Less Early Days

My childhood is a rather foggy stream of summer bike rides, camping, swimming, hiking, boating, and playing in the snow. We were a very active family along with a lot of other fire fighters' families and took fine advantage of the great outdoors. I remember great times at Priest Lake during the summers and eventually during the winter when we started snow camping. My brother and I both took swimming lessons at a house right around the corner from home. My strongest memories from that are trying to tread water while holding bricks at head height and that my brother always (and still does) sank like a rock. It seems like he always had stomachaches afterwards from desperately gasp swallowing air whilst flailing madly to stay on the surface. Although I still flip him off his tube into the water every summer, his swimming is no longer flailing and I am usually the one that ends up gasping and dying as he retaliates. Someday I'll learn, but who else will help his kids learn to take him down? But I digress, the annual float trip will take up it's own entire website. Back to Priest Lake. Our parents used to set up this old, dark green, canvas tent. I think it came from the army? They would build a big fire and place several large irons bars in there until they were glowing red hot. These would be placed in the sand in the middle of the tent then doused slowly but continuously with water until the inside of that tent was an exhilarating and terrifying steam monster that would suddenly belch out a bunch of screaming, sweating adults who would dash madly into the lake seemingly in fear for their lives. Us kids weren't allowed in there for very long until we were older but we loved hiding in it after it cooled and telling ghost stories in the near pitch black. I can still smell that damp, earthy canvas and hot metal.