One thing I’ve noticed as I get older is that there’s a tendency to get nostalgic about places or things. Looking back, places or experiences that were actually awful at the time don’t seem so bad. I suspect that this predilection only gets worse over time. By the time I’m 90, maybe I’ll think high school was fun. (Okay, maybe not.)
Nostalgia is a weird thing. When you first move to a place and everything is really new and different, years later, it’s easy to look back and think that things were better “back then.” But realistically, objectively speaking, they probably weren’t.
These thoughts started rambling about in my brain after reading several emails from people who haven’t lived here very long. After a few months of residency, the golden haze is starting to fade, and they are starting to realize that Sandpoint isn’t the paradise it’s portrayed to be in the tourist brochures and glossy magazines. The road conditions, for example, were cited as something that becomes less and less fun when you are a resident.
Nostalgia and population growth both make me fondly recall the days when there were fewer people on the roads. But I can safely say that 10 years ago, the roads themselves were in significantly worse shape than they are now. There’s no nostalgia in North Idaho roads and I’m willing to bet that they were even worse 20 or 30 years ago too.
Even 10 years ago, however, few roads had signs, and it seemed like the county went through a new “road boss” every year or so. Various rumors of financial mismanagement and a serious lack of grading equipment anywhere seemed to dominate the local news. Now we do have more road signs and graders are sighted on a reasonably regular basis, even out here in the toolies.
In the Sandpoint Insider, we’ve shown pictures of the local roads and what happens to them in every season, including winter and even the springtime when the dirt roads turn to sucking mud. So for anyone who is planning on moving here, yes, the roads are better than they were. But that doesn’t mean they are good.