Consider aging North Forkers

For some reason my 80th birthday seems to be rushing toward me much faster than did my 21st. I agree that getting old sure beats all of the known alternatives.

Also, there are both advantages and disadvantages. Although I do enjoy my lifetime pass to national sites acquired for only $10, I am not sure it evens out what seems like a flood of deaths among my old friends and lately of “kids” I had in school.

In early December, Peggy Cohn passed away. She was the eldest of the three children of Orville and Helen Foreman who came to the North Fork in 1949, when Peggy was still in high school. She and her younger siblings, Connie and Mike, were summer residents and spent their summers on the North Fork, until college, work, and families made them occasional visitors. Today, the Foreman Family North Fork property is still owned by them but is only rarely used by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Sadly, Peggy’s passing was noted by only a few of us who knew her, and most North Forkers hadn’t met or even heard of her.

Today, I received a letter with news of a more recent North Fork resident, Nancy Hubble. John and Nancy Hubble lived in Ralph Thayer’s homestead cabin on Trail Creek until John’s health deteriorated and they went back to Arkansas. After John died, Nancy continued to spend summers on Trail Creek, thinning trees and controlling the weeds well into her 80s. The new letter informed me that although Nancy is mostly healthy she is suffering from dementia and no longer knows even her family. She is in a fine facility and is well cared for and happy.

Many of our close group on Trail Creek are aging too. Duke and Naomi Hoiland are in their 80s and even my long-time friends Lynn and Bonny Ogle are getting older and Elmer Benson is mostly house-ridden.

What is the point of all this rambling? Maybe there is no point. We are just realizing that we are not going to get out of this alive.

Even so, it does show that protecting the North Fork is more important than getting what we want for our own comfort.

We have a responsibility to consider the future of this special place that has done so much for us. The rub is deciding what is best for the future and we each have to decide for ourselves and our property. All I ask is for everyone to think about side-effects. What do you think?

Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views column appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.