MY TURN: A fresh look at Coeur d’Alene

I was born and raised in Coeur d’Alene. I’m raising my two boys here, and I’ve chosen to invest my life, my work, and my resources into this community alongside so many others who believe this is a place worth building.

Like many locals, I sometimes stop seeing what’s right in front of me.

Sunday, I received a text message from my friend Daron Babcock that reminded me.

Daron isn’t just another tourist passing through North Idaho. Before entering philanthropy, he built his career in private equity. Today, he helps lead community transformation efforts at Stand Together, one of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations. His work has taken him into communities across America, helping local leaders build places where people flourish. He’s seen remarkable towns, struggling towns, and everything in between.

That’s why what he wrote to me about Coeur d’Alene matters.

Daron came to North Idaho to lead a Build Cities workshop on what healthy communities look like. Afterward, he and his wife spent a couple of days enjoying some of the places many of us call favorites. Harrison. Anthony’s. Ten/6. Mineral Ridge. Panhandle Cone & Coffee.

A few days later, this text showed up on my phone.

“There is a particular kind of fatigue that comes from meeting good people all day. Not the fatigue of being drained, but of being filled past your ordinary capacity. That’s what the Build Cities workshop gave me: room after room of people who think seriously about their towns and love them without irony.”

Then he described what so many of us are fortunate enough to experience every day.

“Coeur d’Alene doesn’t ease you into its beauty. It simply presents itself, all at once, and you understand immediately why people who live here start every sentence with some version of ‘you have to see it to believe it.’”

He continued:

“I kept thinking about Genesis, the part where creation is called good before anyone is there to notice it. The lake doesn’t need witnesses. It’s good regardless. We just happened to be there for it.”

He loved the local businesses too.

After lunch at One Shot Charlie’s in Harrison, dinner at Anthony’s earned another visit the following evening.

“Dungeness crab stuffed mushrooms, clams, fresh walleye, the kind of meal that rearranges your opinion of what a small-town dinner can be. We liked it enough to go back the following night, which should tell you everything.”

Breakfast at Ten/6 made the list as well.

“A little New Orleans-style place with biscuits and gravy called the S.O.B. that has no business tasting that good this far from Louisiana.”

And after hiking Mineral Ridge:

“We ate slow, walked it off on the Mineral Ridge trail, and were flattened again. This time by ridgelines and the water.”

But after all of that, what stayed with him wasn’t the scenery or the food.

It was you.

“Here’s what I keep returning to, though, more than the lake or the crab or the trail: it was the people.”

“Every single interaction, at the workshop, in restaurants, on the trail, carried the same current of unguarded kindness.”

He noticed something many of us probably walk past every day without thinking.

“American flags on porches, in yards, like nobody had gotten the memo that this is supposed to be complicated now.”

Then came the sentence that stopped me.

“It left my wife and me a little homesick for something we didn’t know we’d lost. Not a place exactly, but a disposition. A way of being that this country used to wear more openly.”

And finally, the line I hope every person in Coeur d’Alene reads.

“You didn’t just show us Coeur d’Alene. You showed us what it produces in people, which is the harder thing to show anyone.”

As someone who has spent much of my life trying to build this community with so many incredible partners, those words mean more than any compliment about our lake or our mountains ever could.

Our greatest asset isn’t our scenery.

It’s you.

It’s the volunteers who quietly serve. It’s the entrepreneurs who create opportunity. It’s the teachers, coaches, pastors, business owners, artists, civic leaders, and neighbors who choose every day to make this place a little better than they found it.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because generations before us decided to build Coeur d’Alene instead of simply consume it.

Now it’s our turn.

Let’s continue supporting local businesses. Let’s mentor young people. Let’s know our neighbors. Let’s volunteer. Let’s welcome newcomers. Let’s build the kind of city our children will be proud to inherit.

And let’s never forget that sometimes it takes an outsider to remind us what home really looks like.

If you’d like to hear Daron’s full workshop on what healthy, flourishing communities look like, you can watch it free in the Build Cities Library where the platform serves as a way to connect with your neighbors around projects they are working on:
https://tinyurl.com/3bed42z6