Last summer, I swam in Lake Erie for the first time; the year before that, it was Lake Huron, and this year, it was Georgian Bay, not technically a different Great Lake, but Great Lake adjacent! It was my first time camping at Killbear and it was positively glorious. It felt like I was living inside a Group of Seven painting, with the rocks and the sparse trees. 

 

This wasn’t the first time I’d swum in Georgian Bay. The first time was years ago. I was nineteen, or maybe twenty, and visiting a friend’s cottage. His dad had just died and his mom was grieving and it was so sad and the skies knew it. It was grey and rainy the entire time we were there. 

 

We went snorkelling—the first time I’d ever been snorkelling, but the water was so cold, and I was freezing and the water was rough and churned up the sand, and the only thing we saw was a crayfish.

 

This visit to Georgian Bay was much better. Each morning, we would gather on a huge rock face while the kids searched for minnows and slid down the slippery surface into the chilly water. The water wasn’t warm-warm, but was still very swimmable and we spent our days sitting on the sun-warmed rocks, chatting and reading and handing snacks to kids while they searched for minnows with nets we found at the General Store. The mosquitoes nearly capsized my youngest, and a whole in the air mattress nearly did me in, but we hiked and stopped for a swim, and hiked again and found a beach to swim at, and found beaches and more swimming spots and it was a most perfect four days. 

Every summer I have THE swim, the one I will remember in the heart of February. This year, the lake at the cottage we rent for a week every summer was still as glass after days of wind and whitecaps. The sun was shining and when I was halfway down the lake, I heard a loon call, and there they were, our family of loons (an asylum of loons!), not far from where I was swimming.

Confession: I was a bit terrified. They are such big birds and their beaks are so sharp and they swim so fast, but it also felt pretty magical to be sharing the water with them.



The other banner swim happened on the one night my fella and I managed to get down to the dock after the kids were asleep. We were sitting with docktails (recipe below!) and all of a sudden, a rainbow appeared over the lake, so OF COURSE I had to jump in for a late night dip.





We visited my beloved grandparents' dear friend from 50+ years ago and hung out with the loon family (I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but we watch the two baby loons learn to dive that week and I full on cried on the dock, cheering them on. They were so little, but so brave!) and caught frogs with my kiddo (he named his favourite frog "Manny Merman"), and my 16-month-old tried to launch herself off the dock every second of the day. Claire's love of the water truly astounds me – she is the happiest when she's in the water, splashing in the shallows, paddling off the dock. Swimming with her was so wonderful, and even Jack got on board and the highlight of my week was swimming with both of them in the lake at the same time. A family swim – it was actually a dream come true.


When I wasn't swimming, or reading, or frog catching, or trying to keep the baby from launching herself into the water, I was on the water. We went on our first family canoe ride with the four of us. It was great until we ran out of snacks and the baby's foot got tangled in a spider web. And I took a kayak out for a spin and I tried standup paddling boarding again. I tried it last year and didn't get what all the fuss was about, but I tried it again one afternoon when the lake was perfectly still and I needed to escape from the neverending frog catching/minnow hunting. It was so meditative, and I loved being on the surface, without being IN the water. It was like canoeing, but vertical. I loved the perch of it. I paddled all over the lake, along the far shoreline. It was one of my very favourite afternoons.



We lost power on our last day, and woke up to thick fog and still no power. So we packed the car without coffee and ran down to the dock for one final swim. The air was thick and grey and we couldn't even see across the lake, but we swam and arrived back to the city with hair still damp with lake water.

Jack has been talking about "The Summerary". It's unclear what he actually means, but he's described it as: "a swimming pool with a library, kind of like France, and a cottage. There are frogs, but no minnows" And so, this year's docktail is....THE SUMMERARY:



To make two perfect "Summerary" docktails:
2 spears of cucumber
juice from 1 lemon
2 oz Bombay Sapphire gin
1 oz Hendricks gin
mix with ice
top with tonic

Serve on the dock next to a family of loons while the kids nap. Best enjoyed on slightly damp towels, preceded by a leap in the lake.

