talk of a summer holiday has been bubbling up more and more at our dinner table of gluten-free and grass-fed.

i’m drawn to lands shopping mall-repellent, where starbucks doesn’t punctuates every corner and alley, and whole foods actually means food from the ground, tree, farm or local, non-have-to-mortgage your house market.

for at least one week i’d like a boulevard of conifer pines in exchange for blow dry bars and gel manicures.

give me an unpopulated, open, blue lake, and i’ll give you a girl on her best behavior {profanity NOT included.}

my first true lake experiences were my high school, spring break debaucheries on lake havasu; thongs and tops typically optional—and i’m not talking “shoes.”

a week of banana boat spf {2}, zima in the can, george strait and neil diamond cd’s galore, chili con carne out of the can, and a body of water so crowded and dirty i’m still in disbelief my friends and i never contracted ecoli or hepatitis………or “motherhood” for that matter.

what we lacked in promiscuity we made up for in folly and play.

playing cards, reading anne rivers siddons, watching the pirate movie for the 500th time, re-enacting “the happy ending” scene, and making the inevitable {hopefully burned} home movies of 8 girls dancing around singing “standing outside the fire!“—still such a great song!

there’s something about a lake that feels a bit less pomp and circumstance than life say, at the sea.

the whites don’t have to be starched, the collar need not its pop, a bare foot is appropriate attire for a meal lit by candlelight.

california may be foremost known for our sandy beaches and pacific blue, but good grief, our beautiful lakes can give the surfers a run for their money any day.

one of my favorite memories is my dad teaching me how to fish at bass lake.

just me and him and an empty bucket……i couldn’t bring myself to “bait” the line.

and the whole idea of hooking a fish made me cry, shoulder-shaking, nose-running, peace erupting tears; my dad easily succumbed to letting me knock it in a beach chair, holding my baitless pole in the water.

this was the weekend i discovered vegetarianism.

then there was the summer i took my broken heart and drowned it all the way to the bottom of june lake.

i swam and swam and swam, dived and dived and dived…until the constant shards of glass, lodged in my throat from a shocking divorce, softened into more manageable, occasional lumps of coal in my stomach.

more helpful than time on the couch or a prescription drug, my time underwater hid the noise of my raging screams and camouflaged any tears.

but per my originial memory the lake is more of a happy, social, spread-the-good, not the grief, place to commune.

there’s something about a boat ride at dawn, with the ones you love, that brings out the truth serum in me.

along with the mascara and designer shoes, rigid, protective walls and insulating egos are shed; left at the last turnpike before meeting the road for the lake cabin.

and i can’t think of anything more romantic than a dockside for two, hunkiest in hand, a homemade meal under the stars, with the ducks and fireflies playing sweet harmony for a post-dinner slow dance.

anyone else lusting a little lake life too?

what are your favorite’s?

do you go fancy nancy? or are you the camping type?

this is my official throwing it out to the universe…i’m thinking somewhere in the south this year.

last one in is a rotten egg….