregiver, student, and then teacher. Even our daughter’s teachers kept us informed of both their emotional well-being and academic progress.

During more stable times, Randy was well enough to play bass guitar on our church’s praise team. Male friends, always mindful of his fragile health, began to take him places, including several hunting trips back to Pierce. His “hunting” consisted of sitting on a tree stump, hoping an elk might come by, but he was delighted to be back in our old stomping grounds.

After our daughters graduated from Mountain Home High School and got married, my husband made an unexpected request that I couldn't refuse.

“We moved to Mountain Home because I was dying,” he told me, “But I’m still alive. I want to live in the mountains again.”

So, we left the desert and moved to Lowman, where we lived ten years before his health issues forced us back to the Treasure Valley. Randy passed away eight years ago – forty years after his initial diagnosis. Fond memories of the support we received here still touch my heart.

I have gone on to become a motivational speaker, encouraging people in difficult life circumstances. I recently documented his cancer journey in a memoir titled "Pines in the Wasteland: A Story of Hope."

Compared to living in the woods, Mountain Home was my emotional wasteland – a place of illness and stress. However, I found I could bloom where I’d been planted. People became the sheltering pines who got me through some of my most difficult days.

I return often to visit this fair city and see that the warm and welcoming community continues to support its residents. I have applied to do an interactive booth at the City of Hope event in September. I want to be part of “What’s Going On” there!