The Way We Were

A visit to a lakeside lodge in Oregon with friends — and memories of family vacations past

I grew up near a lake, out east, and most years, my family, part-Canadian, part-American, would rent some ramshackle cabin or other on a pristine 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.

Most days, my grandmother would do an hour-long 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 cryptic crossword, or beavering away at her summer project book. Never good at sitting still, my dad would paddle 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 right over.

There also tended to be wild blueberries and mosquitoes in the mix, thwacking screen doors and cliff jumps, crying jags (the worst one brought on by bloodsuckers) and arms-raised euphoria after winning an epic game of Capture the Flag — the amplitude, the exaggerated agony and ecstasy, of even the most fortunate childhood.

I bring myself back to the here and now, where I’m currently experiencing a pang of longing for my absent clan.

Here is Suttle Lake, in Oregon’s mountainous interior. 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. It has views from its shores of three mountains — the pyramidal Black Butte, the evocatively-named Three-Fingered Jack and Mount Washington, with its distinctive, Matterhorn-like profile.

Now there are seven of us in this lakeside cabin. All nature-loving city-dwellers, our day jobs reflecting a certain slice of San Francisco-Bay Area life — we’re writers, teachers, radio producers, techies. They aren’t family, but they are the people who’ve helped us adjust to the West in our decade out here, opening their homes, their circles, their lives to us.

Sometimes on a trip like this, everything just comes together nicely. This was not one of those times. — nothing truly dreadful transpired, but things kept departing from the script I’d devised.

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 lake, and stock up at the local farmers’ market, grocery and butchers, and then we’d go to the resort, settle into the cabin, take a dip as the sun went down.

It was not to be. One of our cars breaks down in Bend, just over the Oregon border. While three of us accompany the car to a dealership, the other four circulate in Sisters, texting their food and beverage finds. Sounds like we’ll have plenty of the in-season Merrionberries, both loose and in jams. We reach the lake after dark, and although our cabin’s kitchen is now well-stocked, all of us are road-weary and agree to try the snack bar in the boathouse.

The Suttle Lodge is the latest of several to stand on this site, from the 1920s on, in the thick of the Deschutes National Forest — three burned down, one got damaged by a flood. A couple of years ago, the team behind Portland’s Ace Hotel bought the down-on-its-luck place and refurbished it, giving it a Scout Camp feel right out of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.

The mirror in the bathroom has birch branch surrounds; there are Pendleton throws on the beds and couches — roughing it, this isn’t. Inside the main lodge are carvings of bears and raccoons for banister finials, a bison head presiding from high-up on the Great Room’s walls. The woman who checks us in has tattooed on her forearm the latitude and longitude of the summer camp she went to as a girl. But there are urbane Ace Hotel-type touches here, too: in one corner, an old cabinet-ensconced hi-fi, with vinyl albums on shelves above; in another, a grey metal bar that offers a signature Old Fashioned.

The snack bar’s menu has the same mix of the down-home and urbane: here are lakeside classics (burgers, curly fries, soft-serve ice cream) prepared with some deftness, some sophisticated salads and sides — one of Portland’s top chefs, Joshua McFadden, consulted on the initial menu. I indulge in a hot dog with all the trimmings, washing it down with a dry rosé, and hear my first loon call of the year coming off the now ink-black lake.

We are none of us in the first flush of youth, and, by this point, we all have our particular ways of doing things. The next morning, we realize we have, between the seven of us, four different methods of making coffee. Some of us decide to spend the day reading on lounge chairs in a gazebo near the lake, some to canoe, others to do the three-mile hike around the lake. My car-mad husband rebuilds the back seats of his trusty old Benz, next to our cabin — each unwinds in his own way. For me, another summer first is accomplished when I stick a paddle in the water, pull it backwards, muscle memory executing the J-strokes needed to guide the canoe from the stern.

In the evening, after watching bats swoop about, picking off insects rising from an inlet off the lake, we assemble for the feast that’s supposed to be the weekend’s centerpiece. The barbecue on our porch struggles to reach the levels of heat we need, and all of us, pretty good entertainers and hosts in our own spaces, try to give each other enough leeway to do our respective things.

The resulting food is just ok — par-grilled vegetables, mealy corn, steaks that are raw within — so, sitting around the cabin’s round table, we largely ignore the food, instead trading wildlife sightings from the day past. I speak of the otters we saw, an adult otter helping to push sleek pups up onto a log, the better, it seemed, to watch the water skiers cavorting around the lake. Two who walked around the lake show photos of a pair of bald eagles they spotted (on the upside) and talk about the tumble one of them took over a protruding root on the trail (the downside). Something about the day on the lake — perhaps the Oregon whiskey one of us sourced — looses old memories from them, also, of camping trips past, of the first fish caught and the brother who perfidiously threw it back in before it could be paraded about.

