Meet me at the lake
We'll try not to die.
You may disagree with me, but I prefer swimming in a pool to a natural body of water. It’s not like we have crystal clear beaches here anyway. We have mystery lakes.
A well-chlorinated pool, on the other hand, holds no surprises. And there are rules: No horseplay. No water spouting. No cannonballs.
But you can enjoy a nice tea party at the bottom. Or practice synchronized swimming with a friend.
A lake is an entirely different proposition.
Do you like chicken? Well, swimming in lake water is like being left with only the dark meat. You understand that you’re having a chicken-eating experience. But you don’t want to think too much about what you’re eating. It’s vaguely icky and you don’t get too involved with it before forcing it down your throat. And when you’re done, you think it might be a good idea to give up meat altogether.
Lakes are dark, dark meat.
And yet, there I was one shiny summer afternoon floating on my back in the local lake. How did I get there? I’d been invited for a picnic. A snooze. But the nearby swimming spot had a certain dark appeal.
Kids were leaping off cliffs into the brine below to a hip hop soundtrack.
A year ago, if I jumped off a cliff, I’d be hoping for an entirely different outcome.
This time around, I sang the whole way down: No die. No die. No die.
SPLASH.
I’m alive!
And, with all due respect to swimming pools, what a feeling.
Recovery changes how you interact with the world. You’re no longer in a constant state of retreat. But it isn’t so much courage as a burgeoning desire to squeeze moments for all their worth. Even if they carry the chance of rain.
The sun neither rises nor sets on swimming pools. But it sure looks stunning when it hangs over a lake.
“Are there eels?” I asked a kid sitting at the edge of a cliff.
“Water snakes.”
“But not the electric kind..?”
“No. No. But the bastards bite.”
That’s just what you want to hear when your floating helplessly on your back.
A dragonfly kept trying to land on me like I was the only landmass for miles around.
All kinds of thoughts go through a man’s mind while floating on a lake. Didn’t they find a body here once? They don’t put it in the brochures, but serial killers must love our local waterways.
“What about snapping turtles,” I asked the kid. But he was lost to the music.
The fact that this water has so much terrifying potential also makes it thrilling. I don’t know what comes next. But I’m all in.
Pools represent a civil, rule-based society — the kind of structure this ex-addict needs. Lakes, on the other hand, are magic. You don’t know how much you need that until you’re literally immersed in it.
We may be the tamest of animals, but like otters and cranes and dragonflies, we need to connect with the natural world all the same.
After a time, I treaded lightly to the shore — the kid had warned me that there was a dead, rotting fish in the vicinity. Also, he told me to watch out for blood suckers.
I guess that’s life too. Everyone wants a piece of you.
Nature is the magic, wild and dark, that we all need. Lest we become just a little too used to a life of tea parties.
All the same, I like the way the pool softens me up. There’s plenty of hardening already in waking life. So I stuck with my chlorine dreams for the rest of the summer.
But I’ll probably jump from those cliffs again next year. And plunge into whatever lurks below. Maybe I’ll see you there. Maybe we’ll hold hands as we fall.