Eagle editor comes full circle back to Bigfork

It was almost like being 25 again.

Sitting in the back of a pickup truck last Wednesday, heading to the put-in on the Wild Mile, it was as if I were 25 again, getting off work at the Bigfork Eagle and heading to the rapids for a good blast of adrenaline and whitewater.

Whitewater kayakers will take what we can get this time of year, so about eight of us gathered at Sliter’s Park and threw our boats in the back of Jake’s rig.

I was clearly in the upper age demographic. These guys were in their early 20s (if that) and I couldn’t help but smile at their youthful enthusiasm as we bounced our way up to the Wild Mile. It was, in fact, 25 years ago that I was doing exactly the same thing. I was in my first year out of college at the University of Montana School of Journalism, a degree firmly in hand and ready to take on the world. Marc Wilson, publisher of the Bigfork Eagle at the time, gave me my first opportunity as a “professional” journalist and I showed up to the Eagle — in a tie — on my first day. The guys in the press room looked at me sideways and I knew the next day I should leave the tie at home.

Twenty five years later — to the day — this March I walked back through the doors of the Bigfork Eagle and into Marc Wilson’s old office. Not much had changed. The wood paneling was still there, as were the Velcro curtain holders. (Marc was a stickler for temperature control.) In the meantime, over the last 25 years, I’ve traveled around the world as a journalist, doing travel stories in Fiji, filming documentaries about the struggle between Palestine and Israel, and working on a film about social conditions in the Islamic Republic of Iran. All the while I’ve hung out my shingle in Kalispell and Whitefish as editor of various publications that my company publishes.

So it’s been a few months, now, that I’ve been back in Bigfork. My, how things have changed. And haven’t. When I left Bigfork in 1989 to go to the Whitefish Pilot, Bigfork was a sleepy little town that pulled down the curtains in September and didn’t open them up, much, until the middle of June. Now, there is a small but growing year-round business in town. Eagle Bend, which was just growing wings when I covered Jack Nicklaus’ dedication of the course here in 1988, has fully matured.

I see a new, vibrant energy in Bigfork that I didn’t see in 1988. Some things are the same. Bigfork is still protective of itself. People are very involved at many levels of the culture here, and that is a good thing. With little government to tell us what to do, we’re kind of out in the Wild Wild West.

We love our independence and it shows. I do hope, however, that the townfolk are receptive to good ideas about growth and development.

Bigfork moves at its own pace, and in the last three months I’ve become quite fond — again — of that pace. I’m most amazed at the people here. Sure, folks are friendly around the Flathead Valley, but I feel as if there’s a certain downhome character in Bigfork that some of the other towns are missing.

I love knowing I can get off of work and go catch a play at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, or head up to the Jewel Basin, catch a trout and be back home to cook it for dinner. Or, like last week, head down the Wild Mile and shoot the rapids.

About three-fourths of the way down the Wild Mile on Wednesday night I pulled into an eddy before we dropped into Three Sisters, a sometimes-vicious series of rapids. I sat in my kayak and watched some of the young guns play in the Moe Hole (named after Tommy Moe’s dad who was a pioneer on the Wild Mile). We never used to do that, I thought.

There’s a place on the Wild Mile that I always enjoy seeing; just below the trailhead for the Swan River Hiking Trail, the river makes a turn and points you right into the late-afternoon sun. I love it there on those warm evenings when the backlit water of the Swan River hits me in the face, one rapid after another.

If you’ve made it this far without disaster on the Wild Mile of the Swan, you know you’re getting close to home.

One of the younger kayakers paddled up next to me, a huge grin on his face. “Can’t beat this,” he shouted. “Boatin’ with my bros on a Wednesday night. It doesn’t get any better this.”

Nah, it sure doesn’t.

It’s good to be back in Bigfork.

editor@bigforkeagle.com