We go for a fishing lesson the next day on a river, the Metolius, that sources some of its water from our lake. As well as giving clear instructions on how to cast, our guide, Chris Martin, a longtime coach of local baseball and wrestling teams, knows a lot about the area, its geology, past and present, and shares it in short, matter-of-fact sentences.

After a couple of hours of fishing, the lines whistling overhead satisfactorily but no fish rising to our colorful, insect-mimicking bait, we get sandwiches from a general store on the river, the 104-year-old classic Camp Sherman Store and Fly Shop, and eat them on riverside benches facing the store. There are tall Douglas firs and slender birch around us, two dogs tied to the decommissioned old gas pumps out front, a couple of crested blue-black Steller’s jays squawking from a tree above us, a monarch butterfly fluttering in a sunny patch nearby, the river burbling away.

Thus cued, Martin says he remembers a woman in a floppy hat from distant and exotic LA coming to the step of that store, in the 1950s, looking around her and declaring it the most beautiful place she’d ever seen. “I hadn’t traveled much then, I was just a kid, but I have now, and I think she just might be right.” We all look around us differently, seeing it through his eyes — and hers.

When we return to the lake, though, we find another of our number has taken a tumble on the same trail and cut her face. She’s a game and gutsy person, and handles it with her customary humor, but it’s nice to see, even so, the care her husband has lavished on her, in dressing her wounds. “Those’ll heal up just fine, babe.”

Our last supper comes together in near silence. This improvised meal is as big a success as the sweated-over, planned-out one was a flop. Someone makes succotash from the left-over corn, some tomatoes and bread become a panzanella, the last of the Merrionberries get used in a crumble and infused into a whiskey cocktail. The cabin has acquired that lived-in feeling they do, with towels and swimsuits drying on rails, with books and magazines splayed on the arms of the Adirondack chairs on the deck, a card from a trivia game we played one night lying face up on a counter in the kitchen: “‘If music be the food of love play on’ is from which Shakespeare play?”

We’re getting our groove at last, just in time for us to leave. For me, my family was with me the whole weekend; lakes conjure them up. My father was in me as I paddled, my grandmother when I swam (though I dunked my head, not having a hairdo to protect), my mother when I read a book on the beach. There’s something about a lake that resuscitates them, the sunniest hours of my youth. It is a lucky thing to have had a childhood you (mainly) enjoyed, a family you miss (still), together with a partner and friends who are not genetic family, but are dear, familiar. For all this trip’s mishaps and miscues, I’ll remember the group of them, faces turned upwards, watching the bats fly overhead, chatting away about this and that, as the stars became visible in a darkening sky.

Lake O’Hara Lodge, Field, British Columbia

Seven miles from the nearest paved road, this inn, constructed in 1925 from Douglas fir logs, overlooks an alpine lake in Yoho National Park. Only 250 humans are allowed into this valley per day, which means the hills are alive with wildlife such as bighorn sheep, grizzlies, and wolverines. The lodge is civilized but simple, with walls lined with photos of visitors past — including several members of the Group of Seven: Canadian landscape artists much loved north of the border. The kitchen pairs Alberta beef with British Columbia wines and bakes bread and pastries daily.

Sardine Lake Resort, Sierra City, California

Three generations of the Browning family have run this resort on a boating and trout-fishing lake at the foot of the Sierra Buttes since 1941. (Would-be swimmers must head to nearby Sand Pond.) Its individuated, chinked-log cabins are available for rental by the week, with guests congregating in the evenings in the lakeside bar and dining rooms.

Redfish Lake Lodge, Stanley, Idaho

An assemblage of well-appointed log cabins around a lakeside lodge, this resort, founded in 1929, has a full-service marina with craft ranging from pontoons — via canoes and kayaks — to paddle boards. Launches drop day-trippers at the feet of the twin, 10,000-foot peaks, members of the Sawtooth chain, that tower over the lake’s southern end. After a strenuous day of hiking, unwind with a drink in the old-timey bar, scoring tips from the outdoorsman bartender for the next day, then try the grilled Idaho trout in a dining room overlooking the water.

Flathead Lake Resort, Bigfork, Montana

This homey resort has a private beach dotted with sculptural driftwood on what is the largest lake west of the Mississippi. Its nautical- and Montana-themed cabins sit right on the water’s edge. Glacier National Park is a short drive away, as are the Swan River’s rapids, famous among rafters and kayakers. During the warm months, the nearby town of Bigfork programs festivals (cider, guitar) and summer-stock theater.

Lake Crescent Lodge, Port Angeles, Washington

Built in 1915 on a headland jutting out into Crescent Lake, this lodge’s classic dining room occupies a glassed-in porch facing the water and Pyramid Mountain, beyond. There are rooms with a similar view in the main building, and the lakeside Roosevelt Fireplace Cabins, named for Franklin Delano who visited in 1937, are ideal for groups.

A version of this piece appeared in the July-August 2019 edition of Sunset Magazine. It has been revised.

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