McCall, the Payette, the North Fork, and the Rest

Like usual, we didn't take our camera with us to McCall (which is in Idaho, for you non-potato-farmers out there). Because we're doofuses who don't care about our children, or preserving memories, or about posting on blogs. None of that matters to us, harumph.

I wish we had for one freaking time remembered the camera, though, because it was a weird trip, and I'm not sure how to make sense of it.

We stayed at my Grandma and Grandpa Davies' cabin there, a 1960s construction with a pretty good expanse lakefront and property up the wazoo leading to the back road. There are cabins on the property and huckleberries and hummingbirds--in the summer anyway--and it's a beautiful but run-down place now. I've never stayed there without some of the insanely massive Davies clan around, and it was odd to have my grandparents' presence everywhere in that house (like, as in, it seems virtually untouched for the last five years), but my grandfather passed on and my grandmother doesn't live there anymore. My dad and his bajillion sisters and brothers visit and care for it now, but there's definitely a sense of waiting looming over that house.

It was weird to sit on the shore of Payette Lake, the mountains' blue forestcover hooded in clouds, "bullying the sun," as Addie puts it. The water was still and glassy until the rains hit, and they lasted all of our second day there. I've only ever been in August, when it looks like this:



so it was strange to witness McCall's transition from winter to spring: cold, moody, dark.

We went ice skating, which I'd never done before there, and went to the Gold Fork Hot Springs (also new to me). And this all happened meanwhile:

I broke into unexpected sobs throughout, mourning my family and the happiest of my childhood days, all different now.

I relaxed, feeling months, maybe years, of stress slough off. I'm not sure why this was. Maybe that place is magical, as I've always thought?

Best of all, I fell in love with my daughters, marveling at how much easier it is to travel with them now that they are grown, enjoying their banter and chatter and laughter, soaking in their preciousness.

I survived the stomach flu and Eric having the stomach flu.

I hung out with my mom on her birthday, talked with my stepdad about his radiation treatments, asked my Dad about McCall and its history, his history there, checking closely for signs of his Christmas Day stroke but not able to pick out much at all.

And that was in about three days.

It's good to be back. I feel renewed, ready to finish the studio remodel, happy to be having this lazy summer time with my girls, ready to read and sew and whatever else, and to work some too.

This doesn't make any sense, this post, does it? Oh well. It can be like life, then, and we can just shake our heads at it and move on to the next thing.