Living Across the River from Glacier National Park: A North Fork Love Story, A Man, His Cabin, The Views

Seeing a grizzly bear at close range is an adrenalin rush. Getting the chance to white-water raft on a wild and scenic river is something that should never be passed up. Capturing a moose or a herd of elk on film from close range allows you to share that experience with friends who have never or will never get the opportunity to see either one or the other, or both. How about the chance to hike to a high alpine lake in Glacier National Park where as late as August you'll discover that the last mile of that hike is through snow, and upon reaching the lake you'll see icebergs floating? Many people would be happy to have any of those experiences even once. For author Joe Novak, now a full-time resident of the North Fork Valley, across the river from Glacier National Park, those and many more experiences like them have become the norm in his life. This is his story of deciding to buy upon first sight a piece of property far removed from the comforts of civilization. He immediately fell in love when visiting ten acres that were for sale in 1995. It wasn't the ten acres that left him speechless, but the surrounding area. To the east he looked into Glacier National Park. To the west were the peaks of the Whitefish Mountain Range. Seven miles to the north was the Canadian border. Those ten acres were surrounded by literally millions of acres of National Park Service and national forest lands. This is the story of his journey, and the experiences, challenges, and difficulties of living on that land, eventually year-round. He has survived a forest fire and a near drowning to chronicle the people he has come to know, the seasons, the views, and the wildlife. It is ultimately a love story-his love of what is commonly known as the North Fork.

Joe Novak was long active in the rough-and-tumble world of Illinois politics, doing everything from managing campaigns to writing and producing direct mail pieces, and writing and producing radio and television ads. A somewhat controversial figure, in recent years he worked for a not-for-profit foundation that successfully pushed school choice for minority public school students in Washington, DC, and exposed abuses by not-for-profit hospitals through a daily blog that he wrote titled wherethemoneygoes.com. Many of his exposes were picked up by national media outlets. Along these lines, he single-handedly devised and executed a paid media campaign in 2008 in Chicago that resulted in a not-for-profit retirement community losing its tax-exempt status, by successfully arguing that it was being marketed to millionaires (some condos cost one and a half million dollars to purchase) as a way to live property-tax free. Once nominated for a Chicago Emmy Award in the category of investigative reporting, Joe-a husband, father, and grandfather-is now a full-time resident of the North Fork Valley, across the river from Glacier National Park, where he spends his time hiking, biking, rafting, cutting firewood, snowshoeing, reading, writing, and cooking. Thanks to digital cameras, he has also taken up photography.