Holland Lake

i took erica and yusef to holland lake over the weekend to hike to the waterfall. holland lake was beautiful, clear water in dense pine and tamarack forest framed by the still snowcapped missions. we came here a lot when i was growing up. i am pretty sure i caught my first fish on a snoopy branded spinning rod on holland lake and in my early teens i remember a summer wedding at which i paddled a beautiful thickly accented polish girl around the lake in a canoe. in my twenties, visiting from hawaii, a couple of friends and i paddled out to the far, wildside of the lake on bodyboards with snorkel masks to spearfish. there was a huge submerged pine trunk laying on the steeply receding bank, dwarfed by the depth and clarity of the water and the school of trout was right where we thought it was going to be, hanging out between that giant snag and the cold inlet where the icy waterfall fed stream came into the lake. i took a huge breath and slipped off my board and dived as deep into the exponentially increasing cold as i could stand to try and get beneath the fish and drive them upwards towards my friend who floated near the surface with a hawaiian sling spear. it worked exactly as planned and he speared a fat one right in the top of its head killing it instantly. we got to the surface, he with fish in hand, and though about it and determined that what we had done was almost certainly illegal and decided to lie to everyone when we got back to camp about our luck spearfishing holland lake.