Best of Beth Ashley: Wistful for idyllic days of Tahoe summer vacation

Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2007.

Last night, I dreamed we were going to Tahoe again.

It was an anxious dream, triggered no doubt by news of the recent fires.

This is the time of year when my husband and I and five sons left our Greenbrae home to spend all summer at the lake.

Packing to go was a chore, offset by the joys of anticipation.

We piled into our cars — his and mine — and wheeled off up the highway, past the Milk Farm and the Yolo causeway, into the hills of Auburn, through Emigrant Gap and Donner Summit, loving each milestone, spirits high as we turned toward the lake.

As soon as we parked at our cabin, the kids spurted off, leaving my husband and me to unpack the bathing suits, the deck chairs, the boxes of food.

Every summer was the same.

By cocktail hour of the first evening, neighbors had dropped by in welcome. The pressures of life simply drifted away.

The days were idyllic: lazy breakfasts, afternoons at the beach, evening gatherings rich with jokes and good food.

I still have recipes from the old potluck suppers.

Those happy years are long gone. My husband has died. So has one of my sons.

But I remember each hour as though it were yesterday, and my throat grows tight when I think of the fires.

I still own my cabin, but no longer go there. It has become a year-round rental, waiting for the day when one or more sons decides to retrieve it and go there again.

That may never happen. Maybe they, too, have moved on — past the carefree hikes, the days of water skiing, the musical nights at Meek’s Bay.

They could never collect again the mobs of friends who used to descend on our cabin, to sleep on the deck or join us for macaroni dinner.

Our lives have evolved, and carefree is no longer the operative word.

Unease had even marked our last few summers.

The lake had become more and more crowded with vacationers.

The road to Tahoe City was a traffic jam. Safeway was a mob scene.

In my Lake Tahoe dream last night, I was writing grocery lists by the hour, and making mental diagrams about where each boy guest could sleep.

One summer we all caught the chickenpox. The fevers and itch sidelined me for days.

The last summer, my husband was ill, and we drove to the hospital at Truckee every week for chemotherapy.

I remember the unreality of those drives: the sadness of our errand, contrasting with the blueness of the sky, the bold white clouds, the stark green of the pines that lined Route 89.

My memories, it turns out, are mixed.

I hold on with introspective smiles to thoughts of reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stories to baby Guy and Gil, of Guy as a tiny kid playing Batman, of the three big boys and our exchange student Axel inhabiting the natural surroundings like Indians of old. (Complete, of course, with pirated beer.)

I feed on the friendships we forged throughout the long, sunlit days. We occupied each others’ lives in ways that rarely happen in the intense routines of Marin. Those friends are my friends still; we post updates about each other’s kids.

When I first heard about the fires at Lake Tahoe, I instantly feared for the safety of my cabin. Then — reprieved — my heart sank for those who were losing theirs.

Then I asked myself what I would feel if mine were lost, too.

And the pain was enormous.

The Tahoe days were among the happiest of my whole life.

Much of what I treasured has already been destroyed in the passage of time.

But my cabin — though I don’t go there any more — still carries an irreplaceable trove of memory.