LIFE JUST WOULDN'T BE THE SAME WITHOUT IT

I think I was around 10 years old. Give or take a few years. Too old to remember now and my only source of information from my childhood is gone. We were going to a place called Priest Lake...a new adventure. I can't recall who all went. I'm thinking me, Murray, mom, and I think the whole Arthur clan....maybe Kay and Scott and Steve.....anyway.....it was a long time ago... a different time, when things seemed simpler. It took forever to get there, actually only 5 hours or so, but when an 10 year old kid is on an adventure, it may as well been a lifetime. We made the turn into Elkins Resort and pulled into the past. Old log cabins, trees as tall as the sky, dirt roads, and nice people. I was too young then to notice the beauty of the water and the surrounding mountains. Didn't care at the time how many millions of years it took to grow into the paradise.....my heaven. We played in the water, we ran through the woods, we rode around on the logs that would one day become the swimming docks. We hung out in the "game room." Old pinball machines and a jukebox that played all of the songs from our youth. "The Night Chicago died" by Paper Lace. "Billy don't be a Hero" by....Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods(?) I think. "Witchy Woman" by the Eagles. Those songs that when we hear them today, take us back to that time. I met my first girlfriend there and drank my first beer. I met a girl who I thought I was in love with and would be forever, writing love letters back and forth, and even though I see her and her family once a year, I still consider a good friend. I swam the mile across the lake, starting a family tradition.

I took Kami there and she too fell in love with the place. For a long time it was just us, Kami, mom and me. Then Meagan, then Marisa, then Kyle. Murray moved away, yet every few years, the lake calls out to him and he shows up with his son , Ben.

Now a new generation travels the 200 some miles once a year to the place that my Grandma and Grandpa starting going to in the 50's. My cousins and their kids. People I only see once a year usually....at the lake. The place that beckons us. The place that we always go to even though there is a whole world out there we would love to see. The place we go "to soothe our soul." The times are different, more confusing. The people are different, more selfish. But the lake is, and always will be the same. Not physically, but mentally. It's the place we go once a year to relive the memories from our youth, and the place we go to make memories for our future. I suppose I will always go. Life just wouldn't be the same without it.

Darren Shoemaker

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I took Kami there and she too fell in love with the place. For a long time it was just us, Kami, mom and me. Then Meagan, then Marisa, then Kyle. Murray moved away, yet every few years, the lake calls out to him and he shows up with his son , Ben.

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a new generation travels the 200 some miles once a year to the place that my Grandma and Grandpa starting going to in the 50's. My cousins and their kids. People I only see once a year