The first time I visited upstate New York, I was shocked by how familiar it felt. I had never spent much time up there, save a short trip to Niagara Falls with my grandparents when I was 9. The energy isn’t exactly the same as northern Michigan, but it felt close enough; I didn’t quite feel like I was home, but I did feel known in some way.
Your parents live on this big, gorgeous lake that astounds me every time I’ve ever looked at it, or swam in it. I’m a lake person; always have been, always will be. I prefer fresh, cold water, slimy rocks and quick, deep drop-offs. Lakes feel knowable, finite, even the Great Lakes. I know that when I stand on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, Wisconsin is on the other side, even if I can’t see it. The ocean doesn’t feel that way — it feels wild, unpredictable, unknowable. It has unseen creatures, even in the shallows, and it’s ability, violence, and domination, intimidate me. Lakes, even the Great ones, do not scare me like this.
Which is to say I feel adequately brave and easygoing around your parents’ lake - no one forgets the first (or second?) time I was up there and insisted that part of being on a lake was skinny dipping at least once when it got dark and late. For some reason, none of the other people staying that weekend agreed! You were all wrong! I remember being about 11 or 12, staying with my cousins at their grandparents’ place on a lake1 and basically having my “aunt” (who is really my second cousin, but that is neither here nor there) instruct my cousin and me that once it got actually dark (which, in that part of the world in the summer doesn’t happen until about 11pm or later - this western part of the UP is at the very edge of the Eastern Time Zone), she was teaching us to skinny dip. There is no real lesson to learn in skinny dipping, you just swim without your bathing suit on. Being tween girls, however, my cousin and I insisted on getting to wear life jackets. Why? Well, it wasn’t because we couldn’t swim. It was because the idea of being naked in front of each other was fresh and terrifying. The life jackets were the compromise. But it was embedded in me at that early age that skinny dipping was part of lake life, and for the last 20+ years, I try to insist on implementing this. It never works.
So here we are, probably the first or second time I’ve ever been invited to your parents’ place, and they are away that weekend, and we are very much in our 20s. This means we are routinely trashing your parents’ house with elaborate meals and cheap beer, cleaning it all up, and starting over again the next day. It is remote but comfortable, so we really stretch our hedonistic muscles and indulge in doing exactly what we want, when we want, and how we want, for a few days. It is a delicious experience. We hike (your idea, not mine of course), we grill, we wine taste, we play card games, we drink what seems to be every Labatt Blue in the county.2 It is the experience I’ve heard friends talk about back in Michigan, wild weekends at their cottages, camps, lake houses, weekends I’ve had that I can count on my fingers. I was never close to "the right” friends who had the million dollar homes on the big, famous inland lakes up north. So to me, it almost felt like catching up.
Holiday weekends on a lake are decadent and depraved, lol. Finger Lakes, New York, 2015.
It was important to me that we include a skinny dipping session into these lake weekends. Probably the second night of the first (or second) trip to the Finger Lakes, after probably 27 beers, I insisted that now it was dark enough and late enough to skinny dip. No one was interested. The night eventually started to dissolve, each of us falling asleep during a conversation and then floating off to bed. I was huffing and puffing because my skinny dipping idea had basically backfired and it felt like a personal failure. So in my beer-fueled defiance, I said fine, fuck you guys, I will go by myself.
No one believed that I actually would skinny dip alone - in addition to a well-known, lifelong fear of the dark, the walk to the dock was, relatively speaking, far away. One had to walk down the driveway, across the road, down two flights of long, wooden stairs, across the rocky “beach” and to the end of the dock.
But once we were in bed, I was still pouting. While he tried to talk me out of it, I threw the covers back defiantly, somehow obtained a flashlight (did you give me one? Did I use my phone?), a towel, and stormed out the door by myself. “I’ll show them,” I told myself, hustling through the dark — down the driveway, across the road, down the stairs, and off to the end of the dock. For some reason, I wrapped the towel around me, took off my clothes (what was I wearing? Pajamas? My bathing suit?) and quickly and quietly climbed down the ladder, naked.
Once I had submerged my whole, naked body into the water, I felt like I had accomplished my goal. I did not let go of the ladder (I probably never told you this!!!) being fully afraid of floating in unseeable water in the very dark of night. After approximately 90 seconds, I emerged triumphantly from the water, wrapped myself in the towel, and stared up at the sky. The sky over your parents’ lake is magical. It’s one of the last places I feel I can go and truly see stars. It feels special and almost otherworldly.
The night sky over the Finger Lakes (3 sec exposure on iPhone), July 2021.
This inaugural skinny dip is the only one I’ve ever done in the Finger Lakes. Despite being teased about it every time I visit, still no one says, “what the hell,” and indulges me, even though I ask every time. I don’t know why it’s important to me, but there is something about it that feels old school, a tradition I believe worth keeping alive. Why? I don’t know! There is some kind of pull to that first skinny dip, a sense of obligation to “the old ways” of lake leisure, a sense of liberation with being naked, I guess. I can’t properly express it, but it holds meaning for me in some way — like I have to make sure to at least mention it, if not actually do it, to remind myself and those around me that we can (and I believe should!) still practice this form of freedom.
Sunset over the Finger Lakes, July 4, 2021.
weekly wanderings
Help 🥺
This is perfect, The End.
Those familiar with “lake life” know that what you call a house on a lake differs, based on your geographic location and regional culture. In the U.P., and other places in the true Upper Midwest, it’s often called “a camp,” like a deer camp. The lower peninsula, or downstate as we call it, folks usually call it “a cottage.” Further east, folks usually call it a lake house, I think? Let me know what else it is called in other places!
I will never forget when you told me that your dad was shocked and slightly appalled when they came home and saw the dozens and dozens of empty beer cans neatly packed in paper grocery bags in their basement.