The Place That Made Me
Born and raised - a rare gem. My mom was still ice skating on Payette Lake with me in her third trimester. My most famous baby picture has my older sister and me being measured against my dad’s current catch, a steelhead salmon ranging somewhere between the size of infant and toddler. My bedroom was painted with a mural of huckleberries - as big as my five year old fist.
As children we were ordered to swim laps to the No Wake buoy one hundred yards out to ensure our strokes would carry us through rapids. Our favorite beach toy was a twelve-foot-long, two-and-a-half-foot-diameter log—the log. Launching ourselves from one end, we propelled the log miles up and down the Ponderosa Peninsula, interrupting momentum to roll each other off the log, giggling. We had foot races along the bottom of the lake, pinned down by the heaviest rock we could find. Afterwards we would snack on fresh berries as venison steaks and potatoes sizzled on the grill.
As summer faded into autumn, fires became frequent. School began. The faces that welcomed you in preschool evolved into the people you learned to swing with, who tattled on you, your first crush, your first sleepovers, your first drinks, your first co-workers, your first kiss, your first breakup, your dysfunctional family, your best friend’s rapist, the worst people you know. The same adults have been observing you the entire time, becoming family, gossips, small-town tyrants, unavoidable, overbearing, and unwelcome.
The magical childhood became unpalatable. There was no future there. The kids that stayed became bar tenders and alcoholics. Anyone with ambition left. McCall became Thanksgiving, and Christmas, maybe a long weekend in the summer. Visits fluxed with the tourists and the second home owners.
Home became wherever you stayed longest: the house shared with university friends a day’s drive away, then an island on the other side of the world. Mountains were traded for city culture, rivers for oceans. Nothing felt familiar, and forever you are an outsider.
Committing to the place and making friendly connections buffer against the sense of alienation, but the eternal yearning for something more lingers. Something felt on backpacking trips, in the uphill trudge, suffering with no purpose other than to be, to experience, to move. I craved the climb and found solace in the mountains -a very different mentality than a beach bum.
I wanted my life to return to the landscape of childhood: the uphill climb, the cold dip, the people who understood wandering into the wilderness for days on end and responded not with confusion, but recommendations. I no longer wanted to build a community from scratch. I needed the one that already knew me. I needed my village.
So I returned home.
Time has passed; change is just as prevalent as stagnation. Last night, I ran through a field of fresh spring flowers as golden-hour light seeped through the trees. My eyes scanned the ground for morels and caught the huckleberry bushes beginning to bloom. I felt the warmth of the evening and knew the berries would come early this year—though the season would be short if we didn’t get more rain.
I wondered how far I could race on the bottom of the lake now.
