One year later

Well, it’s 2013 now and the world didn’t end for whatever your apocalyptic tastes may have been. The zombies didn’t come, the Mayans were either wrong or grossly misinterpreted by sensationalistic “documentaries” and our newly elected or re-elected politicians haven’t doomed us yet.

The majority of this week’s edition of the Bigfork Eagle takes a look back at 2012, the big news of the year and what some of the local residents thought about the progress their group or organization made. The Ferndale Fire Department got a generator, Bigfork Schools got iPads, downtown Bigfork got a clock tower, and so many other things happened for better or for worse that it made 2012 go by fast.

The fun thing about the Opinion Page is that it gives the opportunity to share my opinion, and my overall opinion of this year is I don’t get it.

How can the town function and thrive when there’s no city government to keep order? How is it possible for there to be so many fundraisers?

It really doesn’t make sense to me.

It absolutely blows my mind that every time something needs done or someone needs help the rest of the community rallies together and makes it happen. Every single time.

When I moved here a year ago I thought I had lucked out and arrived at a time when a lot of fundraisers were happening. It made finding things to report on easy, the people involved were eager to talk and the feedback from our readers was consistently positive.

But I was wrong, it wasn’t that I had arrived during a particularly charitable time, it was just the town doing what it always does.

For the last 205 weeks I’ve kept a notebook of “to-do” lists. It started with research papers to write, Hapkido techniques to practice and routes to run while I was in college. I took a look at what I had to do this year, the events I attended, wrote about and photographed, and tallied them up.

Since moving to Bigfork I’ve attended more charity events than I have done my laundry. I checked the numbers and this isn’t an exaggeration, I’ve done my laundry 31 times this year and I’ve attended or at least wrote about 44 charitable events.

Some weeks had more happening than others. This last week only had a few days between Christmas and then the weekend before New Year’s, so there weren’t any happening that I knew about anyway.

But I still don’t get it, how does this happen so consistently? Our population is small and transient with quite a few seasonal residents, so it just doesn’t make sense.

I suppose the best answer to this comes in the form of another question. How can Bigfork function and thrive as an unincorporated village?

We don’t have a Parks and Recreation department to make sure our local parks and trails are pristine, we have volunteers who keep them that way.

We didn’t hire a city planner to design Bigfork’s Christmas decorations, instead we had a massive crowd gather to do it and they were paid in cocoa and doughnuts; though I’m certain it would have been done without the free food.

After tornadoes in Iowa we would have barn-raisings or just fire up the grill and feed whoever showed up to help cleanup the damage. Note the word “damage,” in the other places I lived people would rally together for things that absolutely needed to happen and that was about it.

In Bigfork people rally together for the important things, and for the things that would just be nice to have. The town would still function without the clock tower, but enough people wanted it to make it happen. We don’t necessarily need any of the amenities that we have, but enough people cared to make each possible and we’re just stubborn enough to continue doing it on our own.

I guess my first year in Bigfork has been like my first time watching the Polar Plunge on Jan. 1, 2012. I had just flown in from Alaska and thought the participants were insane. Now a year later, I still don’t get it but I think it’s cool.