Lake Magic

as seen in the Marquette Monthly August, 2019
By Michelle Menting

I can’t remember the exact year I learned to swim on my own—that is, without the accompaniment of a capable swimmer nearby—but I wasn’t much older than three, possibly four, years old. Before that time, I was in the water—lakes, always lakes—but I was held by a sister or my mother, or kept afloat by a raft. There are pictures of me, fat naked baby, being held by one of my sisters while she wades waist-high towards the deep. But even with accompaniment, I swam. I paddled. My hands and feet became flippers, oars, rudders. I practiced every type of water movement, and, oh, how I dived! My love for diving from the surface—plunging below, taking long strokes and coasting under water—was and remains one of my greatest joys. It’s a form of spirit renewal. It’s the act of entering another world. When I submerge, I am surrounded by fluid silence. It’s what I define as holy.
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My childhood had a fairytale setting. I mean fairytale in the truest sense of that genre. That is, not everything was tulip-skipping-puppy-fluff positive. There was danger, dread, and death, o-my, for sure. I grew up in a family of 12 siblings—that’s nearly a fairytale full set of characters. There were dangerous dramas in droves, but those are stories for another time. I mention this because what seems to be a connecting force in all those true tales is the power of water or, more specifically, lakes. Lake magic.
By “fairytale setting,” I mean setting in terms of place and landscape: the moss-covered woods, the thick tamarack and cattail marshes, the many inland lakes, and the one Great Lake, that inland sea—Lake Superior. We lived in a shoddy cottage on a hemlock and oak-topped hill. Down this hill, across the road, was the 1/16th mile trail through the woods that led to a 90-acre lake. Our lake was small and unassuming, and a gem of pure magic. It was clear yet full of water life: loons, eagles, kingfishers, herons; otters, deer, raccoons, black bear; perch, bass, crappie, bluegill; and so many plants above and below that “belonged” there. We were a poor family, but still a fortunate one. Though we lacked material wealth, we were rich with those moss thickets, those forest groves, and the lakes where we canoed, rowed, fished, and swam in the summer, and skied, skated, and ice-fished in the winter. And where, no matter the season, we communed with the stars and moon, round or slivered, always beaming. On winter nights, we’d shuffle our boots on the snow-covered ice, watch for night shadows, and snow-angel the sky a greeting. In summer, we’d swim moonlit, star-filled celestial swims.
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My favorite memories of swimming are those midnight, moonlit swims. These were highly anticipated affairs contingent on weather, the presence of starlight or moonlight, and who was game for a late-night walk past hungry mosquitoes to the open water. My memory has it that we’d wait until midnight, but midnight was magic to a child of the woods. It might have been just 10 PM when we’d make our way, my mother and a varying number of sisters, down to the lake. When I was this wee child, I’d hope for nighttime heat and humidity, the thickest kind, the sort you can’t sleep through. Weather like that meant a greater chance of my mom and sisters agreeing to go moonlight swimming, even if there wasn’t much of a moon. If the stars were bright, and we could see our silhouettes as we waded into the deep, then that was light enough. Wading in became a fast affair. Despite any chill in the water, we’d “get used to it” quickly and, oh my favorite, plunge below. Diving into darkness and resurfacing to the night sky felt like visiting another planet. It was, for lack of a better word—and coming from someone who doesn’t believe in such things literally but embraces them metaphorically—heaven. And even though swimming was a communal affair, where my sisters and I swam in great circles playing dolphin games and my mother would swim out so far she’d reached the moon itself, when I’d dive, I’d submerge alone into a delectable solitude that felt so grown up, so freeing and cleansing, like renewal itself. It was what I define as holy.

WATER SAVER TIPS

Don’t wash yourself, your dog, your friend, your friend’s dog in a lake. If you must wash in the vicinity, take buckets of water far offshore so the water won’t stream back into the lake. Use only biodegradable soap.

Don’t have a lawn near the lakeshore. Let the shoreline be natural. Consider avoiding a lawn altogether. Why mow? Have a garden with native and indigenous plant-life that supports pollinators, groundwater, and prevents erosion.

Contributor’s note: Michelle Menting grew up in the northwoods of Wisconsin and the U.P., and earned an MA and MFA and NMU.

“The Gift of Water” columns are offered by the Northern Great Lakes Water Stewards and the Cedar Tree Institute, joined in an interfaith effort to help preserve, protect, and sanctify the waters of the Upper Peninsula.