Same place, next year

THE faux-Swiss-chalet motels are cheesy after all these years. The game room pinball machine still robs me blind. Out on Main Street, the KFC looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the Carter administration. But Mammoth Lakes still exerts a strange and powerful pull over my family, just as it has for the last three decades.

In the backcountry surrounding this Sierra town, we’ve lost our way in the Minarets, scorched our mouths on boiled Tang and ridden the dumbest and craziest pack horses in the world.

The meadows, cinder cones, tufa towers, hot springs and glaciers look as beautiful and strange as they did when I first visited at age 7. But the town and my family are changing. My parents, not yet 50 when they first brought me here, are closing in on 80. This summer we embarked on a “once more to the lake” family reunion.

I insisted on an easy but stunning trek to Sky Meadow, four miles round-trip to a destination that only seems remote. Even better, it would make us forget the upscale changes overtaking our homey resort: the spa treatments and the listings for $3-million vacation homes. Sky Meadow, at least, would have no scary surprises.

We met up on the Emerald Lake trail head with my sister, Edie, my brother-in-law, Doug, and their bandanna-wearing dog, Scout.

“Head for the water tower,” my father said, pointing with a telescoping walking stick equipped with a shock absorber. The same old bald-headed summit rose above the forest. Ridges looked like shark fins. They drifted above the clouds. The tangled roots of pine trees still wrapped the rocks.

My mother’s hiking pace was quick and relentless. She took the lead, her wrap-around sunglasses keeping gnats from her eyes, but she always stopped after a while to wait for my father. He hung way back, hunching into the hills while chatting up every human and creature he saw.

“You’re alone?” he said to a young woman. “Aren’t you afraid of bears?”

Two black Labrador retrievers sniffed my father’s shoes.

“Don’t worry, my dogs are nice,” said the owner.

“I bite,” my father said. He bared his teeth. The dogs looked edgy.

My father enjoyed these interactions, though he didn’t remember that the hike had so many hills. Neither did I. Even Emerald Lake looked different.

Every year at the water’s edge, my brother-in-law had stopped to have his picture taken while perched on the same log. In doing so he created a time-lapse portrait of himself aging. But the log, after all those years, had sunken into the murk. Doug could no longer find a place to sit.

On the edges of Coldwater Creek, footing became uneven. I worried my parents would slip on pebbles and dash themselves against the rocks. Almost swooning with guilt, I asked if they wanted to turn back.

“No,” they barked in unison.

Fortunately, they made short work of the uphill. I was sighing with relief when something pricked my leg. A fat mosquito plumped itself with my blood. Out of nowhere, more mosquitoes and biting flies descended. My sister stood on the rocks, hiding beneath a long pink shirt while her lower half did a wild bug dance. My mother made a series of frenetic motions that reminded me, somehow, of the Lambada. Just when I was getting woozy from guilt or blood loss, my father froze in his tracks and smiled at something in the middle horizon.

“The prettiest part of the park,” he said, pointing to falls dripping from the meadow above our heads. Streams, thick as fingers, worked their way through beards of moss. We walked to the top of the hill to Sky Meadow and Blue Crag, a black ridge that rose to a set of broken points. I wondered whether the buggy walk was another frayed tradition to cross off the list, along with the psychotic trail horses and Shadow Lake.

“What do you mean ‘cross off the list’?” my father said. “We’ll come back here next year.”

“Really?”

As I stood beneath Blue Crag, I realized that each of the last five or six reunions was “the last” -- and, to my relief, it never turned out to be true.

*

The particulars:

Where: Sky Meadow, 9,700 feet above sea level in the Mammoth Lakes Basin.

What: Easy hike, about four miles round-trip.

How: From Mammoth Lakes, stay on Main Street, which turns into Lake Mary Road. Pass Twin Lakes and Lake Mary and then turn left at the sign for Coldwater Creek camping area. Drive almost to the end of the road, and park near the Emerald Lakes trail head.

Information: Mammoth Lakes Ranger Station and Visitor Center, (760) 924-5500.