Lake Effect

by Tim Coonan

When is a family vacation more than a family vacation? The classic lake cabin, beyond being an iconic vacation genre, becomes a home away from home when the visits are regular, when they are a set piece in the year's calendar, when they bracket generations of a family's trajectory. As much a natural history as a memoir, Lake Effect delves beneath the surface of a rather ordinary lake - a reservoir, really - to examine the region's origins, and its unclear future. Viewed through the lens of classic, family cabin vacations at California's Lake Almanor, the narrative explores the author's fond remembrance of times past at the lake, and his affinity for its natural environment. Beyond being a tale of memory and nostalgia, Lake Effect examines the genesis of the lake and region, focusing on the shock-and-awe geologic force of volcanism, evident at nearby Lassen Peak (the volcano on the horizon, the southern-most of the volcanic Cascade Range), and the natural history, the biota that wraps itself around the geology, at this confluence of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. Overwhelming this is the inexorable advance of human civilization, economic interest, and resource extraction in the area, including a Chinatown-like subterfuge to grab water rights and build a dam, an effort that just maybe included a little arson. Lake Effect details the fate area's natural resources during the evolution from a lush, Native American-inhabited meadow through timber extraction and dam-building to the proliferation of lake vacation rentals. Overlying this all is the new kid on the block, catastrophic fire exacerbated by climate change, a force that threatens the character of the lake vacation itself, if not the very existence of the lake. How long can the lake be a refuge, a respite from the world? Maybe you can't go home again, or at least back to the lake. On the other hand, life finds a way, and perhaps humans can exhibit an adaptiveness, a resilience, like some of the area's furred and feathered residents.

158 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2023

About the author

Tim Coonan was born during the Eisenhower administration and grew up during the 60s and 70s, a fact which greatly influenced his consistent and questionable sense of hair style. He and his twin brother (who became a priest for a while) were the oldest in a large Irish-Catholic family growing up in southern California, from which their family made the epic family station wagon trips retold in this book. Tim’s dad went to Notre Dame, and thus Tim and his siblings grew up as Fighting Irish fans in hostile USC Trojan country, a siege mentality that no doubt affected his decision to leave idyllic southern California for the frozen tundra of northern Indiana, to attend college at Notre Dame (two of his brothers did, as well). Driving home from ND one spring, Tim passed through Flagstaff, Arizona, a Highway 66 town which he fondly remembered from family road trips, and he decided to attend grad school there, at Northern Arizona University, because, well, it was pretty. This led to a love of wildlife, wildlife biology and conservation, and several summers spent as a ranger at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. The rest, as they say, is history. Tim ended up spending 30 years as a wildlife biologist for the National Park Service, chasing bighorn sheep in Death Valley and getting bitten by island foxes in the Channel Islands. In fact, Tim, along with his ex-wife, wrote the definitive (all right, the only) book about that unique and rare endangered species, the island fox of the Channel Islands. Tim now teaches science to impressionable Catholic kids in Ventura, which means he has, ironically, come full circle, being a product of 16 years of Catholic schooling himself. Tim has two grown daughters and lives with a German shepherd and two cats. Tim has spent most of his life trying to be outdoors, and hates wearing shoes, except when hiking (he also wears shoes when teaching).

Reviews

[Karly Drake · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book parallels my own time in Plumas County and my deep love of Lake Almanor. This book was a fuzzy robe and slippers. My own stories ran through my head while reveling in our shared love of Almanor. The Dixie fire was devasting and left a scar on my heart, I found tears running down my face when the destruction of beloved Greenville was described near the end. A joy of a book, I cherish it and thank the author for sharing his ongoing love affair with this magnificent lake and area. Thanks Tim!