The North Fork Interlocal Agreement meeting will be held Feb. 15 at the Glacier National Park Community Hall at Park Headquarters. Host will be Glacier Park, and MC will no doubt be Polebridge District Ranger Scott Emmerich. The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. and is scheduled to end at 1 p.m.

The main purpose of the meeting is to encourage open discussion among North Fork neighbors, private landowners and local, state and federal agencies.

Landowners are represented by the North Fork Landowners Association, the North Fork Compact, the North Fork Preservation Association, and the North Fork Coalition for Health and Safety.

Individuals may comment at the meeting, but everyone is encouraged to contact the group that represents them with their questions and concerns. They will then notify the agency involved so that they will be prepared to answer the questions or concerns at the meeting. This is especially important if the agency representative needs to contact other people to get the information requested.

The meeting is designed to provide an open exchange of views and factual information, not to provide a forum for long opinions or attacks. We may disagree, but it is inexcusable to be disagreeable.

I have no advance knowledge of topics that might be discussed, but some items are inevitable. They include plans by the Forest Service for logging, thinning and recreational uses. I hope there are no road closures in the works.

No doubt, there will be discussion about the North Fork Road. Somehow, weeds are always talked about, even if it isn't likely they will be eradicated or controlled in the lifetime of anyone now living.

Since the Border Patrol commander Dave Abegglen is no longer in the Border Patrol, perhaps we will meet the new local commander. I doubt they are doing anything new - certainly they have no road-building plans in Glacier Park.

The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation continues to manage state lands and will inform us of any new projects and progress on pre-existing ones.

I suspect that landowner reports will be pretty much the same as previous reports. The NFLA has a great social schedule. The Preservation Society still wants more wilderness and will continue their volunteer work on Forest Service trails. The Coalition still favors paving, and the Compact is concerned about development. If they surprise me with something new, I'll write about it.

In the next couple of weeks, I will be writing about North Fork history. The first will be about a family that was among the first to settle here and whose descendants are still on the North Fork. The second will be a rehash of the Madame Queen story because I just discovered new information this summer and I hope folks will be interested in the whole story.