Last summer, mid-way through July, I finally took the plunge (quite literally) and started jumping in instead of hanging off the dock ladder FOREVER before getting in... (cliff jumping, diving tower jumping, and just plain ol' joyful jumping...)

It's now been a full year and I'm officially a full-fledged JUMPER-INNER. I love it. LOVE IT. Everything about it. #cantstopwontstop





And I played the animal game where the person on the dock counts down from three and when you are mid-air yells the name of an animal you have to make in the air. (ps: BEST. GAME. EVER).

A snake:


I even tried a canon ball (though truth be told it's not my fav):



Here's to more jumps to round out the summer!

I jumped in minutes after arriving at the cottage we've rented for the last two years, leaving everything packed, except my bathing suit, gin for a pair of docktails and some chips.

We were going to leave for the cottage after lunch, to coordinate with the toddler's nap, but my fella and I were up long before the kids (going to the cottage morning is apparently our Christmas morning) so we headed out the moment we could get everything stuffed into our wee car.
The lake was darker than I remember it. And colder this summer than last.



I immediately started swimming across the lake, leaving my family waving on the dock. But three quarters of the way there, I suddenly didn't know the lake and the dark water was made even darker by the tint of my new goggles. I turned around, treading water and clearing my goggles. But there was something in seeing my little family from across the lake that unsettled me.

Last year, I swam the "L" at least daily – across the lake, and the along the far shoreline until the red buoy – but this year, the "L" felt too far. The lake was empty except for the four of us (and one of them depending solely on me for survival) and somehow having a baby, not just a toddler on the dock. The what-if-something-happened thoughts started looming.



That's not to say I didn't swim – I did, just on our side of the lake – an "I" instead of an "L".

There was one beautiful post-dinner swim, where the sun burned the top of the water, and my legs kicked hard against the cold, an early morning swim before the wind had woken up when the water carried an exact replica of the sky, and another perfect mid-day swim where both kids slept and my post-swim snack was s'mores and beer.


There were molars and growth spurts and fevers and rainy days – not exactly the most relaxing vacation, but there was that lake, and a stack of books and docktails no matter what the weather.

Still, I was surprised at how hard it was to say goodbye to the lake I just started getting to know, knowing I might not ever see it again.



Farewell, Buckskin Lake.

You know you're having the best week ever when the deck railing is strung up with damp beach towels – the best kind of bunting – your hair starts dreading with lake water, and the only thing on your to-do list is make docktails for happy hour.

And that is what my last week has been.

My little family rented a cottage on Buckskin Lake and I packed my cottage clothes (aka two bathing suits, my So You Think You Can Dance Canada track pants and my falling apart at the seams Orange Crush t-shirt) and dove head first into cottage living.

I swam at least once a day, took the canoe out (my kid's first canoe ride!), ate dinners cooked over a fire, ate my weight in s'mores, leapt off the dock with wild abandon at least 16 times a day, wrote with a view of a mama loon feeding her babies fish from the shallows, listened to Moose FM all day long, marvelled at the kadrillions of stars, and had the most delicious docktails every. single. day. (French 75s are my new go-to. Lemon, gin and prosecco? ALL THE YES!)



There was a family of loons that lived next door, frogs that enamoured my 17-month-old, water skaters that left tiny concentric circles on the water that from a certain angle looked like rain and a beaver that had team-meetings with the loons in the late afternoon.



The lake was deep and clear and remarkably warm. Every day I'd take off from the dock, cross the lake and swim along the far shoreline where there were no cottages, just Crown land. I'd tell myself the loons were busy napping and would stay clear of the lily pads so nothing pulled me under. One-two-three-breath and trees and trees and trees. One-two-three-breath and sky and sky and sky.

It is the swim I will do over and over again before I fall asleep in the heart of February.

I already miss the lake, the pace of my heart up there and I'm protesting being back by not washing one shirt that still smells like campfire and not washing the lake water out of my hair. I'll have to wash my hair one of these days, but I'm hoping that until the end of the summer when I lie down, I'll still be able to feel the lilt of the floating dock.