The romantic notion of living in the wilderness and running a business with only nature as a neighbor lured me from the civilized wilds of Washington, D.C., to the uncivilized wilds of the Idaho backcountry in 1986. I arrived with love in my heart for unadulterated nature; stars in my eyes for the novelty of living without that obnoxious symbol of civilization, the telephone; and a marketing plan in my mind for a guest ranch business.

I lived that dream for thirteen years with never a change in my heart, but the stars in my eyes disappeared by year ten and the marketing plan in my mind fell apart soon after, all due to the difficulty of communicating with the 'outside' world and the advent of the internet as a vacation search source. It took me some time to realize the importance of communications in the most rural location in the lower 48 states, but by 1991 the importance was clear!

Because we had radio-phone communications to the ranch for only two hours each day all winter (our booking season), I was forced to rent a motel room in Cascade - the closest town about 2 hours away and over two mountain passes - to keep my business alive. There I collected phone messages, returned phone calls, and conducted all the business of the ranch. Three days each week, I donned cumbersome winter gear, climbed on my snowmobile and rode twenty miles to the closest trailhead where we stashed a four-wheel drive SUV. Each day, I shoveled the accumulated feet of snow off the car, stripped off my snowsuit, boots, helmet and gloves, and climbed behind the wheel to drive the remaining ice-covered miles to Cascade. The reverse process often brought me back to the ranch in white-out snowstorms on the summits - a daunting journey for a 51 year old woman who had no knowledge of snowmobile repair and no strength to hoist it out of a ditch should she miss a curve in the trail.

The only solution was the brand new satellite phone which weighed about 20 pounds, was ultra-touchy in its connection with its satellite, and cost a fortune to buy and even more to use. In 1992, we spent over $20,000 for the phone and the calls coming and going - darn few of the latter, I might add. As you can imagine, the year-end bottom line looked pretty grim in 1992. We had heard that Midvale Telephone Exchange was working with the Forest Service to bring fiber optic cable to our remote valley on the very edge of the largest Wilderness area in the Lower 48, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. My letters, satellite phone calls, radio-phone calls and Midvale's persistence finally brought the line to Wapiti's front door, just in time for the boom in internet use for vacation planning.

They asked 'How many lines do you want?' and we said, 'As many as you can supply.' Since then we have been hooked up to the world with five phone lines - one for the computer, one for the fax, one for the phone for guests and staff, one for our business phone, and one for the Idaho Fish and Game computer, so we can provide our guests with State fishing licenses right here at the ranch. Now we are about to be hooked up to high-speed internet access. Our business went from languishing to liquid - a survival story in the wilderness thanks to Midvale Telephone Exchange and the Universal Service Program. No marketing scheme in my mind, no stars in my eyes, no love in my heart could have affected the success of my business the way being connected by telephone did.

To learn more about the Wapiti Meadow Ranch, visit www.wapitimeadowranch.com