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Home My Public Portal AboutWisner, Frances Zaunmiller:j t Q L .Q/J YYt GL v, Tim Woodward Wilderness tribute for Idaho loner Eight years after her death, an unforgettable Idaho char- acter is back in the news. "Free Press Frances" is be- ing honored twice this month. She is one of 12 Idahoans pro- filed in Cort Conley's new book, "Idaho Loners," and on June 25 a bridge in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness will be dedicated in her memory. Frances would have liked that. Without her, there wouldn't have been a bridge. Unforgettable No one who met Frances Zaunmiller Wisner forgot her. A Texan by birth, she came to Idaho in search of mountains, stayed a lifetime and became a legend. To repeated offers to appear on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," she said she was simply too busy. I met her in the late '70s, af- ter writing to request an in- terview. A friend suggested bribing her by offering to bring a carton of her favorite chewing gum. Frances wrote ' back to say she didn't chew gum — she smoked Luckies — but to come anyway. There were three ways of reaching her cabin at Camp- bell's Ferry. You could hike, float, or take the mail plane. I took the plane and died twice, once when the pilot began to relive his past crashes and again when we fell from the sky to the landing strip, which might as well have been a ledge in the Himala- yas. Frances was waiting when we arrived. I'd imagined a mountain woman in jeans and a flannel shirt, a soggy Lucky hanging from her lower lip. It was hard to believe that the lady in the frilly blouse and matching bonnet had shot eight bears in her front yard. Later, I learned that she had led the effort to bring mail service to the backcoun- try. The plane ride that had taken years off my life was the only wilderness air -mail route in the lower 48 states. From her isolated cabin, this unassuming, white- haired woman wielded sur- prising influence. In the early '60s, she used her column in the Idaho County Free Press to condemn the statewide practice of shooting big game from the air. The state re- sponded by outlawing it. Her cabin seemed to be held up by books. I asked whether she had read them all. "No," she replied. "There are certain people concerned with saving my soul, and they send me religious books. I've read all but those." She was one of the rare few who live exactly as they want. All the religion she needed was to be found in her mountains. "Trees are not planted in the primitive area," she once wrote. "Yet they grow, even the tiny little one, so small you'd think something would step on it and it would be crushed. But it has a tough- ness not dreamed of in nurs- ery rows and it will grow, each year lighting candles to the spring. The day will come when it will be a monarch of the mountains ... (It) asks for little, until a summer storm comes and it bows its head to pray, even as you and I." Shared wilderness The words, packed out by mule and printed in the Con- gressional Record, were part of her successful campaign to have a pack bridge built over the Salmon River. Long be- fore the back -to -nature move- ment, she wanted others to experience the wonders of "her" wilderness. When the bridge was fin- ished, in 1956, she called it "the most beautiful bridge in the world." Soon, by government edict, it will be hers. The bridge over her river, to her mountains. As tributes go, it's perfect. 3/3/9� Tim Woodward Loners are last of a breed It was inevitable that someone would write a book about Frances Zaunmiller Wisner. She used to say that her home in the wilderness was held up by books, and she herself was the embodiment of "a book in the making." An Arizona writer, Carol Furey-Werhan, is the first with more than a chapter about Wisner, who embodied the phrase "Idaho original." The book, "Haven in the Wilderness," should be available at The Book Shop this week. Unforgettable Its subject was like no one else, one of those unforgettable characters who live life precisely on their own terms. She left indelible impressions, both in person and in the column she wrote for 40 years for The Idaho County Free Press. It gave her a nickname, "Free Press Frances." I met her in 1979 on the mountain landing strip outside her home at Campbell's Ferry, in the Frank Church -River of No Return Wilderness. A friend suggested priming the pump for an interview by offering to bring her a carton of Doublemint. "I don't chew Doublemint," she wrote back. "I smoke Luckies. But you can come anyway." Expecting a rough mountain type in grimy jeans, I was surprised to find an almost dainty -looking woman waiting beside the runway. She was wearing a blue, floor -length skirt; a red, ruffled blouse and a red bonnet, trimmed with lace. Born Lydia Coyle, she went by her middle name and those of her last two husbands. She outlived three. A Texan by birth, she wasn't at home in the flatlands. Her dream was to live in the mountains. After her first marriage, she quit her job as a telephone operator and worked her way west. When she reached the Salmon River country, she knew she was home. "I never tire of it," she said of her home by the river. "... I see something new every day. Every time you look at it, you see something different." She married Joe Zaunmiller, a packer and guide, after convincing him her cooking was as good as he'd ever need. They had 20 years together. Her third husband, Vern Wisner, died in 1974. She spent her remaining years alone, in a cabin brimming with books and sporting a National Rifle Association sticker on the front door. "Sometimes I get lonely for a particular person," she said of her solitary lifestyle, "but I've only gotten lonely once for people in general. When that happened, I thought about how I'd feel if the person I least wanted to see walked through my door. I haven't been lonely for people in general since." She stayed in contact with people through her weekly column. Writing about nature, she was almost poetic. Committed to a cause, she was relentless. Her words got a bridge built over the river. In 1994, eight years after her death, it was renamed for her. Memories Once people like Frances were part of the fabric of Idaho, the original Idaho characters. Now Free Press Frances, Buckskin Bill, Sunrise and others are the stuff of books and memories. We're down to two. Dugout Dick still lives in a cave; solitary Helena Schmidt still tends her garden at Starveout Creek. But they belong to a bygone era. Who will take their place? And what kind of place will Idaho be without them? Tim Woodward's column appears Sundays. Comments: 377-6409.