There goes the neighborhood

I have lived in Whitefish on Dakota Avenue for almost 20 years. Recently, in the past three years, I have been living and working in Arizona in the winter and returning home to Montana for the summer.

Two summers ago, my neighbors for 20 years, who have a very nice small home set back from the road, and therefore not interfering with my privacy, nor I with theirs, built a two-car garage with an apartment on top.

The apartment now looks into my back yard. The once quiet and unobtrusive neighbors I had for 20 years now have visitors who stay in the apartment with windows that look into my back yard. These visitors seem to have a propensity for parties and late-night music and drunken chatter. All this noise rolling into my windows with the cool evening breeze.

Now, too, the once empty lot across the street has been purchased and a three-story house with huge windows and decks is being built in their quest for a view of the lake. This house stares over my house like some big eye, the sun reflecting from the windows like burning spotlights. Could not one just walk to the lake or bike, instead of needing to build a house that towers over all the others just so they can get a glimpse of the lake?

I wonder if anyone considers their neighbors, or the neighborhood that was once quiet and simple, before they make decisions to interrupt the privacy of others.

I have loved living in this neighborhood — quiet and clean with neighbors respectful of the distance one loves when choosing to live in a small town in Montana. I am actually considering selling my home to someone who will build a really huge tacky house so they can get a glimpse of the lake and tower over my neighbor's back yard and their three-story apartment over a two-car garage. But that is just vindictive thinking.

I am greatly disturbed with the opulence that people think they need to maintain in a country that is losing its grip, while people lose their jobs and homes.

I am concerned that one day we will all be piled on top of one another, every inch of soil and green growing things plowed down for the sake of bigger and better.

When will people get it — what is important, asphalt and huge homes or this green, watery earth that surrounds us and sustains us? People move to Montana, and I'm sure other places, because of the beauty and the wildness, and then they go about destroying it for their own comfort. What can change if we cannot change, if we cannot learn to live more simply, in tune with the earth instead of in opposition, forever trying to tame and disfigure the beauty we were once drawn to?

Rebecca Patchell lives in Whitefish.