Ode to an Older Time: Chris Petterson

“I say I have a passion for life, and I do. I've lived an amazing life, and I'm still living an amazing life,” said local resident, Chris Petterson. “But, it’s not all roses. Everybody has difficult times in their life. And my philosophy is, that's what helps us grow, learn, and have something to teach… We have the opportunity to choose what we will do with those hard times. And if you choose to still look for all of the good that's around you, and the positives of what might come out from this, you get through it a lot easier. You make it through, and you're a lot stronger.”

Petterson said she has lived along the Kettle River, near the Canadian border for the last 30 years with her husband, Chris. “He's Christopher and I'm Christie; I was named after the ski term, ‘Stem Christie.’ I am so grateful they didn't call me ‘Stem,’” she joked. Petterson said the duo started a business called Petterson's Construction when they first moved to the area, and “people knew us as ‘Chris and Chris’” she added.

When asked what brought her to Stevens County, she responded, “I came to this area because my father was the Colville District [Forest Service] ranger and my sister and I grew up in this area. I was really close with my dad.”

Due to her father being a botanist, she spent a lot of time out in the woods with him learning the Latin terms for all the plants he classified. “They usually wouldn’t have people with the Forest Service stay in one place more than three years without a transfer. So, I have lived in a lot of places, but I am a western girl. I like the West. That’s what brought me to the area, and the beauty and richness of the wild attracted me,” she said. 

 Petterson discussed her “reverse retirement,” explaining, “A lot of people will buy their retirement home so they can go from there and travel. We bought our retirement place so that we could build it, which means we had to work. We found our place on the Stevens County side of the Kettle River on one of the scariest roads probably in Stevens County. It even has the nickname of ‘Rock and Roll Road.’ It was an abandoned county road that was part of the Sand Creek Rock Cut Road with straight rock cliffs on the east side and straight down to the river on the other side.”

She said that it used to be the original stagecoach road and she has found square nails around this historical spot. “Matney Beach sits across the river, and when the water levels are low, you can still see the ponds from the ferry that would take the stage cars in the river,” she said.

“Basically, we homesteaded the place, and are still homesteading. We were able to build quite an infrastructure; I have a nice little orchard, a vineyard, every kind of berry bush and my garden. It's just fun and it's still fun. We're still working on things, of course, and changing things; but it's been wonderful. I loved it because, in all my life, I wanted to find a place to live that had lots of rock, flora, fauna and water. And in that place, we have all the above. It's lovely.”

Growing up, Petterson talked about being raised in a family that loved books. “I’ll never forget, you’d go to grandma and grandpa’s house, and he’d have seven big, thick books opened up to where he was on, in each book, on the back of a davenport. He memorized a lot of things, a lot of poetry, and the Constitution. And, it just trickled down through all of the rest of our lives.”

She described her father growing up poor and perhaps in the wrong era because he had a love for all things dated. She remarked, “He should’ve been born at the very beginning of the century. I was raised with lots of antique woodworking tools, kerosene lamps, and we always had a team or two of horses. For hobbies, my dad would farm his place with the horses. He had a sawmill, and he would fell the trees on his place with the horses, and then he milled the wood and built his house up on Kelly Hill.” She said that she grew to love all things of the past like him, adding, “I didn't realize those things were antiques until I was older; they were just part of our living out there and growing up.” 

She still practices many of the things she learned from him, and commented, “I like the old ways of preserving food and baking bread; a lot of the things that a lot of people don't do any longer.”

She also shared a special “Father’s Blessing” that she received from him where he encouraged her to always be aware of the gifts and knowledge of others. She said he reminded her to be grateful for that, saying, “I always have… I was gifted with a passion for life and learning.”

Petterson said she has a son,a daughter, and nine grandchildren. She said, “Oh, it’s fun to see all of their interests and how they've picked up on some of the things that I've loved. They've taken off with some of the things that they love and introduced them to me; it's a joy.”

She continued, “My family is all over the place. So, not being around them all the time, I’m [still] with kids everyday.” The “kids” she is referring to are the students of the Orient School.  She described getting the job there, when her body needed a break after a decade of construction work with her husband, “In the Statesman-Examiner, there was an ad for a job opening with the Orient School District… I just tried, and I was excited that I got the job, and that’s where I am still. I've been there almost 20 years.”

She recounted the first time she went to the school. “It was a January morning. I walked up the steps of the old school and opened the door. They had a boiler system with radiators on either side of the front doors, and they're singing and clanging… It gave a different warmth, an old-fashioned warmth.” Smiling, she told of looking down a long bench in the hallway, “with coats and little gloves, and it was like I walked into a history book. Underneath the bench, there were little cubicles, and inside of each was a pair of ice skates. I'm not kidding.”

