Journeys: Fish Lake, Utah - Cabin

Monday, October 10, 2011

Fish Lake, Utah - Cabin

Hunter invited me to spend the weekend with him, Col, and his good friends Lisa and Jeanne at Lisa's family's cabin near Fish Lake. I've heard about this place for years and I've always wanted to check it out, but other plans have always gotten in the way. After a stormy week in Salt Lake with the first snow of the season in the mountains, this sounded like a perfect autumn getaway.

We left Salt Lake early Friday afternoon and after a couple of stops to pick up some beer and food, we were off to Happy Fish Cabin at Fish Lake in south central Utah. We arrived to a surprising amount of fresh snow on the ground as Fish Lake is at an elevation of almost 9,000 feet, and unloaded the car as fast as we could to get out of the cold.

I finally made it to Happy Fish

It looked more like January with the snow and icicles

I got a tour of the cabin and it was even more awesome than I could have imagined. It was rustic, cozy, and huge! I loved the giant windows in the living room area - it almost felt like being in a greenhouse looking out on all the cold and snow from the warm, comfortable cabin.

Beautiful deck

Too early for this much snow!

Hunter's favorite cabin activity

Hunter and I walked down to Fish Lake to enjoy the sunshine and take some pictures of the fresh snow and the yellow aspen trees. As much as I dislike snow, it definitely made for some very pretty scenes around the lake.

Aspen trees and fresh snow

Walking to Fish Lake

Fish Lake

Lisa is very familiar with the area from all the years her family spent at the lake, and she took us to a few viewpoints that made for some fun excursions from the cabin. Time in the cabin was spent cooking, drinking good beer, and playing fun games that Jeanne always seemed to win.

Lodge at Fish Lake

Me, Col, Hunter, Jeanne, Lisa, and Bailey!

View from Pelican Promontory at Fish Lake

Great view of Fish Lake

Standing above Fish Lake

Guess who found the hunting clothes storage bin at the cabin!?

A huge thanks the Hunter, Col, Lisa, and Jeanne for a fantastically fun and relaxing weekend. Now I understand why everyone loves Happy fish so much!

Bailey taking a sun nap

Col, Hunter, and Bailey

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess