When I was a young kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old, my family would drive across Washington state to Loon Lake, which is just north of Spokane (Spo-KANN). While we were there, we slept in a trailer next to a boathouse on the lake, and would take a rowboat out on to the water to go fishing.

Summers in eastern Washington are hot. I think I sunburned my shoulders and back fairly badly one day when I fell asleep for ten minutes laying on an inflatable raft in the water.

I remember the green slimy bottom of the lake squishing through my toes. And trying to catch sunfish on hooks baited with sticky red salmon roe that came out of a jar. The only other fish in that lake were mud-colored catfish, who had big black eyes and long strange whiskers. I still remember that pickled fish egg smell.

And the smell of the high, dry grass that grew all around the camp site. It was spicy, like licorice. Filled with what seemed like hundreds of crickets, who would just jump on to your body. I wasn’t afraid to catch them in my hands.

I was afraid of the june bugs, which were as big as walnuts and clicked loudly as they flew blindly into whatever happened to be nearby. Horrible creatures. They reminded me of the gold beetle pocket watch my grandpa had given me, whose wings splayed open to reveal the face and hands.

At night, a train would pass on the tracks that were about thirty yards from our trailer. It was incredibly loud. One night while we were at Loon Lake I had one of those dreams that stays in you for a lifetime. I was on the playground at school and there was a forest nearby where I saw four white silhouettes walking, like ghosts. I opened my mouth and tried to scream but no sound came out, so then I struggled to wake up and it seemed like forever that I just tried to yell so that someone else in the trailer would come wake me. But it was all in my head, and then the train came by and I was awakened, my paralysis broken.

The people we were with who owned the boat house had a powerboat too, and everyone took a turn waterskiing — except me who was still afraid to swim. I think I tried a couple times, but always sank right into the water immediately.

A few times we took the boat across the lake to the other side. Some friends of my parents lived there. They had a huge house and a daughter a few years older than me whom I was expected to play with. I remember that she had numerous Barbies and other toys, and one of the games she liked to play with me involved us taking off our shirts and pretending to kiss. Heh.

I don’t know how many times we went camping out there, maybe three at the most. But for some reason the smells and sounds stay with me, the way it was always hot, the way the loons would laugh in the morning, the giant electric bug zapper that crackled and popped at dusk.

My parents never took us to Disneyland, and I have a feeling that going to the lake was probably a hundred times cheaper and a million times better.