When the weather is appropriate, she said her husband sets up the ice skating rink. (He is an Emergency Medical Responder, firefighter and is on the extrication team of their volunteer fire department). She said that they take one of the bigger tanker trucks full of water from the local fire hydrant in town and come over and pour it, and by morning, it's ready. The kids are able to use it for Physical Education and recess. Petterson shared that she is also a volunteer Emergency Medical Responder for Fire Districts 3 & 8.  

When asked about working at one of the oldest schools in the state, she detailed, “Oh my gosh. I've always wanted to share knowledge, and I've always loved to learn… But I didn't know that I would work in the school system. I'm the administrative assistant and the district secretary. And, when you have a small school district, you do everything else. The Orient School is more like a family; we have three grades per teacher, all together in the classroom. It's a lot like schools used to be; it's wonderful to watch how the older children take care of the younger children and how the younger kids learn from the older children. And the staff, we’re just a family. I love working with kids. I might be there forever. Who knows?” 

Petterson said, “My husband and I, our children are grown and our grandchildren aren't close, but we're raising everybody else's kids as much as we can. Not raising them for them, but in support of them, in support of the kids. My whole philosophy for life is right there. I really believe that it takes a village.”

She quoted General Colin Powell when discussing her experience championing community and volunteerism, “One of the things that he said that hit me so hard – he grew up in New York, and in an area that was shady – he said, ‘If you know that one person cares about you, it makes all the difference in the world.’ And as an adult, he said, ‘I am where I am because of the village.’”

Petterson said she met Powell while volunteering earlier in her life in Utah. She explained that, while serving as director of Volunteer Efforts for the governor in 1997, they had the President’s Summit for America's Future and she was asked to go. “It was really an honor. What an experience. We had President Clinton and his wife, President Bush and his wife, President Carter and his wife. President Ford, Nancy Reagan, Vice President Al Gore, and Ladybird Johnson was even there,” she said. “It was surreal.”

During her time living in Utah in 1983, she helped put together “LoToJa” which is a bicycle race from Logan, Utah to Jackson, Wyo., spanning 215 miles. She was an avid rider and participated in the longest, one-day United States Auto Club-sanctioned bicycle race in 1993. She expressed, “I always had purpose in some of the crazy things that I did, because I always had a passion for giving.” This was reflected by the sponsorship rallied at this event, which has been a fundraising resource for the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, National Ability Center, Utah High School Bicycle Leagues, ALS Foundation, and Bike Utah, with contributions totaling almost $3 million to date.

She noted that she has always been athletic, and a “tomboy.” One of her favorite adventures was when she was 16, and manned a fire lookout tower with her best friend in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. At one point, the tower was struck by lightning, causing her friend’s hair to stand up and anything that was plastic to be “static-ed” to the wall. She recalled, “You could feel the hairs on your arms standing up. It smelt so strong of sulphur.”  

At one point, Petterson’s daughter said, “Mom, you have to write a book.” Petterson has started it, and shared a preview of an empowering experience she had with her father: “The first chapter is about… in those days, I could go to work with my dad sometimes, and we would take pack horses into the Wind River Mountains… We came to one place where it [the Wind River] flows down in this gorge. There's this funky wooden bridge that went from side to side; no railings or anything. We're on horseback and my dad – he was quite the horseman – told me that I needed to pull the reins, make sure that they were even, yet with enough play that the horse could turn its head if it wanted to, but not enough that he didn't know that I was in charge. He said, ‘I want you to hold them in your hands and hold on to the horn. Pull your knees in tight. Sit tall in your saddle. Let your horse know you're ready to go, and then let him take you.’” And, they crossed.

She continued, “But on the way home, by the time we got to the gorge, it was dark. This time, my dad said, ‘This is different. I want you to loosen those reins, tie them around the horn. Don't touch them after that. Hold onto the horn.’ He said, ‘Don't you tell your horse to go. Your horse will go. And we're just going across it. They can see, and we can’t.’ And we did. It was crazy. My dad did crazy things. But I've lived to tell it.”

A number of years ago, Petterson said she was asked to speak at Orient School’s eighth-grade graduation. “I decided to speak about landmarks and I explained how pioneers and explorers would make the trails, and they'd leave landmarks, so the people coming behind them would have some idea of where they are,” describing the value of guiding and providing information to others. “It's important that you be aware of where you are and set your landmarks, so that others have some direction,” she asserted.

She summed up, “I've had such a wonderful life, and how can you keep those things to yourself and not share what you've learned? When it's a passion, how do you harbor that within yourself? You've got to share it.”

Petterson said she encourages everyone to volunteer in some way, saying “I don't believe there's anybody that doesn't have something from their life that they can share and give. There's so many opportunities, yet not enough people to do it.”