Childhood Camping in the Mountains of Idaho

Circa 1962. My very first camping trip, that I can remember, was when I was four years old. We went as a family to Seven Devils Lake, Seven Devils Mountains, Idaho. A dirt road turns off the main north-south highway at Riggins, and climbs some way, way up. The road doesn't generally open until around the Fourth of July, due to the pile of snow the area gets, especially in the higher elevations.

The campground is at the Lake. To this day it is one of few that does not require reservations, nor a fee.

Fishing for me and my sister consisted of a stick with a piece of line attached to the end. At the other end of the line, a hook, and impaled on the hook, a worm. I guess we expected it to work. We didn't know any better. So, at age 4, I caught my first trout, with a stick, string, hook, and worm. And to even better that, my sister Sue caught her first, age 2.

The lake is not a big one - though it seemed pretty big at the time. Towering above the lake is a mammoth block of granite, un-named that I know of - but over the top of which sits Mirror Lake. While the rest of the family camped at Seven Devils Lake, my dad and a comrade climbed the block of granite, and descended to the lake on the other side. Upon return they yelled to us far below, and once back told of big trout.

Years later my dad went back to Mirror Lake, and this time I was his comrade. The trout had become even bigger. They looked like big bombs in the glass-clear water. But we could not get them to bite. At one point one turned to look at my bait, my heart stopped, but then the giant fish turned back to return his cruise of the shoreline. The "Mirror Lake Bombers" we called them.

Years later I would climb that block of granite again, not with my dad, but as a dad with my own children. We didn't drop again down to Mirror, but went on to Sheep, Hanson, and other lakes beyond. But every time I get to the top, and look down to Mirror, I am reminded of its beauty, and the black and white photograph of the lake, snatched by my dad and comrade on that very first trip. Beautiful now as it was then.

And I sometimes think back of when I was four, and my sister age 2, and how we caught trout with sticks and a line.