This has got to be one of my all time favorite places to swim. After leaving the shore the rocky edge drops away leaving a vast deep green and blue water with streaks of sun shining into the depths. The water is cool with patches of cold that rise up from the depths.
Its not like swimming in the ocean, where there is always a concern of sharks, high surf or rip tides. Lake swimming, beyond the occasional boat or jet ski offers the freedom to just enjoy swimming stress and worry free.
After I'm warmed up and in a good rythym, it feels like I am actually breathing under water. I've tried to explain this a few times with little success however I suspect that anyone who swims knows what I saying. Its not that I'm actually breathing under water, its more that breathing is timed in such a way that it feels like oxygen is always available, even when I'm under water.
Open water swimming requires that you sight on some distant object and then continually check your alighment with that object in order to stay on course. The green water below offers no clue on the direction in which you are travelling. Normally I try to sight every 10 strokes. Sometimes this goes better than other times.
Todays swim was way above average. I got into a zone and just started day dreaming. I was watching how the sun formed rays in the water below me and I just stopped counting strokes or sighting. I guess I must have missed 3 or 4 sightings because when I finally did remember to check where I was, I had absolutely no clue which direction I was going.
I had turned well over 90 degrees off my original course and it took me a few moments, in the middle of this lake, to figure out where the heck I was. I had to laugh at my mistake.
As I reached the far shore of the lake, the shadows of the huge pines turned the blue and green water nearly black, leaving me with the eery feeling that I had just passed some sort of shelf in the water, and the lake bed just dropped to 1000 feet below me.
Brian and Robin shadowed me on a jet ski to keep boats our of my path. With the exception of a party boat and another jet ski, the path was clear in both directions. It was a perfect swim on a perfect day.
Later in the afternoon, I had a chance to go water skiing. I tried to think back to the last time I had been on a ski boat, let alone been up on one ski. It was at least 10 years ago, maybe longer. While I did spend more time in the water than I did skiing, I did manage to make it up and get a few turns in on the lake!
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