Ross Lake and the North Cascades

[Ross Lake, 1991]

When I was a kid I went on a few canoe trips up and down Ross Lake, which is in the North Cascades. Several such lakes were formed by dams put up by the public works projects back in the twenties and thirties. If you have a chance, the dams are worth a tour - they are filled with Art Deco touches like tile mosaic floors and brass hardware - much like the Panama Canal contol houses. I guess it represents lagress at the public teat, but they're good looking none the less.

Anyway, we would go canoe up and down this lake, which was about 30 miles long, over the course of 9 days. Canoeing is my favorite sort of outdoor travel because you can go to remote places, get away from everyone, and yet you can carry things like coolers and extra thick inflatable air mattreses, which makes for a nice isolation/comfort ratio.

On one trip, the weather was basically not nice, and so we spent the first 4 days canoeing into the wind and a 2 foot chop, which is no fun with 12 inch gunwales. At the bottom of the lake, we goofed off for a day and then headed back up the lake, at which point the wind and rain promptly turned around and we had to canoe uphill on the way back too. Somehow, this is a metaphore for life.