Lake-Swimming

This is Sturgeon Lake, where I spent every summer as a kid and teenager. Not as a cottager, but as a local, since this is where I grew up!

In the summers from when I was about nine to seventeen, each day I would boat across the lake with my brothers in the early morning (it was probably not that early, but we were lazy teenagers) to go sailing at the Sturgeon Lake Sailing Club. 

One of my best friends lived across the lake as well, so in the afternoons I'd boat there myself and we'd hang out, eat nachos, play cribbage, and listen to India Arie. 

I'd been in this lake loads of times, but always with a lifejacket if I was in the middle of the lake. I have one of those silly fears of open water and fish touching my feet or sharks or something. 

Last year I swam across the lake for the first time, in a wetsuit, with my dad in a canoe beside me. 

This year, I swam across and BACK, no wetsuit, with my dad and mom in a canoe beside me again. It would be unsafe to swim across this lake without boat support. It's a big lake and very busy with big boat traffic! I actually experienced a lot of "boat waves" while swimming across and back. It sucked swimming into them, but swimming with the waves must be what body surfing is like. 

What will I swim next summer? The length of the lake? Oh, probably not something that far. But who knows!