Lake Life

This is one of the longer times I’ve stayed at this family cottage on Lake Michigan—close to three weeks before I return home this Saturday. Also unusual because all family members (except my wife) and guests are now gone and the house is blissfully quiet and peaceful. The days are long and schedule-free and I feel myself settling into a happy rhythm. Every day the body exercised with a bike ride or walk on the beach or climb up a dune or stroll through the woods and every day without exception, a long swim in either the front or the back lake. 

 

After each summer loving the swims in the lake, I think I should join a pool in San Francisco and keep swimming all year long. But to pay money and get to the indoor pool and change in a locker room and swim laps in chlorine water and shower and get dressed again and get myself home is so far from walking out the cottage door down to the beach or out the back door to the back lake that I never have followed through on that idea. And never will. 

 

But meanwhile, these daily swims that strengthen the body and soothe the spirit are heaven on earth. Immersion in water is a sacred experience Note all baptism rituals, consider our life’s beginning in unconscious bliss in the watery womb, think about the 60% of our body that is water and our inside reuniting with the outside, feel the constant cleansing, note that when in grief, looking out at a body of water is often recommended— there’s a lot to be said for it. And here the added bonus of the invigorating freshwater blue of Lake Michigan and the calmer, warmer, silky waters of the more intimate Lower Herring Lake— I love them both for different reasons and often swim in each every day. 

 

Back home, The San Francisco School is welcoming the kids in our vibrant Opening Ceremony. This year, in honor of the school's 60th Anniversary, it all made more poignant by six alums from the six decades of the school's existence taking part in the water ceremony.  Had I known about this earlier, I could have made plans to arrive home in time to witness and partake, but alas, I found out too late. So I'll just think of them from afar as I celebrate my own lovely Lake Life.