You are Bonners Ferry

By Mike Weland
Publisher

For many, myself included, the winter doldrums are a real thing, a general malaise brought on by shortened days, mostly gray. A desire to sleep the day around but achy bones preclude falling asleep easy or staying asleep long. Hibernation is not an option.

Ennui sets in. Even the mental tricks that can get you through the worst of human tragedies; consciously looking for the small smiles that are always there, deliberately going from small smile to small smile rather than minute to interminable minute, instead of looking at the horrors of a disaster, looking for the helpers who are always working to alleviate the suffering, just don’t seem to work for the winter doldrums.

But this is Bonners Ferry. And this town has its own way of lifting up her own. All you have to do is let her. It’s typically nothing big, no light-up-the-sky epiphany. It’s those little out-of-the-blue kindnesses that seem to come when you need them, those small but uplifting gestures thrown out there for everyone to leave or take as we choose.

Those who’ve known only Bonners Ferry probably know just what I mean, but to them it’s nothing unusual, it’s the norm … the way it is, was and has always been. I’m here to tell you it is unusual.

I’ve lived in communities from coast to coast and in Germany, and until I came here in 1991, I never imagined there could be such a place, such a community as this. I’ve coined a pretty lame phrase for it, and I invite any better ideas … leave a reply below, comment on the Facebook feed or email mike@9b.news … “You are Bonners Ferry.”

In Bonners Ferry, you seldom have to look for the helpers — they’re right beside you. Ditto looking for smiles — our community is replete with people who just seem to show up anyplace, and at the right time, and the ensuing smile stays with you for hours. You are Bonners Ferry.

On my first day as a reporter in Bonners Ferry, I was sent to Crossroads Chapel to interview an Idaho State Police Corporal presenting an award to one of the people he so proudly served. I apologize that her name is lost to me, because that interview set the tone for my career as a reporter in Bonners Ferry. She must be 40 now and Brian Zimmerman retired just this year.

I know Brian remembers, and I’m willing to bet the Crossroads Chapel kindergartener upon whom Brian bestowed with all due respect and solemnity a safety award for looking both ways before crossing the highway remembers that morning as if it just happened today.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the most important news story I’d ever write. In the years since, I’ve come to know why … they are Bonners Ferry.

For me, the doldrums are a fairly new thing. I still love telling of the people who are Bonners Ferry, of sounding alarm when my community is threatened by weather, slide or the machinations of the less than scrupulous. But it gets harder by the day and I slowly realize I can no longer keep up. Hence the doldrums.

And yet …

Seldom a week goes by I don’t bump into a friendly somebody I haven’t seen in an age, always a welcome occurrence, but it seems that in Bonners Ferry, there’s a magic telegraph at play and three or four come in a series when needed to send the doldrums packing.

Evelyn, Dave, Caroline, Joy, Jim, Lila, Jerry … You are Bonners Ferry.

Bad news comes with the territory for a reporter, especially those who serve on the front lines, the small town reporters who live side-by-side with the people they write about and amid the disasters they cover. Sometimes the stories weigh heavy, opening a person up to the doldrums.

Mikey Bjoraker was my neighbor for the five years I lived on the South Hill, and never one better. I’d known him far longer as a Special Olympian. The first stories following his injury I wrote through veils of tears, the latter through tears of joy. He is Bonners Ferry.

Then there was the story of a potential contract dispute (A community gives, a contractor makes for a Merrier Christmas). Simply writing such an article is stressful enough, but using your media as a vehicle by which to intercede is risky and ratchets the tension as tight as it can go.

Just moments after the article went online a private message came in.

“Is there a go fund me for him?” Jessica Spiller wrote. “I don’t have much as we are going through our own issues. But I’m wondering if a there’s like a donation or something that could help him get a fence.”

We chatted for a moment and she apologized for typos.

“I’m over here trying to put my kids to bed and trying to voice to talk at the same time,” she wrote. “I just wanna say it takes a village and we are the village.”

Jessica Spiller, you are Bonners Ferry, as are the several others who wrote afterwards with the same idea.

