When I was a kid, we spent our summers in a cabin in the Belt Mountains near the town of Monarch. All the wild country was national forest preserve land, and someone built this cabin long-long ago, with a 99 year lease on the land. It was a beautifully built old cabin, with an outhouse out back, and more sleeping quarters out in a bunkhouse.
Potbellied stoves kept the cabin and bunkhouse warm, and that meant a fire going in the morning until about July. We slept in brass beds, and used old down comforters. The sound of Belt Creek was right outside our window. It was mostly glacier-melt, down off the mountains, but during the day we swam in it, in a wonderful swimming hole under a bridge. We had a huge dog, a St. Bernard, and he loved cooling down in that creek.
Totem Lodge was only a summertime cabin. The snow was so high in winter, you'd not be able to live there, and you'd never be able to stay warm. We'd have breakfast, and that would be the last Mother would see of us until we got hungry! We'd be exploring the woods, making forts, hiking the boulders behind the cabin. We became good climbers, good swimmers.
A nearby gravel road led up to Camp Rotary, and dotted along the road were family cabins, almost always filled with other 'summertimers'. We knew them all, and had an endless supply of friends. In the evening, after dinner, we kids would walk along the road, and visit every family. Of course, we'd spent most of the day with everyone's kids at the swimming hole, so sometimes we stayed for dinner. Those days, you'd knock on a door and walk in, you were so welcome.
Every 4th of July we got together with Bobby and Kathy Pearson, their's was the second cabin from us. Their mom went to school with my mom, so those ladies would visit. Someone always had extra hot dogs and potato salad, and they'd just bring the works down to the bridge, over the swimming hole. We kids had a game called 'walking the rocks' where you'd hop from one rock to the next to see how far you could go out in the creek. We could play in that creek all day, pulling rocks out of the sand to see what was underneath. Skeletons, little insect skeletons were under them. And we layered rocks to make a dam - imagine changing the route of water! We felt pretty proud of ourselves.
Another frend brought her goat and pet deer to the swimming hole, to join all of us and our big St. Bernard. That was the most unusual sight, what a conglomeration. People driving up the road to Camp Rotary would stop, check out the animals, and figure 'Yes, there really is a deer there playing in the water with those kids!'
Come nightfall, families would share their sparklers, and we kids had a ball. You know, in those mountains, I don't remember anyone setting off loud fireworks. It was a quiet place, and it would have disturbed the peace. It was like we all knew what a special place we had.
Besides, in those mountains, an echo was an ECHO, was an ECHO, was an ECHO!!!
