Some in the community are welcoming these long overdue beacons-of-safety cell towers.

Over a dozen years ago, some friends and I witnessed a horrific crash, twelve miles north of Ketchum. Several people were severely injured in a head-on crash and nobody in the group had yet called for an ambulance. I sped back to the SNRA to call 911, but unfortunately, two young girls died from their wounds. I often wondered if they might have survived, had the emergency technicians been notified by cell phone sooner, as every second counts in these harsh situations.

Soonafter, I vowed to get a cell phone and keep it with me, fully charged and with a spare battery at all times, in event of a similar emergency. Since then, local sportspersons have been caught and even killed in avalanches several times. Mountain bikers have flipped over their handlebars and smashed their faces onto unforgiving rocks or been accidentally pierced by sharp hardwood branches. Horses have thrown riders and motorcycle incidents have whisked away too soon, some of our most beloved friends and family.

Undoubtedly, some of these incidents would have had more fortuitous outcomes had not our unenlightened cell phone area of Idaho been crippled by non-coverage.

Moreover, there is more: Automobiles have been quickly caught in ravines or pinballed off roadside snow-banks and then back into traffic, spinning at 65 mph to uncertain fates on the icy roadway. Countless campers and their vehicles have tangled together with outsized migrating mammals. There have been more than a handful of bad boating incidents, where a lifesaving cell phone might as well have been tossed to the barren wind. Hunters have become bewildered in the frozen tundra and skiers wedged unwell in tree wells. Once a group of us standing at the Galena overlook saw the immediate aftermath of a lighting started fire, blazing in the mountains, with nobody knowing if the forest service had yet been called.

Having a few beacons of safety seems a small price to pay when the lifesaving benefits are considered. Letting our evermore-bustling Galena area remain a cell phone acme of barrenness is not the answer in this age. As dingy as it may sound, we should embrace these disguised pine tree lifesaving cell towers with receptive warm hugs.