A Few Days at the Lake
We drove north until the pines took over.
The trip began the second we backed out of the driveway. We started with fun road trip music, but somewhere around the first hour, we turned on an audio book – this time we enjoyed the full-cast version of the Harry Potter series – the car went quiet on its own, and the flat brown stretch of Texas highway gave way to tall trees and narrow two-lane roads. By the time we pulled up to the cabin in Broken Bow, the air had changed — cooler, greener, brighter, the kind of quiet that makes you notice how much noise you've been carrying without meaning to.
The story I tell most often is being on the coast — 30A, the Gulf, sand that stays in your shoes for days after you're home. But all water feels like home to me. Growing up on the East Coast and then in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, we were always around a body of water – whether it was the Atlantic Ocean, a freezing cold creek fed by spring water, the Arkansas River, or the beautiful lakes Oklahoma is known for. Water’s in my veins.
To kick off this Summer, we drove away from the coast, and into the trees surrounding Broken Bow Lake.
The Slowing
The first morning, nobody set an alarm. Lincoln was the only one up before the rest of us, standing at the glass door watching the fog sit low over the lake. I made coffee and carried it out to the deck and didn't do a single thing except drink it while it was still hot. That almost never happens at home.
The thing about leaving is you don't realize how full the days have gotten until you take all of it away. No drop-offs, no inbox, no running list of the next thing. Just a lake, my favorite humans, two dogs who couldn't believe their luck, and a long stretch of hours that belonged to no one in particular.
By afternoon, both dogs were splashing in the water. Lincoln walked straight in like he'd been waiting his whole life for it; Penny followed, because Penny would follow Lincoln anywhere. The kids swam until their fingers wrinkled and then spent time trying to catch a fish for dinner – I’ll forever remember my son’s excited voice shouting, “I got one! I got one!” He’s entering junior high next year, and I can’t help feeling like this is our last Summer of boyhood with him. We dried off on warm rocks in the afternoon listening to the water lapping at the rocks’ edge and let the day get long. Nobody checked the time once.
The Evenings
The evenings are the part I keep replaying.
We'd light the firepit before the light was fully gone, and then there was nothing left to do but sit in its glow.
Bare feet on warm stone. A playlist low in the background. String lights coming on overhead as the sky went from gold to deep blue to the kind of dark you only get this far from a city — where the pines turn into tall black shapes and the stars actually show up. Some nights we roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. Other nights, we just sat, enjoying each other’s presence.
One night we sat there a long while before anyone said anything. The pines do something to the noise. They absorb it, soften it, hand you back a quiet you forgot you needed. I don't know how else to explain it except that we all felt it at the same time, and none of us wanted to be the one to break it.
What We Brought Home
We came back with sandy paws – different than the white sands of 30s, a little rockier, grittier, but steeped in memories of my own childhood — and that loose-shouldered feeling that lasts about a week if you're lucky.
Growing up, water was always close — the Atlantic Ocean, creeks and streams in the Ozarks, the Arkansas River in Summer, beautiful Oklahoma lakes. The Gulf came later, and I fell hard for it. But the truth is, water was already in my veins long before 30A ever was. Broken Bow didn’t feel like somewhere new. It felt like a return to something I’d almost forgotten I missed.
I watched my son shout about that fish and my daughter explore the rocky banks of the lake, and I thought, “they’re building the same thing I’m still carrying.”
That was the part worth packing for the drive home.
