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.