Waves

Saturday night we race the sunset down to the beach and push the corners of our beach towels into the sand because the wind is that strong. In front of nine other beach-goers—four teenagers, two who are perhaps senior citizens, and three young men who never leave the food they have on the grill by the stone and cement pavilion—we run screaming into the water. The running is necessary because the push of the waves against the shore is enough to keep you on the dry sand if you don’t have enough forward momentum. The screaming is necessary because that’s what you do when you run headlong into giant waves that crest and fold over each other right into your waist five feet from the shore.

These waves are a once-a-summer thing, my sister tells me. They only happen when a cold front comes in and drives all the sun-warmed water from the top of the lake toward the shore. I’m not prepared despite the screaming and sudden bravery and the undertow knocks me forward into shallow water. My balance is gone for a few moments like I’m losing my sea legs from a long trip, but I have no choice but to scramble onto my feet, thanking god for the Five Fingers that have become my water shoes and the grip they have on the ankle-sized rocks that cover the lake’s floor. I wish I had my Noodle! I shout at Caitlin over the wind, even though I haven’t owned one of those slightly ridiculous flotation devices in years. If you had it, you’d float out to sea!

Caitlin is braver than I am and she has already leaped over several waves by the time my body remembers the childhood art of jumping up to meet each wave as it comes. She points out toward the horizon, saying It looks like a storm is coming, but it’s not and I know she’s right. Neither of us can stop laughing.  I am nearly overwhelmed with the sheer joy of jumping over waves. And they are huge waves. Thirty feet from shore, when the water is usually waist-deep (even for me), the water is over my head each time a wave rolls in.

If you catch a wave that is cresting and push off from the rocks at just the right moment, it will throw you toward the shore. Once I am almost carried completely out of the water by a wave I didn’t see coming, and I spend the rest of the time we are at the beach looking for waves with similar power. In that moment, hurled over rocks and sand in a rush of water, I was not in control. It’s a human illusion that we’re ever in control over large bodies of water, but on a still day it’s easy to think so. I have to fight my way back out to a more comfortable depth. The secret of waves is that most of them crest near the shore, and if you can get beyond the point where they crest you can bob up and down in a relatively calm manner. I never go quite that far.

We are leaping a particularly large wave when Caitlin says Do you see the three-masted schooner? I jump over the next wave and look where she’s pointing, but I don’t have my glasses and all I can see is a vague shape. It’s facing us right now, so all you can see is the front she says, so I jump again and let her description resolve the blur. In fact she is the only thing I can see clearly—not the shore, not the faraway clouds, not truly the schooner. Once out of the corner of my eye I think I see a person swimming far out in the lake, almost beyond the length of the pier. It’s a buoy, Caitlin tells me, and I’m relieved because for a minute I was sure that person would drown.

After a while we realize that we have drifted far down the shore from our towels. I can see the bright colors against the sand. Caitlin lands from one of her leaps on a huge rock that’s totally invisible beneath the seething surface of the water. We decide to go back toward the towels, but it’s much easier to go with the water than against it. Our progress against the waves is slow, and between waves I run parallel to the shore. My toes wrap around each individual rock and push off. A gigantic wave crests right on top of me, and I land with what finally seems like perfect balance, facing the next oncoming wave like a snowboarder, like a Warrior pose, prepared, and I think This is as close as I’ll ever get to surfing, or flying. Caitlin is farther ahead than I am, and she, aside from the lighthouse, is the only other beacon to head toward.

Getting back in front of the towels is the grand adventure of the trip, and once we’ve reached the end of it we spend more time jumping waves. I hate swimming in cold water and so have only been out in the lake one other time all summer, but the water now is like bathwater. It’s warmer than the air. I never want to leave.

Eventually there comes a moment when the waves get too large, and the sky is just a little too dark. One of them catches me before I’m ready and completely covers me, even though we’re not far from the shore at all, and I breathe in some water. Another reminder of my relative insignificance in comparison to the universe and even in comparison to this lake, which is a tiny speck compared to the ocean, and how easy it is to be bested by water.

We race the lake onto the sand. The running is necessary because if you’re not with the waves you’re against them, and if one catches the back of your knees you’ll go down in the shin-deep water and hopefully miss the sharp rocks but probably not. Our towels have miraculously survived the whipping wind and that same wind wraps them for us when we haul them out of the sand. My sister’s hair is windswept and falling from its braid. I’ve lost two barretts to the lake. On the way to the car, we see the typical gathering of teenagers up to no good loitering near their cars and thinking they are invisible. It’s just like old times, says Caitlin, and I know she’s talking about the teenagers, but I think instead of the five-year-old and seven-year-old and nine-year-old joy of leaping waves with your sister nearby in water like a bath, with the sun setting over everything.

Tagged as: Home, Swimming