Editor’s Note
A Crinkly Wiggle of a Stick
A word from our Summer 2020 Editor-in-Chief, Clare Menzel.


CLARE MENZEL
Have you ever picked up a magical river stick I have. The first one I really remember was delicate and silky gray, with a spray of hairy frayed bark. Warped, but gracefully so. There’s a pointy, triangular rock wedged up in its armpit, cradled right there in the crook. I came upon it a few years ago while bikepacking in the Canadian headwaters of the North Fork Flathead, and I tenderly stowed it between the folds of the foam sleeping pad strapped on my bike and took it home.
Times being what they are, I recently began tying my river treasures together with string. I’m making kinetic art, sculptures that bob and float, propelled by air currents. They’re a lovely home for my prized river trinkets: fragile lumps of gnarled root, a scale of Ponderosa bark, a crinkly wiggle of a stick that looks like a question mark. To build a Calder-style mobile, you work from the bottom up, balancing each level before adding another, which is probably a brilliant metaphor for some dots I’m too frazzled to connect.
The making helps me wind my anxious brain down. It’s all intuition, all sensing. But the watching is just as good, just as nourishing. It’s best when there isn’t really a breeze at all. The dancing sculptures quietly turn, turn, turn, seemingly of their own bewitching volition.
Maybe your thing isn’t mobiles. It’s probably not mobiles. Still, I hope you have a thing, something niche and weird and skillful that brings you joy, something that keeps you keepin’ on. Someday, I want to hear about it. Those are the stories we adore at Go Local. When we put our plucky dream of a re-imagined and spunkier-than-ever publication out there, our pages filled up with work by so many talented people, about so many remarkable people, all here in the Flathead Valley. In this issue, we wanted to highlight some bright spots in our community. We’re proud to present what we think is a beautiful beam of sunshine. It makes me at least as happy as river sticks suspended in the solstice sunlight. Welcome, and thank you.
Warmly,
Clare Menzel
Go Local Summer 2020 Editor
TAGS:
Read More!
Manifest Destiny
Manifest DestinySprawling subdivisions are not the Flathead Valley's inevitable future. FEATUREBY KEEGAN SIEBENALERWhen Tianna Thomas moved back to the Flathead Valley as a crisis counselor for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline in 2019, she couldn’t even...
Squad Goals
Squad Goals They’re a robotics team and a Girl Scout troop, but neither label fully defines the members of Kalispell’s RoboScout Squad. As the girls look to their individual futures, they reflect on how their time together has changed them.FEATURESTORY BYMEGHAN...
The Zeal of ZaneRay
HeadwatersThe Zeal of ZaneRay A Whitefish company with a funny-sounding name carves out a home in the tech industry by building quality websites for some of the biggest brands in the outdoor industry. STORY BY JUSTIN FRANZ"T he internet is not a ‘Field of Dreams.’ You...