Cascade Paddle Club Canoes, camp, and the same good company.

From the boxes

August 2006, when we still thought we were the new ones

A recovered report from the summer Tom was twenty-eight, Brick was still Brick, and Nick had hair he has since misplaced.

Portrait of Tom Written by Tom · 19 August 2006 · Cedarkettle Lake

Three younger fellows camping with canoes in 2006
Brick, Nick, and me. We thought this was a long time into the club. We were early.
Two younger men canoeing in orange PFDs
Nick in the bow, me in the stern, vests that look dated now and were not optional then either.
Younger Brick cooking over a campfire
Brick’s beard was darker. The skillet was already the skillet.
Younger fellows with a canoe on a trail
The carry we still do. We complained more. We were younger, so we were allowed.
Younger fellows with coffee at a misty lake
Morning. The lake has not changed as much as we have.

Brick found this one in a sleeve labeled, unhelpfully, “AUG.” I wrote it on the drive home, in the tone I used when I still thought I might be the youngest man in camp. I was not. I was twenty-eight. Brick was thirty-two and already running the fire as if he had been born beside it. Nick was twenty-five and taking notes on a legal pad, which should have been a warning.

Cedarkettle was glass until it was not. We had the green Old Town — not yet as scuffed — and Brick’s Royalex, which he would later eulogize and then replace with the Prospector without eulogizing as much. The vests were the orange ones that photographed like a safety poster. Pete would later make a religion of nicer PFDs. In 2006 we just put them on.

We portaged because we had heard there was a smaller lake, and because men in their twenties will carry a boat to prove they can. The trail was the same trail. The complaining was louder.

Evening: fire, a cheaper beer than we buy now, Brick cooking with the confidence of a man who had already been in the club a dozen years. I mentioned Linda, I think, in the sense that I had to be back. Nick mentioned a girl named Kate. Some things landed.

I am typing this into the site in 2026 with the photographs beside the keyboard. We look like ourselves, only more available. The lake is the lake. If you are filling later years, remember we were not always this age. The boats change slower than the faces.