Cisco’s Sonar

Musings
By Bryce Nielson

The year of 2020 is half over.  The events that have occurred has had a major impact on the Bear Lake Valley, its people and me.  As I sit on my deck or travel around and on the lake, I enjoy observing the changes I see from past years, some good, some bad.

We has a lot of snow last winter.  It seemed as if it snowed every day.  We were all looking forward to what we were going to do when it finally melted.  Unfortunately, Coronavirus and the world governments changed all of our best laid plans.  The snow melted and there were negligible flood events.  The Lake came up and has remained high so far.  Rain events in the lower Bear River drainage has decreased demands for water from Bear Lake.  The vegetation has been so healthy, lush and green, that I thought I was along the Pacific Northwest Coast.

I fed 200 pounds of Black Oil Sunflower seeds to the birds.  Most of it was consumed by a large flock of Evening Grosbeaks which spent the winter at my feeder along the neotropical migrants that were flying by.  I will have to admit that I derive great pleasure watching birds and their antics.  It is well worth the cost of the seeds.  Even the magpies have stayed around.  For the last couple of summers, they left in the early summer and did not return until fall.  The one thing I miss seeing are the deer.  I suspect that they have moved to places where there are less people, if there are any.

I recall that early this summer residents were worried about the seasonal visitors staying in the cabins during the quarantine.  Businesses were going to fail, and the tourist industry was going to collapse.  Luckily it didn’t happen.

Now, during the endless summer, where every day is like Raspberry Days, the area has been taken over by people who are looking for fresh air that doesn’t need to be inhaled through a mask.  It seems as if everybody has days off and you can barely tell the weekends from the weekdays.  There are countless side by sides, big surf boats and huge travel trailers on the roads and in the campgrounds.  The RV businesses have had a banner year.  We could complain about it and ow things used to be, but Bear Lake will continue to grow.  It is just such a precious resource.  We need to make sure that the future activities are in concert with preserving the value of Bear Lake and its way of life.  By the way, I want to thank all the people involved, especially Mayor Mike, for putting on the July 4th celebration.  We all needed it.