7. Priest Lake

            If I could run away from all my problems and forget the world it would probably be alone or with my boys. And I would go to Priest Lake, Idaho. It is a place where I forget all my anxieties and let them gradually go in little ripples into that calm, beautiful lake. At this place I can watch the skies change and see the light from the changing skies transform the look of the mountains with their endless forests—and all of that reflected in the lake. All of the history of the world with its constant fear of Ragnorak, Armageddon or Day of Doom melts like the winter snows from the Selkirks into the lake. I have no fears that the world might end because here I know that it’s all just part of the spheres on a small but very significant planet in a seemingly lifeless universe. What difference could all my menial problems be in the scheme of all of this?

            The shores of this lake have very few homes. It is remote from human traffic and here I can see my tiny place in a much bigger whole. Some 40 years ago I first came here a teenager. I was working for the Youth Conservation Corps with other kids from all across the state of Idaho. Our job was basic forestry sorts of things. As teenagers we were only allowed to work six hour days but during those days we maintained trails, thinned forests, mopped floors, put fire pits into campgrounds and cleaned outhouses. I made new friends, some of whom I still encounter all these years later. Together we worked as much to help others as to help ourselves because even all these years later those campgrounds are all still there and I can still go there to see all of the universe from a tiny little corner of the world.

            So Priest Lake is a place where I have always felt at peace with the world and humanity and I found it early in my life. Since then I have camped there in the rain with my wife and newborn son. Later I hiked to upper Priest with my son where we encountered a bear in the night and it destroyed my water bottle. I have taken my youngest son there and picked huckleberries and swam in the lake. I have hiked from the northern part of the lake to the Canadian border where the trees are cut away. The whole place is beautiful, isolated and forces you to forget the rest of the world. You have to protect your three year old from the bears, right? You have to build that fire to cook, right? No time to think about anything beyond the woods, lake and stars. Part of me thinks everyone should go to Priest Lake just to experience it and part of me just wishes no one but me knew about it. I think nearly everyone who has been there feels the same, so it is a place to be thankful for.

6. Payette Lake

There is no denying that I am enamored of water. I love its rushing noises and its reflective qualities. Let me repeat, I love its reflective qualities. Perhaps my favorite lake—I can’t say that there are many lakes that don’t categorize themselves as favorites—is the one on whose shores I was born, Payette Lake where McCall, Idaho rests. It’s a large lake yet it is alpine at an elevation around 5,000 feet. It is, naturally, a glacial lake at the base of mountains and the end of Long Valley.

The Payette River flows out of the lake’s icy shores into the Snake River in the Treasure Valley. Payette lake water is never very warm even on hot summers, so the frequent swimmers on the sandy North Beach, or any other beach, will often have either an incredibly ruddy look as if sunburned (before they’ve even seen the sun) or an odd blue tinge highly pronounced in their hands, feet and lips. That cold has never stopped people from swimming in its waters. But most people wait for a hot August afternoon before they actually take the plunge. Others, especially children at church camps or scout camps, could care less how hot the air is. Sometimes when it’s snowing in June parents put a stop to those swims but otherwise summer swims are not predicated by heat.

            As a child I was just the same, except I lived a few miles away so unless I could convince an older relative to take me I usually swam on warmer days. I do remember exceptions to this. A few times I remember my aunt taking trips for night swims during the full moon at North Beach. Have you ever swum in moon beams?

            People have built huge “cabins” on the shores of that lake, “cabins” bigger than any home I have ever lived in (including entire dormitory complexes in college). They have likely been featured in Sunset magazine. Their owners ostensibly go there to relax, but when they have such huge complexes to care for I’m not sure it ends up being much beyond an investment. They are beautiful places and one of the unfortunate aspects of many of them is that they are on state land with a 99 year lease. So they don’t really belong singularly to their inhabitants anymore than they belong to me. I have admired many of these from off the lake as I’ve boated around the place.

            I love the woodsy-ness of it all. All those homes just seem to be like the sands on the shore waiting to blend with the detritus of the trees to form topsoil and something to continue, not interfere, with the reflective beauty that is Payette Lake, the remnants of a glacier for which I am thankful.

Rowing

Sometimes we row in tandem

And it’s smooth.

I live for that.

Sometimes I have to row alone

To carry you.

I can do that.

Sometimes you have to row alone

To carry me.

I don’t want that.

Sometimes we row against each other

And spin in circles.

I don’t get that.

Sometimes we row in tandem

And it’s smooth.

I live for that.

I live for you.

5. Hell's Canyon

Here's my next installment on things to be thankful for in America.

Hell’s Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America, takes second fiddle to the Grand Canyon, not because it lacks in spectacular grandeur, but because fewer people know about it and its access is more limited. The wild freedom of both canyons is amazing but I am especially thankful for Hell’s Canyon because there I can escape the every day and all of my life it has been fairly accessible to me.

As a young man I would hike into it, vaguely familiar with its history because I lived in the adjacent canyon of the Salmon River. I was oblivious to possible dangers of dehydration or snake bite, partly because where I lived the climate was similar and partly because I was young and stupid. The beauty of the canyon from the peak of Heaven’s Gate is truly awesome and most of that melts away as you descend into the canyon afoot. It becomes more intimate, at first wooded and then brushy and then simply grassy until you approach the Snake River.

The designation of wild and scenic river has always baffled me with the Snake River at this point because prior to even entering the state of Idaho the river has been dammed, but here in the canyon it truly is scenic and it regains much of its wild nature that man has attempted to snatch from it.

I had never actually taken a jet boat ride into the canyon until well into my middle age and now I have done it twice. Jet boat rides are always with a group of people and they are usually not locals because, like me, locals do not want to pay that much money to see their back yard. But both times I have gone I was taking British friends to see what I consider one of the wonders of the United States. Even with the tourist crowds of a jet boat (always small and intimate groups), I have found that at the stops people will hike up a stream and leave the others or they swim in the river and let their thoughts escape the modern trappings we have given ourselves. My hope is that the canyon retains its wild character forever and that the only exploitation it ever gets is the few tourists of the adventurous type hiking down into it on a Bear Grylls adventure or the more moderate type taking a jet boat trip into its wilds where they all can experience a getaway and a reunion with themselves that reminds them of the sublime and our individual part in that much larger whole. If you want a canyon experience with little key chain trinkets you can always get that in Arizona…