Santa, McCall, and the F-Word

A decade had come and gone since I’d last set foot in McCall, and almost two had slipped by since the days when the sleepy little lakeside town was my family’s weekend getaway. Yet there I was, unexpectedly, when an extended business trip kept me in Idaho for the weekend and I was offered the chance to tag along with my sister and her family on a McCall excursion.

McCall is a rustic little town deep in the mountains of Central Idaho. Its roots as a logging town are still visible in the culture there, though today it tends to find most of its revenue from tourists seeking lakeside recreation or winter sports venues. More importantly though, it was my home away from when I was a kid, and for that reason I was excited to go back for the weekend.

Driving up on Friday evening, the two hour road trip up Highway 55 was familiar and I remembered how much I enjoy driving in the mountains. The plummeting grades and cliffside hairpin turns are just made for those few of us left on earth who love a 5-speed transmission.

McCall was exactly as I remembered it, and no less exciting. My sister and I spent part of Saturday wandering around town. We window shopped, stopped at a Farmer’s Market, and enjoyed chai lattes in a little coffee shop downtown. On the shores of the very lake that had defined our childhood we talked about life, love, politics, and how many calories might be in the blueberry scone we just inhaled. We laughed as we talked about the days when we knew that Santa was real, but we didn’t know that the f-word could be an adjective, a noun, and a verb.

Life in McCall radiates a simplicity that is almost tangible and somehow I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy life was before I traded in pine trees for skyscrapers and crickets for sirens. But while those moments bring me peace and solace and a tasty hint of memory, I don’t suppose I’d want to go back. My sister has children of her own now and I loved seeing them building their own memories of this place. Life has been good to me, and I appreciate that I can look back and not be sad.

Our last night in McCall, the adults all got to enjoy cocktails by the fireplace in a lakeside condo which would have been unimaginable to those ragamuffin kids who used to catch frogs at the KOA and didn’t seems to mind that the only campsite left was right next to the port-a-crapper. Childhood memories are wonderful, especially when they’re good. It’s easy to get stuck on them, in fact. But a slight liquor buzz brought me back to reality as I remembered that being a grown-up is kind of cool too.

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This is me and my sister sometime in the late 80's, on a rock in Payette Lake, taken on a family trip to McCall.

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Twenty-something years later, same lake, same rock, same kids... Look Mom, we're all grown up! :)