Twelve Months at Merritt Lake

Twelve months of visits to a mountain lake tells more than twelve tales. The solitude found during a Wednesday in the winter is completely different from the chaos found on a Saturday in the summer. The seasons make one set of changes. We make the other. The combination produces a much more interesting set of experiences that can't be revealed in one visit or in a page of some guidebook.

Merritt Lake hides on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, between the crest of the range that partly...