Lake Tschida is a diamond in the rough, and is never the one that comes to mind whenever I tell people, “I’m going to the lake.” Lake Tschida was formed by the construction of the Heart Butte Dam on the Heart River, a flood mitigation and irrigation project completed in the late 1940s.

My grandfather Charles Edward Crane and his brother-in-law O.C. “Muggs” Maercklein of Mott in nearby Hettinger County were among the first individuals to begin squatting on the new lake’s shorelines at the time (much to the chagrin of the Bureau of Reclamation), securing an indispensable home-away-from-home for their clans for decades to come.

Family lore is replete with tales from my father and his siblings about fishing adventures with Uncle Muggs, learning to operate a sailboat and returning with treasures like a chunk of a massive petrified cypress tree. My father returned to Mott himself to raise his family shortly before I was born to take over my grandfather’s law practice, and needless to say my summers were also spent taking the rolling drive up and down the dirt roads that lead to our family’s strip of paradise.

Lake Tschida’s water is often bitterly cold, which is preferable to it being covered in blooms of algae, but there was little that would keep us out of the water anyway. Lake Tschida days were best spent on or in the water, wiling away the hours swimming, tubing or kayaking.

November Reinoehl and Luca Crane took turns wearing a sun hat and basking in the summer sun during the Crane’s family June vacation at the family cabin on Lake Tschida.

If one finally had enough, a good book or even a Game Boy was all that was required to kill some time before supper. Evenings were centered around the campfire, where my father would regale us with non-copyright infringing “Dungeons and Dragons-land” stories starring my siblings, cousins and myself.

On Sundays, we’d load up into our speed boat and zoom across the lake for Mass on a beach on the north shore, a practice that the Diocese of Bismarck has since sadly discontinued. We’d return to town in the evening exhausted, but spiritually renewed in every way as the radio played the latest edition of “Prairie Home Companion.”

While it was an incredible privilege to have the luxury of a single-wide trailer, our location in the floodplain was very precarious. After the historic winter of 1997, the trailer I grew up with was totaled along with many others in the subsequent flooding the following spring. Though we were able to replace it, concern grew within the family that eventually we would no longer have our place at the lake after some rumblings from the BOR.

My father sat down with my namesake and pitched him on committing to a more secure location for the future “flock” of Cranes. Muggs had passed away in the ’90s, but his children were looking to sell a small cabin his nephews had helped him build a few bays over from the original site in the ’70s. This location had far more favorable elevation and a conspicuous lack of neighbors as the Bureau cut off further development at some point.

It took some time and friendly haggling, but eventually Mugg’s cabin was ours, and just in time too, as yet another flood claimed our old trailer shortly after it was sold. My extended family would gather every summer, putting in new windows, building stairs down the hill to the water, constructing an ever expanding deck, mowing the grass, and planting trees to secure “shade in our time.”

November Reinoehl and Luca Crane took turns wearing a sun hat and basking in the summer sun during the Crane’s family June vacation at the family cabin on Lake Tschida.

The fears that drove us to Mugg’s enclave crystalized in 2016, when the BOR informed residents that trailers would have to be removed in 2021. This move was eventually rebuffed by the passage of the Water Resources Development Act, spearheaded by Sen. John Hoeven.

I didn’t get to visit Tschida with nearly as much frequency in the years that followed as I moved to Fargo for school, but every moment I did spend there was treasured.

I briefly returned to Mott myself in 2015 to work at the law office with my father, who has long had the policy of shutting up shop early on Fridays in the summer. It must be nice being your own boss sometimes.

I’d head over to the cabin alone, disconnected from cell signals and the internet, free to count pelicans while kayaking and to sleep under the stars until the whoops of coyotes heralded the break of the next day. There really is nothing else quite like Lake Tschida in the morning; quiet and still even if a fisherman is trawling nearby.

My wife and I decided this summer to take a well deserved vacation in June, and we had only one destination in mind. We loaded our two kids and supplies up into the car, which was bursting at the seams due to an emergency purchase of an “Air Force-special” mini-fridge shortly before we left town, after a phone call from my father informed me the cabin’s fridge hadn’t survived the winter. We arrived to find the old cabin greatly changed after a much needed remodel to the kitchen and bathroom.

Our infant son Luca got his first Tschida baptism, though frankly he was more interested in eating the sand than anything else. The water proved too cold for our daughter, November, but thankfully, the public beach now comes complete with a playground where she could safely work off her energy. Unfortunately, we spent most of the week cabin-bound due to endless rain and thunderstorms, but we were kept warm and dry thanks to a wood stove and a recently repaired roof.

My parents and grandmother stopped by to visit and delivered a new fridge in the middle of our stay, and my father informed me we better enjoy the lake while we can. A recent environmental assessment determined that repairs to the earthen dam are needed, which will require draining the lake for several years. This drawdown will make it hard to get a boat in and several campgrounds will have to close, but my father is excited about the treasures that may be found at the lake’s bottom after the water recedes.

As we loaded up to begrudgingly return to our busy lives in the big city, I said good-bye to the totem of cypress my family has had since my father and his siblings claimed it all those years ago. Some day, once the lake is filled again and they’re old enough to be trusted in a canoe, I’ll take November and Luca there to claim a chunk of their own.

November asked more than once during our stay if we were going to live at the cabin forever. If only we could. But thanks to our loved ones who have passed on, and those we don’t get to see nearly as much as we used to, it’s a place we will always have.