Priest Lake, Idaho has been my favorite place on this earth ever since I became old enough to choose favorites.
Tucked snugly in the woods just beyond Washington state’s eastern border, Priest is close enough to be easily accessible, while still far enough away from the big city experience to allow visitors to feel sufficiently unplugged. I learn something new with every visit, making Priest not only a lake above all lakes, but a sort of outdoor educational conduit for my own personal growth. Besides learning that my favorite place on earth boasts of more than seventy miles of shoreline ripe for recreation and relaxation of all types, the last few years I’ve come to understand that when you mix my family and friends with Priest Lake, laughter induced stomach aches, life lessons and interesting occurrences abound. Following is a selection of wisdom I acquired this past weekend spent lakeside:
Cheetos brand cheese puffs, always a good idea. Sitting on a pontoon boat with fifteen people who think watching a fast approaching lightning storm from the middle of the lake an ideal plan, not such a great idea.
When you hear the same song six times in the span of two days you just might start paying attention to the lyrics.
Routinely leaving at least one window open at your lake cabin is a good idea, especially in the case that minutes upon arriving at 11pm one of your friends decides she’s going to lock and close the front door, with all of the keys, cell phones and warm clothes tucked, and now locked, safely inside. As a side note, watching that same friend try to wedge herself through a window about 8 feet from the ground, Charlie’s Angels style, does prove quite entertaining.
Quoting SNL skits and movies like Zoolander, The Royal Tenenbaums, So I Married An Axe Murderer, and The Rundown can make an afternoon raft-lounging on the lake pass ever so quickly. So quickly, in fact, that you don’t realize until it’s too late that you could look the part of the lobster on the Long John Silver commercials without ever donning a costume.
Don’t argue with the birthday girl. It can only end in tears.
Biff remains a better name alternative than Clifford. Well, naturally.
Water in northern Idaho is still /take your breath away/ cold in June. But never does that deter the extreme lake fan from taking a pain staking plunge at midnight.
The deepest question of the weekend: “Do you think Ronald
Reagan really liked everyone calling him Ronnie?” My answer: Nah.
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...