Jolie été

Hidden Chiquita Lake

And, just like that, summer feels like the stirrings of Fall. Most of the smoke from the wildfires has blown past us. The sky is blue again. Cloudless again. Yes, the nights are cooling, and the fan is no longer needed in the bedroom at night. The days are mostly lovely, though an occasional slightly-too-warm day arrives now and then.

I'm fairly certain that just as I get comfortable with this trend, September will drop a heat wave on us once again. I will accept it gladly, if I can make it to the houseboat for some swimming. I have not had enough swimming in the lake this summer.

I'm not sure why swimming in the lake is so much more meaningful than swimming in my own pool at my own home, but it decidedly is. I love the moment the water closes over my head as I plunge into that very clear, deep green, lake water. I think often as I swim around the boat about how far below me the bottom is. Well over 80 feet where we are moored. There is something so primal feeling to me, swimming in what amounts to a bottomless body of water.

This weekend, the thought occurred that I might have run out of opportunities to grab a swim at the boat for the season. I know from past experience that I often find myself thinking about my last swim of the season once the winter chill has settled upon us.

And, as I contemplate that thought, I realize I have almost always lived near or on a body of water, and I have always fondly revisited my last swim of the season, over these many years, and throughout these many homes and locations. Oddly, I never even describe myself as a swimmer; nor do I think of it as one of my hobbies. And, yet, it's an experience I crave and dream of as the swimming-in-the-lake season approaches.

Further consideration reveals why the swims off the back steps of the houseboat are so much more long-cherished to me than a swim in our pool: it feels incredibly seamless when I swim at the boat. One moment I am making a cup of coffee, the next I am slipping into the silent water and able to cool myself to the core in an instant. Reading a book, I can set it aside on a moment's whim and jump from any spot on the boat and be swimming once again... or, rather, floating and enjoying the weightless feeling.

Before the houseboat, there was the house with the beach on the American river. I could always remember the last dip of season when I was there. There were the cabins on Chiquita Lake. I didn't swim there as often, for some reason, but I always dredged up the memory of my last swim or toe-dangling in Lake Chiquita, too. Past "lives" at cabins in Lake Tahoe and memories of those swims, and even in my early 20's, when I first left Santa Cruz and moved to the Sacramento area, I had a rental house in Old Town Folsom, a short walk from The Power House and Negro Bar on the American river, and I would escape to Lake Natoma every afternoon for a cold plunge.

The beach on the river. An old favorite place for a cold plunge.

What is it about those swims in those cool, inviting, bodies of water that stays with me all the months of winter until I can make new memories the following swim season?

Note: Jolie Ete is the name of the houseboat. It translates to: Beautiful Summer.

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