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The long days of summer always seemed to be shorter when we went to Clear Lake to camp. The snapshots of life as they run through my head remind me of simpler days when it seemed that summer was too short and school was merely a distant memory. In those days my parents taught us the meaning of integrity and courage, and I will be forever in their debt.

Clearlake is the largest lake in California and is rated as one of the top five bass fishing lakes in the world. My four siblings and I would swim and water-ski, running barefoot to the water because the ground was so hot. If we ate lunch we had to endure a whole hour before being allowed to swim. I was sure that this rule was invented by my mother, who delighted in torturing us with tantalizing promises. We watched fireworks at Lakeport, ate sherbet as fast as we could so it wouldn't melt all over our hands, and washed it down with long sips of Orange Crush.

We would catch catfish with spare tires, throwing them into the shallows then wading out to retrieve them, always on the lookout for that Volkswagen sized monster that could be lurking beneath the pier. Our parents always told us that some of the catfish were so big they could swallow you whole, and everyone knows a parent wouldn't lie. Mostly, they just allowed us to be kids, and my memories make the word priceless seem inadequate.

By today's standards, some of the things my parents put us through would be considered dangerous. Society was less concerned with interfering with the family in those days, and because of that my parents were free to risk our lives with impunity. They were used to living life on the edge of danger and they always took us along for the ride. Whether it was hunting or fishing, or a midnight hike by moonlight on a mountain trail, we were never sheltered and learned respect for ourselves and our environment at an early age.

An example of what I am talking about is our frogging expeditions to Bloody Island Slough near where we camped at Clear Lake. Not many people knew about the giant bullfrogs that lived in the slough, and even if they did, it was a forbidding place. It was named Bloody Island because white men massacred a whole tribe of Indians there in 1847 over revenge for the killing of two white overlords who mistreated the local Pomo Indians. The slough was infested with snakes and rats, and insatiable mutant mosquitoes bent on draining our bodies of blood.

We would wait until about 10 pm on a moonless night to launch the old fourteen

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