 From
the front porch of his mountain cabin artist Larry Milligan looks
across an open meadow at some of the most spectacular mountain peaks in
North America. The Sawtooth Range, as it's called, rises up from a dark
forest of lodgepole pine to cut a ragged outline against the Idaho
heaven.
On a summer's day there may be cattle grazing in that meadow, or
perhaps a small herd of elk. In winter you're as likely to see coyotes
and eagles and jackrabbits.
The view is much
the same as it was a century or more ago when there were no freeways or
airports or fax machines. Larry can look out and easily imagine Indian
tipis, stagecoaches and cowboys roping calves. Images like these emerge
on his Western art canvasses.
"We came here for the beauty of the place," Larry says looking back on
the move he and his wife, Jody, made from the highways of California to
the wilderness of Idaho in 1969. They gave up well-paying jobs in an
established community for an unsettled territory with few prospects.
The Milligans left behind fast food and indoor plumbing to live like
homesteaders in one of the most primitive corners of the continent.
They taught themselves how to cut timber and build a cabin, and they
learned new ways to make a living or get by on less.
By the time he was 26 years old Larry had his fill of city life and was
determined to return to the country. Raised in rural Idaho and schooled
in electronics, the young man and his high school sweetheart had moved
to the big cities pursuing adventure and opportunity. They found good
jobs and plenty of nightlife, but before long they realized something
was missing.
"We were tired of the traffic and the crime," Larry recalls. "And the
people were very impersonal. We just wanted to come back home."
Beckoned by the Sawtooth Range, the Milligans bought two acres of
undeveloped ground in Sawtooth Valley, erected a couple tents, and
commenced to building themselves a log home. Neighboring ranchers shook
their heads in amazement and figured the newcomers would be gone by
spring. But 25 years later the Milligans are still living their dream
in the cabin where they raised two daughters, Genii and Sarah.
"The only thing that's saved us has been ignorance, because we never knew what we were doing," Larry says with a broad smile.
 With
a chainsaw, an old Chevy half-ton pickup, and a general idea about how
to proceed, Larry and Jody constructed their family home in two
summers. "I had built a small model of the house out of dowels, and I
had determined -- based on an average of 9 inches diameter -- how many
trees I would need of what length," Larry explains.
Armed with his lists of dimensions and Forest Sevice permits, Larry
went out to the nearby forests looking for dead-standing timber of the
right sizes. He brought the trees back to the property in his pickup,
draw-shaved and notched them by hand, and laid them into place one by
one.
The cabin's fireplace was constructed from slabs of slate gathered from
a rockslide and its bathroom, for the first dozen years or so, was an
outhouse. Inside the two-story structure are three bedrooms, a cozy
kitchen, a living room, and a loft studio where Larry does his
painting. The cabinetry and finishings were all crafted by hand using
native materials like deer antlers for drawer handles.
The cabin isn't finished, Larry claims, but it now has indoor plumbing and it's been home for a quarter-century.
"Like a lot of people in the '60s and '70s, we were caught up in
getting back to the land. But the first winter was a rude awakening. It
was much colder and the snow was much deeper than what I expected,"
Larry recalls.
At 6,500 feet elevation, winter often brings 40-below temperatures and
snow drifts six feet high to the Sawtooth Valley. The nearest schools
and groceries are in Stanley, 12 miles away, or Challis, nearly 70
miles. Neighbors are few and far between. Only about a dozen families
were over-wintering in the Sawtooth Valley when the Milligans arrived.
Jobs, too, were scarce. After giving up a career in banking when she
moved back to Idaho, Jody spent the next several years working as a
waitress and clerk. Larry provided day care for their first daughter,
three-year-old Genii, while he worked on the cabin for the first two
years. Then he started painting.
"I came back to Idaho not knowing exactly what I was going to do to
make a living," Larry recalls. "But I always had the idea in the back
of my mind of being an artist. Of course, I didn't know exactly what it
took to be an artist then. Do you paint some pictures, set them outside
the door and the next morning there's $25 in the tin?"
When Larry first discovered his talent for art as a teenager it was the
images of the Old West, inspired by artists like Charlie Russell and
Frederic Remington, that emerged on his canvasses. He tried other
styles and subjects, but he kept coming back to cowboys and Indians.
"If I'd been in Maine, maybe I would have painted lobstermen and stuff," Larry says.
Born not far from Nashville -- in Marysville, Alabama -- the
51-year-old artist grew up on country music and Western styles. Folks
in his family would miss a meal before they'd miss the Grand Ole Opry
on the radio. When they moved to Idaho the songs of Jim Reeves and
Marty Robbins and Patsy Cline went with them on the air waves.
In his Sawtooth Valley studio the lonesome wail of Willie Nelson
lingers in the background as Larry applies the finishing touches to his
latest painting, a portrait of a Piegan Indian warrior. He recalls how
the long winters in this quietly beautiful setting gave him the time
and inspiration to find his metier in the art world. Today he markets
his paintings in more than a dozen galleries and has a long list of
consigned projects to complete.
"My thing is painting out of my imagination as much as possible," he
says. "What I paint is no longer around, so my imagination has to take
over. But, of course, your imagination has to be tempered with a little
bit of common sense and historical accuracy. You have to do your
homework."
A passionate student of western history and Native American cultures,
Larry has gathered a vast collection of Old West books and artifacts.
His studio is littered with Sioux warclubs and tipi bags, Nez Perce
drums and beaded gloves, and the paintings of other Western artists
like Ace Powell, Sheryl Bodily and Ray Dan Sleeping Bear.
His paintings depict the everyday lives of 19th century Westerners,
both Indian and white, at work and at play. "I try to show these people
as human beings who were up against a tough set of circumstances in
terms of terrain, the weather, the climate they lived in and as their
beliefs drove them," he explains.
Like other artists, Larry also pours his own experience onto his
canvasses. His winter scenes are from a hand that has known the threat
of frostbite and his paintings of pioneers are by a man who has felled
trees and laid his own hearth. The Sawtooth Range, his constant
neighbor, often emerges in the background.
As for paintings with settings outside the Sawtooth Valley, Larry says
he may be ruined: "I swear, even when I paint other mountains now they
always have a Sawtooth flavor to them."
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by MichaelHofferber@outriderbooks.com
Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.
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