Times’ Vision Is Hard To See

Readers of The New York Times discovered North Idaho a few days ago. Sitting in their comfortable townhouses on the Upper East Side with a bagel and espresso, they turned to the Sunday New York Times Magazine and saw, probably for the first time, many of the people who constitute our local color.

Bo Gritz, the survivalist ex-Green Beret, was there on his Clearwater River estate known as Almost Heaven.

Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge fame was cited often as an example of the new North Idaho neighbor.

Assorted old hippies, home-schoolers and shack-dwellers who have moved to the Idaho Panhandle to drop off the grid of civilization made appearances, too.

The headline of the story read:

“Idaho, The New Leave Me Alone America at It’s Most Extreme.”

A picture emerges of Idaho as a state where self-reliance rules, antigovernment sentiment prevails, and a whole bunch of people live off solar power.

(Proof: Steve Willey, owner of Backwoods Solar Electric in Sandpoint is quoted as saying he has 1,000 customers in North Idaho.) But New Yorkers, take a message.

Most of the state has running water and electric lights.

Despite the postcard sentiment of Idaho as a land of rugged individualists living far from the nearest stoplight, remember this: For every family buying a lot at Bo Gritz’s survivalist subdivision a 100 are buying into subdivisions that look quite a bit like suburban Westchester County of 20 years ago.

According to Mike McDowell, senior deputy assessor for Kootenai County, for example, 1,844 new platted lots were recorded in the rapidly urbanized population center around Coeur d’Alene last year - a record.

All have plumbing, paved streets and are cable ready.

Sure, some people in Idaho are out there “living off the grid,” as The Times describes it. Ten times more are building up the grid.

In fact, construction-related crafts rank as the top employment category in North Idaho with perhaps 10,000 men and women working the trades in the five northern counties.

So is Idaho really the most extreme place in the nation? I don’t think so.

Washington state had a bigger swing from Democrats to Republicans in elected office last year.

And, for all the talk about getting away from it all, thousands of people are working to put Idaho more on the map.

Witness the effort of the University of Idaho to move up to NCAA Division 1-A football.

Think of the hours being put into the effort to woo Micron Semiconductor Inc., with its 4,000 technical workers, to Post Falls.

These are much bigger components of Idaho’s current history than the old news of a few survivalists and back-to-the-woods types.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine depiction of Idaho is colorful, but outof-date and, in some important ways, out of touch with what is happening in the state.

Home-schooling is an interesting story, but over-crowded schools is a bigger one in Idaho.

Randy Weaver is important, not because he was a backwoods survivalist, but because the federal government overdid it big time when officials brought in 400 federal agents and then shot and killed Vicki Weaver as she held her baby in her arms.

If The New York Times wanted to write about Randy Weaver and Idaho, the paper might have followed the lead of its rival, The Wall Street Journal.

Coincidentally, just as The Times’ magazine piece came out, the Journal’s editorial page published a stinging rebuke of the government investigation into the Randy Weaver shoot-out of 1992.

The commentary rightly concluded the big issue in North Idaho was how the FBI got away with unlimited use of deadly force, thereby setting a precedent that would concern everyone who might find themselves involved with a federal agent.

As sports heroes know, it’s important to not begin to believe your own clippings.

The same is true for North Idaho at the moment.

Despite what others may say about this place being the last, most extreme haven in the nation, we know differently because we live here.

North Idaho is busting at the seams with people who are plugged into a growing, highly interdependent social and economic region we call the Inland Northwest.

Its problems, and promise, will be decided by people fully engaged in making modern life work, not those who have taken a hike to the hills.