Letter from the editor 

Thanks for the memories 

In a letter he wrote to his editor, Pascal Covici, while working on the novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote that the great epic he was telling was for his sons.

"I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers. And this my boys will not know for a long time nor can they be told."

A great admirer of the man I consider the finest American writer, I have never believed this assertion.

For me, there has only been one river, and it has always run through Montana.

Since before I was old enough to play tackle football, living in Big Sky Country was all I ever wanted. Through a great many fortunes, I have called Montana home for most of a decade.

Now, I can scarcely believe, I am leaving.

This will be my last column in the Bigfork Eagle. A new adventure takes me to Salt Lake City, not much closer to my Southern roots, but away from the only place I've ever wanted to be.

My time in Bigfork has been a continuous education, and without the help and kindness — and occasional berating — of people throughout the community, it would not have been nearly as fruitful.

This is, I don't need to tell you, a strange and wonderful place.

There is not enough space here to thank everyone who deserves it, so I hope that a blanket statement of appreciation will suffice. I must, however, thank a pair of Bigfork residents with whom I have shared this page for two years. Jerry Sprunger and Barb Strate are fixtures on the Eagle's opinion page and in my office. I've been privileged to hear Barb's tales of growing up in England and her life in Montana and Jerry has been a bottomless repository of knowledge about the history of Bigfork and a sounding board for story ideas and Montana Grizzlies theories.

And if I doubted the importance of the role of a small weekly paper like the Eagle, the two of them have done more to bolster my belief than anyone.

One morning we told Barb, a contributor since 1986, that her life story was the stuff of books and that she should set to work.

"I've been writing it," she said, "in the Eagle."

If chronicling a woman's truly singular life is the paper's only accomplishment, it is a worthy one.

In general, I owe the Bigfork community at large an enormous debt of gratitude for allowing a young person to take the helm of a local institution. That is no small leap of faith, and I am thankful to have been treated with a respect my age did not command.

Finally, to the regular readers of this column — I didn't believe there were any besides my mother for a very long time — this has been the best part of my job and the one I will miss more than anything else. There is a cathartic quality to sharing your views with readers each week, and your words of kindness have been humbly received.

In searching for a way to adequately explain my feelings for this great state, I concede that I must once again defer to Steinbeck, whose words of affection about Montana I doubt will ever be surpassed.

From Travels with Charley: "For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection," he writes. "But with Montana it is love. And it is difficult to analyze love when you are in it."

—Alex Strickland