On June 6, 2023, I had the opportunity to visit the Jump Creek Recreation Site in southern Idaho. This trip was one of the first I have taken in pursuit of filming a Biblically-based nature documentary about the Owyhee Mountains in Idaho.

Owls Off the Bat!

I got to Jump Creek around 8:30am and there were only two or three other people at the recreation site. As soon as I got out of the car, I saw a Burrowing Owl poking its head above the pale brown weeds at the top of a small rise nearby.

After confirming what it was with my pocket camera, I set up my video tripod and camera to get some footage of the two owls that were present. It appeared that one of the adults was flying back and forth from the creek to the nest, each time bringing back what looked like a large Mormon Cricket, and then feeding the meal to an apparent juvenile bird. This juvenile was quite vocal, giving screeches as the other bird was in flight back to the burrow.

I filmed the owls for about an hour before packing up my tripod and driving down to the lower parking lot. When I was last at Jump Creek around 2014, the route to the lower parking lot was just a steep, rutted dirt track. Now, there is a nicely paved concrete ramp that makes ascending and descending much less nerve wracking!

Journey to the Falls

I slung my drone bag over my shoulder, strapped my drone landing pad to my belt, and donned my backpack to go for a short hike to Jump Creek Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls in the Owyhee Mountains.

The sun was beginning to warm up the desert, but as I moved into the shade of the canyon the temperature dropped significantly. I could immediately see why Jump Creek is so popular. Surrounded by deciduous trees and shrubs, the creek is bordered on each side by massive rock cliffs, many of which have been carved and eroded into fantastic shapes and formations. In some areas the trail crossed the gurgling creek beneath a shadowy canopy of green trees. One of these short crossings even had round stepping stones that had been placed in the creek for the benefit of hikers. As I neared the end of the short trail, I could see the falls through a screen formed by the trees bowing over the creek.

Once I emerged from the creek, I could see the falls in its full splendor cascading down the cliffs above the pool. I had to go through a large rock to get to a calm beach on the south side of the falls. Somehow this rock has a nice slit carved in the middle of it that allows a person to walk through it to the other side.

I was able to put my drone up in the air after securing a weak satellite GPS signal. As I slowly ascended and moved into a more open area of the canyon, the GPS signal got stronger and I was able to go a bit higher. I topped out around 60 feet in the air, which was roughly the same height as the waterfall.

The Return Journey

After I got some video and photos of the falls, I packed the drone up and headed out of the canyon. It was around 11am, and there were quite a few families with young children that were making their way to the falls.
As I had made my way to the falls, I had seen a couple of Western Fence Lizards basking on a rock in the warmth of the patchy sunlight. Now there was more light that was reaching into the canyon, since it was an hour or two later. I am also pretty sure I saw several poison ivy plants, which are known to be present in this area. I certainly wasn’t going to touch a plant to confirm its identity!

When I made it back to the lower parking lot, I put my drone in the air once again to capture footage of the entrance to the canyon in both directions—upstream and downstream.

Finally, I landed my drone and headed for home at 12:45pm. The temperature had risen to at least 85°F, and it was quite warm in the late spring sun.

Reflections

After having seen the wondrous rock formations along the Jump Creek canyon, I am reminded of how they likely formed during the global flood of Noah’s time. It certainly would have taken an immense amount of water to carve out the Jump Creek canyon!

Although the canyon is beautiful today, it is just one of the many geologic formations in the Owyhee Mountains that point to the destruction caused by “Noah’s Flood” as a result of the Lord’s judgement against mankind for their rebellion and sin against Him (Genesis 6:5-8). The Lord graciously spared Noah and his family in the ark because Noah was righteous in his generation and had faith in the Lord his God (Genesis 6:9, 7:1; Hebrews 11:7). Even today in the wickedness and brokenness of our world, we can have faith in the Lord’s salvation like Noah did. But our salvation is not physical. It is a spiritual salvation from the ultimate consequence of our sin and disobedience to the Lord. That consequence is physical death and eternal separation from our Creator. (Romans 6:23)

The Lord saved Noah from destruction using the ark, so where is our salvation from destruction? Our salvation is made possible by God Himself in the person of His son Jesus, who died the death we deserved to die and then rose from the dead three days later so that we can have eternal life with Him! (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4) All we have to do to accept this free gift of salvation is to “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31), “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

We get the opportunity to place our faith in the Lord as Noah did. And was Noah’s faith misplaced? By no means! The Lord certainly saved him from the destructive waters of the flood! The Lord even made a covenant with Noah after the flood and promised to never again flood the entire earth and destroy all life (Genesis 9:11). The Lord established the rainbow as the symbol of this covenant, and we still get to see rainbows today after storms have passed. (Genesis 9:12-17)

Thank you Lord!