Skilak

I bet it's so beautiful back home right now. I am envious hearing about my brother's class reunion and how he and my sister-in-law hiked into Skilak Lake, the most beautiful place on earth with no exception. I remember camping at Skilak as a Girl Scout and the marshy excitement of bear tracks, and then how we wandered along the shore that lasted forever, where lake-driftwood and old fishing lures meant the chance to collect a handful of jangly jewellery. There were rotting salmon, which were a different kind of (bear) lure.

Camping with my family was always wonderful at Skilak; it was the first time I realised how the wilderness just never stops. Every time we cleared one lagoon on our hikes, eating peanut butter from tubes and hard salami and apples, climbing over bushes for hours, we'd hit another lagoon. Thirty, forty coves; they just never stopped.

The water made me think of pirates as a kid; it was the same colour as in tropical pictures I'd seen, bright blue like in this picture, but Skilak is so cold. It's glacial water. I want to go swimming in glacial water until someone tells me I'm being stupid, to get out before I get hypothermia, to get over to the campfire.

I haven't gone camping this summer.

(I got these pix from Google Images and they were taken by other people who are strangers)