Lake Effect

Writer Alec Scott retreats to Oregon’s Suttle Lake to revive a family tradition with his closest friends.

- Alec Scott

I grew up near a lake, out east, and most years, my family— part Canadian, part American—would rent a cabin on a 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. On my first day staying on Suttle Lake in Oregon’s mountainous interior, I get nostalgic for my absent family.

Most days, my grandmother would do an hourlong 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 is paddling 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 over.

There 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 a heroic game of Capture the Flag)—the amplitude, the exaggerated agony and ecstasy, of even the most fortunate childhood.

Now, as an adult, I’m carrying on my childhood summer tradition with friends. They are the people who have helped my partner and I adjust to the West in our decade out here, opening their homes, their circles, their lives to us. We are seven, all nature-loving city-dwellers, our day jobs—writers, teachers, techies, radio producers—reflecting a certain slice of San Francisco Bay Area life.