Before and after
Farragut Naval Training Station vs. Farragut State Park. Those two names for the same plot of ground represent a span of 64 years, from 1942 to today, and a period of incredible change, both functionally and ecologically. I had been vaguely aware of Farragut’s history since I first visited the place a dozen years ago, but it was not until I read Carl Gidlund’s article last winter (Handle Extra, Dec. 17, 2005) on its World War II days that I realized the full extent of the transformation of the site all those years ago. For four years, the area was stripped of its native pine forest and was covered with more than 700 buildings, 45,000 people, and all the roads and parking lots that would service such a citylike conglomeration. Two years later, the area was again stripped, this time of all those buildings – except the brig and a water tower – and most roads.
During the next 18 years, the land sat mostly idle, and the process of regeneration took over. For the past 40 years it has been maintained as a park. Once again it is an area of maturing pine forest, but now interspersed with large remnants of artificially produced open ground, old-field areas, with prairielike grass and weeds.
During seven decades, from quiet forest, to frenzied training base for 300,000 sailors, to semiquiet park – at least in the winter, when all the campers and boaters have gone and only cross-country skiers and birders are present. Most cities with the population of Coeur d’Alene and Hayden combined don’t have the opportunity to suddenly shed most signs of civilization and be allowed to revert. But without much help, and not too much interference, the land has, to a large extent, healed.
I have, of course, only known Farragut as it is now. Seeing old pictures of the training base is hard to reconcile with the park of today. Only the outline of Lake Pend Oreille shore is the same.
My first experience with Farragut was on a Christmas bird count soon after I arrived in North Idaho. We drove the icy roads looking for birds, and I had no idea what those roads represented. The next spring, with snow gone, but green grass still weeks off, I saw my first North Idaho mountain bluebird, our state bird.
In the time since those two trips, I have become well acquainted with those old and crumbling roads of Farragut. Some have had work since being built, but many have not. And they were not building for longevity in those frantic times.
My strongest memory of both those first visits to Farragut has to do with the peace of the place. Both times it was so quiet and calm. At those times of year, there was little human-generated noise. The calls of the birds I was seeking seemed amplified. The sound of wind in the trees could not be ignored. The desolation of snow-covered, then snow-deformed, fields inspired loneliness. There was nothing frantic about anything in the area, except perhaps the activity of the chickadees I saw foraging on both trips.
Imagine the sounds six decades ago – night and day. Cars and trucks in steady streams, the pounding from unending construction, the yells of petty officers and the in-unison answers from “boots,” the popping and roaring of rifle fire.
Imagine the lake six decades ago – covered in small boats full of awkward boatmen-to-be. Who’d have thought they’d come to North Idaho to learn to be sailors? The water was just as cold as the sea, but, of course, no salt. That came from the ocean of perspiration shed in getting to know and use new muscles and skills.
It was a no-nonsense place 60 years ago. If nature was in the way, it had to go – and did. Today nature is back in charge. Park people deliberate and civilians debate where and how to cut a few tress. Bluebirds and swallows are invited to nest by the only current new construction, that of birdhouses.
The lake has its share of boats still, but that’s mostly seasonal. The only flotillas I’ve seen there in winter are large flocks of horned grebes and goldeneyes and merganser ducks. I wonder how many officers and recruits ever noticed the birds. I’m sure the bird population took note of them.
As if a fire had swept through in 1942, the landscape was suddenly changed. And just as with a fire, through the ecological process of succession, the forest, and all that goes with it, has returned.
This weekend hundreds of those trainees, war-bound kids from all those years ago, will return – making their last official visit to Farragut. Most have passed. Of those that remain, what must they think of the Farragut of today?
I wish that I could see it through their eyes and make comparisons based on their memories. Their perspectives of the same piece of ground have got to be so different from my own. Could those kids have guessed what a difference 60 years would make when Farragut was still their threshold to the world, and to the war?