For some reason the air near the lake always has a different feel to it than then chemical-tainted air at the crowded community pool — cleaner, crisper, more alive, and there is always something special about that first splash into the still, wet mirror of blue sky on a hot Summer day.
Of course, it is always more fun to call it a “swimmin’ hole” and swing on a rope as far out as you can toward the middle of the stillness and pretend you are Tom or Huck in the good ole days after a hot day of pretending to white wash the fence.
No, there is nothing quite like it at all. That moment when your hands let go of the rope and you breathlessly hang mid-air for one weightless moment before falling ever so quickly with your heart in your throat. No changing your mind now. Just downward into the cold, wet, crashing through the stillness and plunging into darkness.
Then as if reason suddenly returns to you and panic sets in, you begin to flail your limbs, pushing and pulling and willing yourself back into the light, bursting upward into the warm Summer air and blinding light, gasping for air to fill your starving lungs.
And for some reason after that first cold splash all heck breaks loose in almost every tree within a hundred yards as if in disturbing the calm of the catfish-infested lake, you have set off some wake-up alarm to rouse every squirrel, bird, and bug within 100 yards.
And slowly as the wildlife goes quiet again, your heart returns to a more familiar beat and you float casually in the water. And you think to yourself, “Could it possibly be better the second time around?”
Nothing else to do but try.
(Originally written by myself, September, 2004.)
{ 0 comments… add one now }