Skipping Stones

This summer has been a little short on camping, because of various things (trips to Colorado for all the boys, a wedding, a very sick (now better) dog, having to pay for college) but we did manage to go up to Kyburz for a few days and stay in the cabin and play in the Silver Fork of the American one day, and up at Lake Tahoe another day. (Then later we squeezed in a few days at Standish Hickey.)


While we were at the swimming hole on the Silver Fork, I got into my old routine of finding skipping stones for my boys. I love filling my pockets with the hot flat rocks and walking back to the beach clinking and clanking. (The hot rocks in the pockets are especially nice when the water is ice cold, and one has just been in.) I was remembering how I used to do this at Standish Hickey for Will & Satchel (above right with their friend Randy) - it made me miss them. Then I started to think about how the tradition & skill of skipping stones gets handed down. About how my father (top photo) taught my brother and me. About the family legend that my dad skipped a stone all the way across Lake Shasta. (Hah!)


Now Carson has been skipping stones for a few years, and this year I taught Reed. I always like to imagine the river floor on the other side of the beach, and how it must be literally paved with good skippers. There's something so satisfying about watching a rock defy gravity and skip across the water - counting how many times it skips - trying to make it to the other side...

And I love how all these rocks, skipped across the water, connect us to the past as well.