with Scott Marchant

Join local guidebook author, Scott Marchant, for a presentation and slideshow highlighting his newest release—The Hiker’s Guide Sun Valley & Ketchum. Discover the spectacular wildflower blooms in the Smoky Mountains, the majestic peaks and canyons in the Boulder Mountains, or the old-growth forests and alpine lakes of the Pioneer Mountains. Scott will discuss day hikes and backpacks including best hikes for wildflower blooms, solitude, views, and hikes to experience with the family.

Register to save your seat. This program will also be livestreamed on the Library’s Vimeo and available to watch later. Click here to watch online.

Books will be available for sale and a signing with Scott will follow his presentation.

Scott Marchant is a Boise-based hiking guidebook author and landscape photographer. He has been trekking through the woods and desert of Idaho for over twenty years. He has published seven Idaho hiking guidebooks, in addition to an annual wilderness calendar, Idaho greeting cards and other products. On Saturdays, look for Scott’s booth at the Capital City Public Market in downtown Boise. To see his work, visit www.hikingidaho.com.

Join us for a “Toast to Summer” at J. McLaughlin in Sun Valley with sips and shopping. 

Friday, July 1, noon-4pm.

15% of sales benefit The Community Library.

J. McLaughlin offers a “collection of women`s and men`s clothing and accessories reflects their casual, classic style peppered with a dose of wit.”

More about J. McLaughlin here.

with Patagonia’s Wader Repair Team

Thursday, June 23

Donaldson Robb Family Lawn

Join the Patagonia Fish Team for a wader repair tutorial and testing clinic on the Library’s lawn. Drop in between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to water test and learn how to repair your own waders. 

Patagonia will have on site an outdoor wader testing station where you can test your waders for leaks, ask questions, and participate in hands-on learning. The Worn Wear team will also share information on how to do repairs at home or in the field.

The Wood River Land Trust will also be on hand to answer questions about the Big Wood River, and to share how you can get involved in taking care of our river.

All ages are welcome!

This event is in conjunction with the evening program, Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession, and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman with Dylan Tomine and Frances Ashforth.

with Dylan Tomine and Frances Ashforth

When it comes to books about fishing, few authors capture the all-out obsession with equal parts honesty, humor and sobering dose of reality as well as Dylan Tomine in his memoir, Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession, and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman (Patagonia 2022).

Including two decades of Tomine’s writings, Headwaters chronicles his journey to wild fish conservation. Thirty-five personal stories appear in (mostly) chronological order,  opening with a portrait of a young boy who is all too busy trying to catch steelhead to bother with baseball cards or girls. Tomine later became a self-proclaimed fish bum, working as a guide and fishing as often as possible around his home waters near Seattle. But in 2001, a wake-up call — the Spring closure of his beloved Skykomish River due a sharply declining salmon population — would change the course of his life from obsessed, couchsurfing angler to one keenly focused on the conservation of the fish and rivers that have shaped his life.

The book follows Tomine and his evolving priorities as an angler as he searches for fish and adventure in the far reaches of the planet: Christmas Island, the Russian Arctic, Argentine Patagonia, Japan, Cuba and British Columbia. In stories set closer to home, he wades deeper into his favorite steelhead rivers of the Pacific Northwest and the politics of saving them. With plenty of laughs along the way, Tomine celebrates the joy and pain of exploration, fatherhood and the comforts of home waters from a vantage point well off the beaten path.

The stories are accompanied by artist Frances Ashforth’s illustrations, which are sprinkled throughout the book. A fellow angler, Ashforth says her stark images share the memory of place and hopes they “strike a chord of deep respect for the raw elegant beauty of the landscapes we all find familiar.”

Tomine and Ashforth will join us for a free, outdoor event on the Library’s Donaldson Robb Family Lawn on 4th Street. (In the case of inclement weather, this event will move indoors to the Library’s Lecture Hall.) The conversation will be moderated by Jim Norton, a board member of the Idaho Conservation League.

Join us earlier in the day also for a wader testing and repair clinic with the Patagonia Fish Team.

A book signing with Chapter One will follow. Their conversation will also be livestreamed to Vimeo and available to watch live or later. Click here to watch.

No registration is needed to attend in person. Bring your lawn chair or blanket!

with Mary Pat Gunderson 

Each new Supreme Court nomination prompts discussion of how the newly appointed justice will impact the Court. Much is made off the candidate’s political persuasions, but what about the gender of a judge? Does the gender of the judge impact the opinions rendered?  

Retired District Court Judge Mary Pat Gunderson will present her recently published research examining the real possibility of implicit gender bias in judicial opinion writing. In this one-hour presentation she will deconstruct recent Iowa Supreme Court ethics opinions written by an all-male Court wherein the victims were female clients and/or an intimate partner of the male attorney/abuser. Not only do the case results themselves raise questions, but the language those results are wrapped in may be even more revealing. The subject matter of this presentation will contain brief descriptions of physical and sexual abuse.

Register to save your seat. This program will be livestreamed on the Library’s Vimeo, but it will not be recorded for later viewing. Click here to join us live.

How Seafloor Sediments Became Mountainous Land – with Paul Link

There was a time in the geologic past when Washington and Oregon didn’t exist and an ocean flooded inland across Idaho. Many of the rocks that make up the Boulder, Pioneer, Smoky, and White Cloud Mountains were formed in this oceanic setting.

Join Dr. Paul Link of Idaho State University for a morning lecture and afternoon roadside field trip where you’ll learn the remarkable story of how this ocean formed and how rock that amassed below sea level became the highly elevated land that surrounds us today. The field trip will follow Trail Creek Road to Trail Creek Summit and continue 7 miles beyond the summit to the North Fork of the Big Lost River.

This full-day class is limited to 20 students. Pre-registration is required. The one-hour lecture begins at 10:30 a.m. in the Library’s Lecture Hall, then the group will eat lunch before heading into the field. Bring your own lunch, snacks, water, and a car (carpooling for the afternoon is encouraged!), and lots of curiosity. The group will return to Ketchum no later than 6:00 p.m.

All attendees are responsible for their own safety during the field portion of this class. The field portion involves riding in a car with yourself or others, stopping at points of interest, and some light walking. 

Paul’s presentation will also be recorded for later viewing through the Library’s Program Archive.

Paul K. Link is Professor Emeritus in the Idaho State University Geology Department. He started in 1980 and retired in 2020. He has a B.S. from Yale, and graduate degrees from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was ISU Geolology Department Chair from 1986 to 1992. Before coming to ISU he was a Mountaineering Instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Lander, Wyoming. In the 1980s he and about 15 Masters Students worked U.S. Geological Survey field geology projects in the Ketchum area. For 15 years he directed the ISU Geology Field Camp at the Lost River Field Station north of Mackay, Idaho. He supervised over 100 M.S. students. He is co-author of the 2012 Idaho State Geologic Map, the book Rocks, Rails, and Trails, and the 2021 2nd edition of the Roadside Geology of Idaho

Space is limited. Registration is required.

Register here.