Menan Buttes: Lasting Treasures

As you pass over the Snake River Bridge which divides Madison County from Jefferson County, you can see to the west the Menan Buttes, two ancient volcanoes sticking right up in the middle of prime farming country.

As a kid growing up in Menan, I remember my dad telling me stories about the Buttes. One told an outlaw who robbed the Menan bank and hid loot somewhere on one of the Buttes. People came from around the country and tried to find the money, but all they found were jackrabbits, acres and acres of sagebrush full of ticks, and a few rattlesnakes–certainly not the riches they were seeking.

I never found the robbers’s buried riches either, but I discovered a more lasting treasure. A friend and I were tired of taking dates to the movies, so we decided to try something different–a hike up to the north butte in the dark without flashlights. We called a couple of girls (I won’t mention their names, but you know who you are) and told them we had a spectacular date all planned for them. All they had to bring were some hiking shoes and warm coats.

We picked them up, drove down the Substation Road across the Snake River, and headed down the bumpy road to the Menan Buttes. After we dodged “washboards” for about a mile, we four-wheeled it halfway up the north butte and stopped. We made sure the parking brake was one, and I stuffed a huge lava rock in front of each tire. I didn’t want to walk back home and have to tell my dad about a smashed vehicle.

Although the moon beamed down like a searchlight, the girls wanted to know if we had brought flashlights. Of course, we had, but we told them we were going to climb up the north butte using the moon’s rays as our lantern and drink the hot chocolate we had brought in a giant thermos.

It took us about half an hour to reach the top. We walked around the rim to Red Rock and sat down. What a view! Luckily, the wind wasn’t blowing as hard as my dad said it would. The stars sat so low it seemed we could reach out and touch them.
While we talked and laughed about walking though the dark and drinking hot chocolate from half-smashed cups, we surveyed the valley.

Rexburg looked like a giant runway of lights. Menan’s lights twinkled in a dozen spots in the valley. All around us farm lights shimmered in the darkness like tiny fireflies. Even the lights of Rigby and Idaho Falls to south lighted up the sky.
Just across the river, Gunderson’s dogs yipped, and their Holstein cows mooed. A cock pheasant called out from somewhere down by Miller’s slough.

Soon it was quiet. Our laughter and lightness had dissipated somewhere, and we talked about ourselves and the problems we probably would be facing.

I was ironic that on top of Red Rock overlooking our little world and sipping hot chocolate, we matured, while the wind stirred up bits of red dust and carried them down into the crater.

As we climbed down, we felt a new sense of who we were--or at least I did. We had seen our little world, even though it only spread at that time from Rexburg to Idaho Falls. But we were part of it.

Although it had been thousands of years since the Menan Buttes had spewed their last river of smothering lava, that night they came alive for us for about an hour or so. Instead of suffocating ash, they sprinkled us with a new vision, so we could see beyond to the next horizon.

Now, as I pass by the Buttes, I feel that meandering Snake River somehow feeds them through an underground tunnel, keeping their roots alive, so the old volcanoes can sit there, century after century, like giant medicine men, waiting for their followers to gather on their rims and partake of their secrets.

Menan Buttes: Ricks College Legacy

The following essay recently won the the Ricks College/Brigham Young University Alumni "Legacy" Writing contest. Enjoy!
Darrel L. Hammon

When students return from BYU-Idaho, I ask them a simple question: “During your stay at BYU-Idaho, did you climb the stoic Menan Buttes?” For the most part, they say no and have a puzzled look on their faces as if to say, “Menan Buttes? What are those?” From my perspective, this is where the spirit of Ricks College/BYU-Idaho emerged for me.

Growing up in the shadows of the Menan Buttes in Menan, Idaho, we did a fair amount of hiking the Buttes, first as children with my parents on Easter weekend and later with friends, fellow Boy Scouts, and my 9th grade class led by Charles Henry, the venerable science teacher at Midway Junior High School. When we arrived at the magical dating age and then post-mission, we took our dates to the Buttes, usually on a full-moon night, flash lights in hand, and hiked to Red Rock on the North Butte. There we sat side by side or back to back, stared down into the valley below and listened to cock pheasants crow and the Black Angus cows on Miller’s place beller. From the top, we could see all the way to Rexburg, yes, even to the “college on the hill.”

It was on this butte, an old volcano, now dormant for thousands of years, where I contemplated life, contemplated what I needed to do, what college I should attend, how I was going to serve a mission, how to get along with my family, and what I generally was going to do with my life. When I sat on the red rock that we fondly called Table Rock or Red Rock, staring into the ancient crater or around the Snake River Valley, I saw beyond the mundane, beyond my own self. Perhaps, it was a place where quietness reigned supreme, despite the wind jostling the cedars, the barking coyotes, the quiet rustling of jack rabbits and mice, and sometimes tractors trudging down dirt roads or through potato fields just below us.

When I returned to BYU-Idaho much later when my daughters attended Especially for Youth, I stood on the new plaza, just south of the Manwaring Center, amazed at the number of students sauntering to and from the new buildings to the north, amazed at the changes, amazed at the new gifts the students received by merely walking the hallowed halls of that great campus. I wondered, though, if they had been to the Buttes, contemplated their lives, wondered about what they were about.

The spirit of Ricks is always seeing afar off and understanding—finally—our roles in both the “small picture” and the “big picture.” At Ricks, it was much like sitting on Red Rock and seeing eastern Idaho, our little world, for the first time or climbing down into the volcano, seeing ragged outcroppings of rock or sagebrush. In class or in devotionals, we learned about the whole person, who you were, what you were about, why you were you, and what you needed to do to become better.

During one class period, we learned about biology and life from Brother Speth; the next period, Brother Stubbs helped us find our way through the Book of Mormon and its many machinations; then the next class, we played playing basketball on “big boys’ court” in the Hart Gymnasium; and to top it off, on Tuesdays, we listened to the servants of God, like President Kimball, who shared with us their lives, their spiritual experiences, their renditions of their own Menan Buttes and understanding themselves for the first time.

Where else can you learn about both academics and yourself, except at Ricks College, now BYU-Idaho? Much like the Menan Buttes, poking out of the good farming country, BYU-Idaho sits on the opposite hill across the great valley and the mighty Snake River, reveling in beauty, academic prowess, and spiritual enlightenment. Is it no wonder that President Hinckley chose “the hill” on which to build a temple of God?

I suspect that if I were to sit on the top of Red Rock today, I would be able to see the expanded lights on the campus and the soft glow of the Rexburg Idaho Temple, feel of its spirit, understand who I was then and what I have become, and hear the gentle, wise voice of the old volcano, whispering across the valley to the temple: “It is your turn to help the young to see afar off” and then retreat to take its ancient place where it had been for thousands of years—overlooking “the college on the hill,” watching another legacy to grow.