We Are All Visitors

By Doug Alder, Historian

Doug and Elain Alder

Nearly 40 years ago, our family built a cabin on Sweetwater Hillside.  We became seasonal visitors in Bear Lake Valley and are still visitors, now with an expanded family of four generations.

This spring we arrived and were once again thrilled with the rich green growth everywhere and the deep blue color of the lake from our view up on the hill.

The first day here, a moose carefully walked by, quite unimpressed by our presence.  Later came a fawn, quite cautiously.  Squirrels darted across roads and paths.  Magpies flew by the windows.   A pair of wrens have occupied a nest under the eaves and are awaiting the hatching of eggs.  The evidence of badgers was visible.

To our amazement, we saw that a porcupine had climbed up three of our Austrian pines and eaten the bark.  When
we visited Jay and Yvonne Spencer at their lakeside home we saw about 25 pelicans on a small sandbar near the shore.  The Spencers say the birds are there daily in a group.

These are all most impressive to those of us who are summer visitors.  The full-timers tell us that they are contiually thrilled by nature's richness surrounding us.

So we conclude that all of us humans are visitors on nature's turf, where the birds and mammals and fish and insects are the real owners, the real long timers.