This was exactly what I had dreamed of: seeing the chipped, blue nail polish of my toes just slightly above me, framed by the mountains in the background, and the coolness of being suspended on a deep body of water, within an inflated pink flamingo doughnut and a beer dangling from my hand.

Somewhere on the banks of Storm Lake my husband was casting – I could hear the rhythmic whir, then the quick tightening of the line. Gabe the dog was patrolling the shore with great intensity and joy, exhausting himself by diving into the water to retrieve branches. The afternoon shower that had just swept through was gone, driving all but the determined and the already-camped-out away back to Philipsburg or Anaconda. On the way up we passed trucks slowly descending one gorged out piece of trail to tree root to rock like the dirt road out was staircase back down to paved easiness. But also life. And cell phone service. And routine. Stresses big and small. All the things we are up here to forget for an afternoon.

It is lush this high. I rolled the window down as we drove up, the rain already starting to work its way through the pines, making everything smell like soil and incense. The side of the road that stretches into the forest is covered in wildflowers in mid August, while everything below in town, around the lowlands, has gone dry and brittle. I’ve already learned that Augusts in Montana can be rough on the mind. It’s the panic of the last true long month of summer covered in smoke. Maybe not ours, but from somewhere where there is something on fire, a reminder of death and destruction. The smoke is confusing, full of unknowns. Threats are everywhere in the soupy, pink-tinged fog that covers the hills we are used to looking out to when we open the curtains. We don’t know what is out there. It’s unsettling. I have to push away resentment that the season I’ve been hanging out to be in is eaten away at – or outright devoured – by the fire season.

But up here in the aftermath of a summer storm, it is the best of August. Cool, with the sun just coming through the clouds above the ridge. We have an hour before it will disappear behind the mountains. That hour is enough. My flamingo tube turns slowly as the wind comes up, and it is like my eyes, behind sunglasses, are getting a sweeping, panoramic photo of everything around me: dog swimming, mountain ridge gleaming, husband fishing, tents being set up on the far side of the lake, and through all this, my toes gliding past each of these scenes as the water ripples turn me around and around and around. I feel like a queen taking a tally of her kingdom.

The smoke is far away and below us. The haziness is gone, at least for an afternoon. There is a reason we go up to get away. There is something about being suspended on a cool, deep body of water, where for at least an hour or two, we have clarity.