Cole Nicole LeFavour writes about conscience and the wild from deep in Idaho. An activist, award-winning journalist and writer Cole’s stories and essays have appeared in The North American Review, Idaho Wilderness Considered, Sawtooth-White Cloud, among others. In 2004, LeFavour became the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Idaho Legislature, elected four times, serving as an Idaho State Senator and leading multiple acts of civil disobedience at the State Capitol. 

Cole's long awaited memoir, IN THE ARMS OF MOUNTAINS: A STORY OF LAND, LOVE, AND QUEER RESISTANCE IN RED AMERICA is forthcoming from Beacon Press in spring 2026.

Rural America deserves more than an elegy: A powerful story of hope, resilience, and political resistance where you least expect it, from Idaho’s first openly LGBTQ+ lawmaker
 
"One doesn’t need to be queer to feel seen, heard, and empowered… A reminder that activists need to believe that the impossible can happen."
— Carole King, singer, songwriter, activist, and author of A Natural Woman
 
Cole LeFavour was 11 years old when their hippie parents moved the family to a guest ranch in Idaho. Hours to the North, as the LeFavours unpacked pots and pans, Richard Butler dreamed of establishing a white separatist nation. It’s here, in one of the reddest states on the map, where Cole learned to raise ducklings, hike the wilderness alone, and build political resistance where you least expect it.
 
This is the story rural America deserves to tell—and that the rest of the country needs to hear. Follow LeFavour’s journey from their 2-mile walk to the school bus along a dirt road to their monumental election as Idaho’s first openly queer state senator. Cole recounts anti-apartheid protests in Berkeley, the solitary life of a fire lookout, and the gravitational pull of unexpected romance and loss. In the Arms of Mountains is a memoir with dirt under its nails and heart on its sleeve. It shatters the carefully constructed “monolithic heartland” myth and rewrites Hillbilly Elegy’s bleak epitaph.
 
Haunting, hopeful, and full of fight, Cole’s story reminds us of what’s possible when we look beyond red and blue, right and left, to meet each other at the edge of the wild.

Co-author of the coffee table book on wilderness, Sawtooth-White Cloud, Cole’s experience is shaped by seven years as a wild land firefighter, fire lookout, and lone backcountry ranger, and by decades living in one of the most beautiful and most politically hostile states in the nation.
 
An experienced speaker, debater, and story writer, LeFavour presented a TEDx Talk on emotion and politics titled, “Fear, Anger and the Manipulation of the Human Mind,” which has 107K views. Cole has spoken to audiences about activism, politics, happiness, and queer equality for over three decades.

Bits of Cole LeFavour’s life and work have appeared in the documentary films Breaking Through, The Legislature, and Private Idaho. Civil disobedience that Cole organized is the subject of the documentary Add the Words, and the art film Mercury. 

Through it all, LeFavour’s optimism has been fed by wins, losses, unlikely friendships, and by the beauty of those who also work for social change.