It’s My 2 Cents — 3/21/07

I was knee deep in weeds last night, scrounging for discarded landscape pavers and cement blocks, when the thought hit me — I must be an Idahoan. Only an Idahoan would risk the tires on a freshly washed rig to drive across a field of discarded material for a few bucks worth of cast-off ornamental rock. My wife had gotten the OK to pick through a house, garage and yard along Government Way before the bulldozers knock everything down to make room for even more storage units.

I’ve lived in North Idaho (if you extend that definition to include Lewiston for 25 years). I’ve lived in the NW 30 years, as of the Fourth of July. In that time, I slowly evolved from being a Californian by birth into a man without a state and then something more neutral. Since I came from small-town Northern California (3,500 population), it wasn’t hard to embrace the values and viewpoint of Kalispell, Mont., Lewiston, Idaho, and now Coeur d’Alene. But I haven’t felt part of any of my adopted communities until the last few years, here, in Coeur d’Alene.

A lot of it has to do with the decisions by a sister, a brother and my mother to move from Montana to North Idaho. I’m more part of my own family than I ever have been. Mebbe it has to do with the interactivity that this blog has produced. Mebbe it simply is knowing where to take your car for repair without getting gouged. Or which place to go for a haircut. Or where to go on a moment’s notice after work to pick up a few discarded ornamental blocks for the garden. At some point, I stepped across the line an became part of North Idaho — not just an observer of it. As Tevya and Golda concluded after they realized they loved each other after 25 years of marriage, it doesn’t change anything. But it’s nice to know — DFO .

Question (for transplants): When did you feel as though you belonged in the Inland NW?