Night Swimming
It wasn't that I'd forgotten how to swim... it was just that I was no good anymore. I thought that as I floated my way across the rippled waters of Lake Superior. The water was cool, but refreshing - instantly focusing my mind. I had been watching the sun set over Marquette in the distance from the deserted beach but as soon as I hit the water, my mission was clear.
Hand over hand, legs working furiously, I expected the same thunderous splashing I'd become accustomed to hearing whenever I swam in my youth. The feeble splashes were not encouraging, however, and after a few minutes I looked back to see how far I'd gone. I hadn't even moved.
I tried diving down to the sandy bottom, a move I'd perfected over countless summers as a kid, and I bobbed back up like a cork. It seems in my mid-twenties I've become more... buoyant.
When I was a kid, the lake was my home during the summers. A summer day not spent on Big Manistique Lake near our cabins was a day not worth waking up for. I was a reedy, wild-haired swimming machine. My sisters and various friends or cousins would take out the paddle boat and jump off into the water, we'd dive underneath the boat swimming underwater from one side to the other. Sometimes we'd come up underneath it, our heads between the pontoons, laughing as our echoes bounced back at us in the muggy, enclosed space.
So it was disconcerting to find myself feeling so unfamiliar in the water. It wasn't unpleasant though. It was like getting reacquainted with an old friend. I suppose I should have expected it. I haven't gone swimming since last summer and even then I only went a couple of times.
With that in mind, I've made it my goal to try to get to the beach at least a couple times a week to go swimming. Even if it's only for an hour or so. I owe it to myself. And I owe it to that laughing, wild-haired child I used to be.
Hand over hand, legs working furiously, I expected the same thunderous splashing I'd become accustomed to hearing whenever I swam in my youth. The feeble splashes were not encouraging, however, and after a few minutes I looked back to see how far I'd gone. I hadn't even moved.
I tried diving down to the sandy bottom, a move I'd perfected over countless summers as a kid, and I bobbed back up like a cork. It seems in my mid-twenties I've become more... buoyant.
When I was a kid, the lake was my home during the summers. A summer day not spent on Big Manistique Lake near our cabins was a day not worth waking up for. I was a reedy, wild-haired swimming machine. My sisters and various friends or cousins would take out the paddle boat and jump off into the water, we'd dive underneath the boat swimming underwater from one side to the other. Sometimes we'd come up underneath it, our heads between the pontoons, laughing as our echoes bounced back at us in the muggy, enclosed space.
So it was disconcerting to find myself feeling so unfamiliar in the water. It wasn't unpleasant though. It was like getting reacquainted with an old friend. I suppose I should have expected it. I haven't gone swimming since last summer and even then I only went a couple of times.
With that in mind, I've made it my goal to try to get to the beach at least a couple times a week to go swimming. Even if it's only for an hour or so. I owe it to myself. And I owe it to that laughing, wild-haired child I used to be.