"Enjoy Your Visit! Then Please Go Home." There's a bumper sticker going around our area expressing that basic sentiment. North Idaho is currently being overrun by folks escaping the more liberal/tyrannical states nearby.
Over the years, I've met dozens of families who moved here from the the Golden State, and nearly all of them are marvelous people. Many came here so they could home school their children without all the restrictions and requirements of California. More recently, they are fleeing the absurd COVID restrictions and other government micromanagement of their lives.
We arrived here over 20 years ago. I quickly learned that most longtime residents harbored a deep distaste for Californians, but it wasn't clear to me just why this was so. As former Minnesota residents, we escaped their disdain. I suppose they figured we knew all about moose and snow and cold weather, so we must be acceptable people.
Now that we've lived here for so long, we may qualify as old-timers. And I admit I am grumbling about the excess of newcomers, regardless of where they came from. Our roads can't handle all the traffic. The police, fire departments, medical facilities and schools are overburdened. The Rathdrum Prairie, formerly filled with agricultural fields, is turning into a mass of subdivisions and apartment buildings. More and more forest areas are being cut down to build houses.
Many of these folks come here with preconceived (and often inaccurate) notions of what life is like here. Zoning laws, city and county ordinances, and HOA rules are often shrugged off with the remark, "Oh, this is North Idaho. Nobody cares." Excuse me? North Idaho is NOT the "Wild West," and yes, we do care!
Some people come here to experience the rural lifestyle. As more and more of them pour in, there isn't much rural-ness left. Where it does still exist (including where I live), newcomers often find out the realities of rural life don't match their expectations. Trees blow down in storms, and the power goes out for days. The internet is always slow. We have dirt roads, and they are usually icy, muddy, dusty, and/or full of potholes. Coyotes, owls, raccoons, and mountain lions live here and will happily eat dogs, cats, chickens, and even small livestock.
And it gets dark. That's part of the rural experience. But city slickers are apparently afraid of the dark, because they put lights all over the outside of their houses and garages and pole barns and never turn them off. It's difficult to go outside and stargaze in our yard now, because so many newcomers have plastered lights all over their property.
And this is why so many north Idahoans resent the Californians, who make up a large majority of the new residents here. They are changing Idaho into New California: overcrowded schools, traffic jams on the roads, higher crime rates, higher cost of living, increased light pollution, and indifference to the old Idaho way of life, which was slower, quieter, kinder, and more considerate.
I sympathize with the desire to escape from wherever life has become intolerable. (A new neighbor describes Los Angeles as a "hell-hole.") And yet, for many of us, life right here is now becoming intolerable. Friends of ours who have lived here nearly as long as we have are getting ready to sell their house and move someplace less crowded. They don't know where they are going yet, but after getting nearly run off the road twice on their way to the VA clinic, they have had enough of the new pace of life we now have to live with here.
Where does one go to escape the craziness? Wyoming? Kansas? Eastern Montana? I would suggest South Dakota or Texas, but they are probably getting overrun with "refugees" from the more liberal states as well.
I suppose we will stay here and make the best of it, trying to welcome the newcomers while cursing the heavy traffic they help create.
Photo taken on my Android phone.
