Taking a long look across the lake

At last weekend's Wake Up Old Man Winter Party in Lakeside, the band had just finished one of their blue-sy, if ear-rattling, songs when the lead singer picked up the microphone to get the crowd going.

"Is everybody here happy to be on the West Shoooore?" he asked.

The crowd, glasses held high in approval, roared back.

"How does it feel to be over here on the West Shoooore tonight?" he bellowed.

Again, the crowd yelled back their agreement that it, in fact, was quite nice on the West Shore.

Then the singer misjudged the room and called out, "How about the East Shore, huh? The East Shore sucks."

Silence, followed by one or two drunk guys giving a halfhearted cheer.

Now the above scene may not be completely accurate (Tamarack makes a fine brew) but the point remains sound: We share more than a lake shore.

Six-and-a-half miles is all that separates the east and west shores of Flathead Lake, but the gulf between them sometimes seems enormous. Lakeside and Somers are sometimes seen as the stepchildren of Bigfork with their "don't blink" downtowns and more salt of the earth populations (if salt lives in half-million dollar homes). Bigfork, by contrast, is seen as snooty and out-of touch, its residents stoned on the fumes of all those oil paints from the galleries on Electric Avenue.

But the fact is that people live and work on both shores and they eat and drink and spend their money on both sides too. And what is becoming more and more apparent is that the east and west shores occupy seats at the same table: Incredible growth, outdated schools, seasonally dependent boom and bust economies and great views. All these are hallmarks regardless of whether you see the Swan range off your front porch or back.

In today's Eagle there are stories coming from the Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee and the Lakeside Community Council as well as one about the proposed North Shore Ranch development which sits somewhere in between. BLUAC and the Lakeside council are in various stages of revising a neighborhood plan with Bigfork's almost done and Lakeside's just beginning. Both are approached monthly with applications for changes and both are saddled with the worry that their opinions will be rendered moot when decisions are made at the county level.

Both sides of the lake would be foolish not to peer at the other because if one community is wrestling with an issue, it's a fair bet that the other either already has or will be soon.

To that end, the Bigfork Eagle and the West Shore News — also written and produced in this office — will share some content that is pertinent to both sides of our readership. Growth concerns, school bond discussions and water quality are just some of the issues we have in common and we'll do our best here to illuminate them in the context of the immediate community and the wider North Lake area.

As both shores react to changes in their communities we need a mirror in which to judge our responses.

We need only look across the water.

—Alex Strickland