Navigating local and national tensions
This week will mark one year since I moved to the Flathead. My friends came up from Wyoming for Under the Big Sky; six people and three dogs packed into our two-bedroom house with no AC over the course of the festival.
I’m sitting in kind of an odd spot, where I’m not from here originally but interact with locals as a big part of my job. I go to local government meetings and try to keep up on social issues. I hear, and more often read on Facebook, the hateful comments about tourists and out-of-staters. At the same time, I kind of am one, my friends and family definitely are.
I also hear and see a lot of political hate for the opposing party out and about in the Flathead, from Democrats and Republicans. I don’t know how many times in my life I have heard that this is one of the most contentious points in American history, though I would debate that to some extent, we have held off from another civil war.