Even more astonishing was the call at around 8 a.m. the next morning.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Andrew Cunningham said in a hushed voice, the deposit he’d paid over a year ago for a fence not yet built returned.

As a result, I set up a GoFundMe account and I’ve reached out to a local fence builder of high repute for recommendations and an estimate and I’m waiting to hear back, hopefully soon after the holidays, in hopes of getting Bronny a good fence built in the spring. Donations are welcome now and I’ll put the campaign in gear once we have a good local fence builder on board.

That such happy endings are not a rarity but more common than not here is a testament. “We, who are Bonners Ferry, stand up for our own.”

While the bad news gets more ink and more notice, in Boundary County I daresay that in numbers of stories published, the happy good news stories prevail, and there should be far more of them but most don’t think to send their good news in to local media and general assignment reporters seldom chase after good news.

And those in the good news stories, who make us smile or laugh out loud, people like Carolyn Birrell and Denise Crichton, who donned pixiesque red elf attire and smiled, laughed and brought holiday joy to passers-by on Highway 95 this week, in front of, appropriately enough, Far North, just for the fun of it and because they had two elf outfits. I don’t think any one will deny that Carolyn and Denise, you are Bonners Ferry.

As are Kelly Hinthorn, Jaycee Atkins and every other teacher and staffer who helped the high school and middle school leadership classes (each member who is also Bonners Ferry) in this year’s holiday rivalry in harnessing the generosity of the community such that those among us in need don’t go hungry or cold.

That is Bonners Ferry. We are diverse, we argue and disagree. But when disaster strikes, as it invariably will, we roll up our sleeves and work side by side until the job is done, no matter what the crisis. We can go back to growling at one another after the job is done.

This nation has shifted of late and a growing faction of newcomers ascribe to the ideal of the fiercely independent, the idea of self-sufficiency, each for his own. Nothing at all wrong with that, but that’s not Bonners Ferry.

You’ll find few places with more fiercely independent, self-sufficient people, But that’s leavened with the understanding that we are community.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked the first sign of civilization. Mead said it was a broken human thigh bone that had healed. Someone had given of themselves for an extended time to feed and protect another, to dress the wound, apply a splint — to save a life from what had until then been a fatal injury. Needing help is not a weakness. Compassion is a strength.

That is Bonners Ferry.

It’s been more than 33 years since my first news interview in Bonners Ferry, at half my lifetime the longest I’ve spent doing one thing in one place by far. I came hoping to build a clip file and gain in experience what I lacked in education to return to a daily as a reporter rather than editorial assistant, but … Bonners Ferry. After a lifetime of moving hither and yon as an Army brat born on base in Germany, I finally found what it felt like to be home.

I have been privileged to have earned the community’s trust in sharing her stories, of sounding the alarm when disaster strikes or trouble threatens, of warning of those who would take advantage, of rallying those who would help.

I am not yet ready to quit, but I am no longer able to do what news requires, no longer able to provide the depth of coverage I owe those who rely on 9B.News, no longer capable of getting news out in time to matter.

I am pleased to announce that Katie Banning and her daughter, Piper, have accepted my gift of 9B.News, that over the days and weeks ahead, we will be dotting Ts, crossing eyes and missing Zs as we make the transition. I will take on the title Reporter Emeritus, allowing me to contribute at a more leisurely pace.

Katie and I differ in opinion, but somehow we’ve forged a respect for one another and a friendship that happened in spite of us. I think it has to do with our mutual admiration of Piper, of her maturity in accepting an intimidating job and growing into it instead of giving up.

Above all, Katie and Piper understand the importance of news, and that news is a very small part of journalism.

Building trust, keeping readers engaged and informed is 99-percent of what we do as journalists at the local level. Providing information, what’s going on where … keeping you up with neighbors, elected officials. Entertaining, sharing opinions.

News is what’s happening now; storms, landslides, crashes that shut down traffic. News is giving options to help people in real-time; which roads are clear, which are flooded. News tells the helpers where help is needed. News doesn’t end with a pithy quote at the end of a story … it ends when the crisis is over.

News is what’s important, what journalists spend the majority of their time preparing for and what I can’t trust myself to be able to do anymore as time snuck up on me before I was ready.