It is the week we look forward to all summer – the rented lake cabin, the family all together under one roof, the familiar routines of idleness. This is August and the lake is northerly, nestled at the foot of mountains, and so we pack sweaters and jeans and socks as well as bathing suits and sunscreen and flip flops. We come prepared, carrying more books than anyone could possibly read in a week, and then we pray for sun.
Yesterday morning I woke early to gentle rain, cool air, clouds blanketing the peaks across the water. As summer draws to its inevitable close, each day feels edged with a scrim of sadness; I’m always greedy for just a little more. Or, if not exactly greedy, at least aware that these golden days are numbered, that a month from now, back at home and yoked into fall schedules, summer swims will already be a memory. And so without thinking it over, I left my sleeping family, slipped out of the warm bed, into my still-damp bathing suit and down to the water.
I wonder if there is any place more solitary than the middle of a lake in the rain at dawn. Alone in that chill, dark water, shrouded by mist and suspended in a dance of rain drops, I disappeared from myself. What a relief it is, to leave the mind and all its small preoccupations behind and to swim far from shore, out into the big picture. Lake, mountains, sky, rain – and me, one small, insignificant human body treading water within this vast, mysterious universe. I watched my pale arms moving before me, allowed my breath to carry me along on its rhythmic journey, felt the water’s buoyant embrace, and offered up my humble prayer of thanksgiving: what a blessing it is to be here, a single note in this gloriously complex hymn that is our natural world.
There were, finally, scents of breakfast drifting across the water, the dense, civilized smells of bacon and coffee summoning me back to life on land. My skin pricked with cold. The rain fell in sheets. Yet it was with some reluctance that I turned around and began breast-stroking toward shore. “Without a big perspective, we are only half awake to our life,” writes Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfeld. “Lost in a thousand errands, and our small self, we are not truly free.”
It’s not easy, when lost in those errands, to remember the magnificence of this world. But nature’s beauty is always available, if we’re willing to take the first step toward intimacy, to stop what we’re doing and thinking long enough to quiet our minds and open our hearts and go forth.
I didn’t go swimming in the rain in search of anything but one more taste of this waning summer. The moment’s profound teaching caught me by surprise, as much a shock to the system as the first slap of cold water on bare skin: Remember your interconnection with all things. Love the mystery. Be free.
I find the same sweet solace in becoming part of the bigger picture of nature. Beautifully stated.
I loved this little story, and it appeared on my Facebook just when I needed it. Thanks so much for the inspiration!
Beautiful…beautiful image, prose, everything. Thank you for sharing!
Gorgeous. The message and the images. I could feel the chill of the rain and smell the bacon crisping.
Great timing as I pack for our yearly trip with the boys to the mountains. It’s so important in our busy lives to stop and breathe everything in. Thanks for the necessary reminder.
Thank you for this post. For some reason I can’t explain, swimming this summer has made me so happy. I keep looking for more opportunities and a lake is the absolute best in my opinion. I’m so glad for you that you swam in the rain and reveled in being free and present.
loved reading this!!! it is so true and I often forget.
This reads like a meditation. Amen!
A beautiful, evocative piece. I love that quote. My year has been so small picture; I long for the big picture. A reminder that it’s right outside my front door.
I loved this line:
I wonder if there is any place more solitary than the middle of a lake in the rain at dawn.
My family used to go to a lake in upstate new york for 2 weeks each summer and your post brought me back in time. I could almost feel the cold, satiny water on my skin and that spooky feeling of all those water creatures under me. Your writing is so beautiful!
That line also describes the sense of solitude in life. In the middle of a lake at dawn and it’s raining. It reminded me of the quote you used in the book you wrote with Rolf: It’s always 3am and raining and you are at the intersection of 2 maps …
Every single time I read anything you write I must be prepared for tears. You have a way of writing that just resonates with me, so much so that I have your book with me at all times, but have not started it yet. My family and I are moving this summer back to the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River, so I can picture a lot of what you are writing about, and it is not because I do not want your words to be a part of me, I just have to make sure I am ready to feel when I read them. Thank you for sharing you insight.
Colleen
Nothing like cold, and deep, water to get us into the eternally present moment—the only game in cosmic town 🙂
That lake has its errands too, swimming in Katrina. Shimmering, like this, when it comes up for air.
Just what my fragmented mind needed this morning. I’m heading out to do and experience what you’ve suggested. I’ll tie on my running shoes, and just take the great outdoors in. There’s an Elk Farm on my route, I’ll bid them hello from you a fellow lover of the mystery that makes up this glorious world.
Thank you for the gentle reminder.
nlk
You draw such beautiful pictures with your words. Thank you for taking me into that poignant moment. I feel as though I have experienced it myself.