Forty-two Minutes from Home

If you follow Dead Indian Memorial Road up, up and around for about 15 miles you’ll come to a sign that says Howard Prairie with an arrow pointing right. If you turn there and meander around for another three or four miles you’ll come to a sign that says Hyatt Lake Resort with an arrow pointing left. If you turn there and drive past the office, and past the pinewood pizza restaurant with its big deck overlooking the lake (closed till the weekend), and past the orange snow plow and the tiny store and the sink where fishermen clean their catch, you’ll come to some lovely cedar cabins. Nancy and I are in #45.

We drove up two days ago to work in peace on a couple of gnatty projects, hoping beyond hope that the pre-Labor Day crowds wouldn’t be too boisterous. Turns out we and the occupants of an RV with California plates are the only ones here. We have this whole glorious pine-mountain lake to ourselves!

It’s 72 perfect degrees with the gentlest breeze and a few spun-sugar clouds. And it’s all OURS.

Nancy saw an otter in the lake just before sunset last night. There are red-tailed hawks, osprey, deer everywhere you look, and about a million chipmunks, but other than the cry of a loon that woke me this morning, there is no sound. No television. No radio. No internet (except on the front porch of the restaurant). No voices other than our own. Even my cell phone doesn’t work up here.

I was uneasy with the quiet at first. Uneasy that the computer I’m addicted to – my lifeline to the world – was rendered impotent in this mountain paradise. Uneasy that I couldn’t reach anyone and no one could reach me. The first night neither of us slept very well. Nancy hardly at all. She has the loft bedroom with steep-as-a-ladder steps, just as at home she sleeps in the attic. She says attics and lofts are magical -- something to do with Peter Pan.

But last night, for the first time in years, we both slept straight through. Ah, such gratitude!

Tomorrow we will wind our way back down to Ashland. Judy will return from Portland. And life will resume as usual for We Three on B. But today I will relish the beauty of this place, the silence and the solitude, all just 42 minutes from home.