Diamond Lake, or, Mosquito Land

We have few traditions, my family. Besides guilt, the neighborhood Christmas eve party and starting businesses, we don't follow many things year to year. With one more exception: Diamond Lake. We've been going to Diamond Lake forever. We all learned to ride our bikes there. We know the history of the lake. We recall with sadness when the algae blooms made swimming impossible. We all hated when they drained the lake and then filled it with chemicals to kill the invasive Chub. We remember these things b/c they are a part of our history as well.

Zach finally entered that history.

We only stayed for a few days. My parents are up there until Wednesday, but we decided to take what we could and head south for the weekend. It took a lot of self control to not spend the entire time filling him in on all the trips he hadn't been a part of. We did OK.

I only wish we could have been there longer. With fewer bugs. The mosquitoes made us abandon my parents and head back down Mt. Thielson and then hike the hwy 90-minutes on foot back to our cabin. Also tiny gnats destroyed our bike trip around the lake. We tore through clouds of them. Thousands of their little bodies blinding us as we pushed through onto the next cloud.

So fewer bugs. More time. But hopefully this won't be the last time he's out there with us. And it's kind of exciting that he's been folded into one more piece of our family.