A Forgotten Wilderness: Nature's Hidden Relationships in West Central Idaho

Published by Brundage Nature Foundation, Inc., June. 2011
By Matthew Deren
ISBN: 978-1-57864-658-6

One of the surprising aspects of this book is that it describes a region that critically impacts the weather along the Wasatch Front. Little Cottonwood Canyon especially is favored by Winter storms that come in on a Northwest flow. That’s when LCC generally gets the most and best snow. This book describes in good detail why and how this is the case. It describes how the geography of West Central Idaho funnels air masses into the Wasatch Front. It is also very good at describing a beautiful region of Idaho, mainly focused on McCall Idaho.

You will want to focus on the “Geology, Geography, Climate” section where the author discusses ecoregions of the Rockies and the West Central Transition Zone between Pacific and Continental ecoregions. The Convergence of these zones centers over McCall, Idaho. The remainder of the book discusses the four seasons in Western Central Idaho and includes many beautiful photographs. The book will be hard to find. Try your local library or search online.

“Idaho author Matthew Deren discovered a hidden niche from the ground up in West Central Idaho as he researched a book about nature’s hidden relationships in the temperate forests between McCall and Riggins.

”I noticed a convergence zone in West Central Idaho that no one had really discovered before,” Deren says. “It’s a point where the south meets the north, the dry meets the wet, and where civilization meets the wild. It’s the largest temperate block of wilderness in North America.”

Deren spent more than two years year-round taking photographs of nature, birds and wildlife in this convergence zone, and he came up with rare photographs of bobcats, mountain lions, wolves and black bears by backpacking into the most remote country he could find and setting up 4 sets of dual motion-triggered remote cameras.

The product of Deren’s work is “A Forgotten Wilderness: Nature’s Hidden Relationships in West Central Idaho,” a 176-page full-color book that teaches readers all about nature. The book is published by the Brundage Mountain Nature Foundation, a new non-profit group launched by Brundage owner Judd DeBoer.”

About the author: Matthew Deren has a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Virginia. He has worked in the environmental fields of education, research, engineering and sustainable construction for the last 15 years. He is currently the Vice President of Sales at Simply LEDs , a leading US manufacturer of Energy Efficient Lighting Systems. This is his first book.