I grew up near a lake, out east,
and most years, my family—
part Canadian, part
American—would rent a
cabin on a body of water not
far from the long border
between the countries.
Usually, the lake had a mix of
pines and maples around it,
mallards and mergansers on
it, the sky’s changing moods
reflected in it. On my first day
staying on Suttle Lake in
Oregon’s mountainous
interior, I get nostalgic for my
absent family.
Most days, my grandmother would do an hourlong
swim in the frigid waters, always keeping her head well
above the water so as not to ruin her hairdresser’s hard
work. I see my mother on a low chair on some dock or
other, wearing a colorful kerchief, working on her cryp-
tic crossword, or beavering away at her summer-project
book. Never good at sitting still, my Dad is paddling a
green, cedar-strip canoe about, with our black Labrador
for company—the dog curbing his natural enthusiasm
just enough so as not to tip the canoe over.
There tended to be wild blueberries and mosquitoes
in the mix, thwacking screen doors and cliff jumps, cry-
ing jags (the worst one brought on by bloodsuckers),
and arms-raised euphoria (after winning a heroic game
of Capture the Flag)—the amplitude, the exaggerated
agony and ecstasy, of even the most fortunate
childhood.Now, as an adult, I’m carrying on my childhood sum-
mer tradition with friends. They are the people who
have helped my partner and I adjust to the West in our
decade out here, opening their homes, their circles,
their lives to us. We are seven, all nature-loving city-
dwellers, our day jobs—writers, teachers, techies, radio-
producers—reflecting a certain slice of San Francisco
Bay Area life.
We have planned a road trip to Suttle Lake, a sand-
bottomed lake carved out of the Cascade Range by a
glacier some 25,000 years ago. It was named for a
wagon-train pioneer, John Settle, but a transcription
error, somewhere along the line, became permanent,
despite his descendants’ strenuous efforts to correct it.
I’d imagined that midway through the afternoon of
the second day’s drive north from the Bay Area, we’d
pull into Sisters, the congenial town nearest the lake44 JULY/AUGUST 2019 SUNSET