It took 60 years for Lois Blackburn to finally arrive in Moscow, Idaho. But only months to call it home. “I feel very fortunate to live here,” she says, keen blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “I have many lovely friends, it’s a beautiful town and I can walk to almost anywhere.”

Lois’s route from her Ohio childhood home to Moscow was long and circuitous. She, her husband, a space engineer, and three children were living near Los Angeles when he died at age 38. “I didn’t want to raise children in Los Angeles, so we moved to New Mexico, the state to which my parents had retired.

“New Mexico is quite beautiful; I loved it there, and I loved my job,” she recalls. “I was a traveling music teacher, teaching orchestra at high school, junior high and elementary levels.”

Lois was 53 when the Albuquerque schools, to save money, canceled all music classes. So back to school she went and obtained her doctorate from the University of Arizona. “People said, ‘you won’t get a job. Nobody’s getting jobs; and you’re 55.’” But Lois did. For the next two years, she taught cello and music education at the University of Wisconsin, where, she says, she had never been so cold. Then it was on to West Virginia and teaching at Marshall University, where “the weather was warm, and the people were lovely.”

Still, the West, with its high, wide-spaced mountains and four-season climate, called. At the age of 60, Lois accepted a position to teach music education at the University of Idaho. Seven years later, she retired. But she has no plans for leaving Moscow. Instead, she teaches private cello lessons, serves on several boards, volunteers for chosen causes and travels the backroads during the summers.

Her first love, as it has long been, is music — the cello, in particular. She and three other instrumentalists meet weekly at her home to play as a string quartet. “That’s why I have no coffee table,” she says, smiling at her own unusual priorities. “It would be in the way when we sit down and fill the room with four instruments and four music stands. As it is, we’ll play for four hours, stop and have something to eat, then play some more.”

But there’s a new love in Lois’s life — the viola. This viola, in particular, bears an enchanted history. When Lois, at 69, decided she had to have a vertical viola — an extra large viola that has an endpin and is held between the knees and played like a cello — she began a search that led her to a Seattle music store. There, she discovered and purchased a viola that had been hand-crafted, unbelievably, in the basement of her very own home. “It’s unbelievable that this man, who worked as a cement finisher by day, made such beautiful instruments in his spare time, a fact unknown to most people around him,” Lois says.

In the community, Lois’s love of music has led her to give her time to causes like the Auditorium Chamber Music Series. Each year, she organizes a concert attended by all county fifth graders. “Last year, it was a small chamber orchestra from Russia; this year it may be a string quartet,” she says. “Usually there are close to 500 children, and they respond amazingly. First, the University of Idaho auditorium is so beautiful that most come in with their mouths open in awe. Then, since I’ve been a teacher for about a thousand years, I talk to them. I explain to them that this is live music, that this isn’t music from a radio, that these people will hear you if you talk and that their feelings will be hurt. They sit quietly, and are excited to ask questions either before or after.”

Lois is also a ‘gallery grandma’ at a local art gallery, where she and other one-time teachers lead children’s school classes through the exhibits.

Another special project on Lois’s agenda has been Moscow’s 1912 Building. Once a high school, the massive building sat empty for many years until 2001, when grants, fundraisers and private donations began funding its restoration. “The first phase has been completed, and the second is paid for and nearing completion,” Lois says. “Then we will have to stop and earn more money, because we have promised the citizens of this town that there will be no taxes involved,” Lois explains.

Lois volunteers to show her appreciation for life in Moscow. “I love the people here, the community and the quality of life,” she says. “The school system is very fine. And I don’t want to see anything erode all that. This is my place. And once you’ve decided you care about a place, you get involved.”

But during the summers, Lois succumbs to the gypsy blood that calls her onto the roads. There’s the annual trip to New Mexico to see her children, of course. But there are also brief excursions into Idaho’s nooks and crannies. She fuels up the mini-motorhome she calls her gypsy wagon, puts in a supply of MaryJanesFarm foods for herself and a big sack of dog food for her faithful companion, Lulu. “I go to the Selway River,” she says. “I go to the St. Joe; I go out to Red Fish Lakes.”

She stops at small-town cafes, laundromats, grocery stores. “I like to talk to the people,” she says. And she watches for signs. “They may say something like ‘come see our museum.’ That’s how I found the museum at St. Gertrude’s Monastery in Cottonwood. That’s how I’ve discovered three of Idaho’s historical ranger stations.

I’m very blessed to have a life like this,” she asserts in a strong, ‘years-of-teaching’ voice. “I plan to stretch it out as far as I can. Now when everybody else is going back to school, I’m still out camping. That’s August. That’s prime camping time, traveling time. And I feel pretty smug about that.”

Lois, who always took her children tent camping when they were young, says, “The nice thing about camper camping is that after you’ve been out hiking all day with your dog, you come back to a dry bed. And ice cubes. Running water. A shower. And now I have this new instrument that will be easy to take with me.”

So any summer day, in a deep-woods Idaho campground, other travelers might see a gypsy wagon, a black and tan dog, and then Lois, her silver-blond head bent over a viola, sending sweet strains of music out onto pine-pungent air.

“Life,” she says, “has been a bumpy, but exciting, ride. And I plan to enjoy every possible minute of it.”