“How’s the water?” I asked the two kayakers floating nearby. We had gathered near the stream’s entry into the lake as it took a final dive over high rocks.
“Ah, well, just fine. Why don’t you try?” said a young woman in a solo kayak. Tempting as the invitation to dive into alpine snowmelt was, I declined. We bantered about the prospect, offering each other additional excuses precluding us from suffering hypothermia.
Back at the boathouse, I checked in my kayak and shouted over to the woman and her friend. “Okay, ten minutes and we jump off the dock!” They appeared more amused than persuaded.
Determined to experience all venues of this mountain retreat, I changed into my swim trunks and headed back to the water, not yet fully convinced of my actions. I was just in time to see the two paddling back out. “Hey, did you forget?”
They looked in disbelief. One asked, “Are you really going in?” Not only was I absent any companions for this venture, my sanity appeared to be in question — hardly the support I’d hoped for.
As they paddled away along the shore, doubt came closer to fill the void. I looked at the water in front of the dock. Its clarity gave no clue as to temperature. I dipped my fingers in: not wholly out of the question. I’d just have to prepare myself.
Another kayaker slipped past. Grasping, I asked, “Any advice before I hit the water?”
“Yea: take your glasses off.” Not exactly the spiritual guidance I sought.
I placed shirt and towel on the dock railing and edged my toes to the end of the wood, the terminus where solid and dry met fluid and wet. I stared.
Did I really want to do this? No; what fool would choose to freeze his butt in a vast snowmelt? Yes; another life experience awaits, another “Nature Boy” adventure!
One problem remained: how was this adventurous desire going to overwrite the body’s innate programming for survival? I wasn’t suicidal. Yet other journeys to the edge had proven survivable in the face of that sense claimed to be common. I would survive this one too. Survive? Yes. Enjoy? That answer was less certain.
I came to terms: this was to be a spiritual quest, a cleansing in a mountain lake, rendering me refreshed and purified. Like an Indian mystic walking painlessly across hot coals — Hey, burning or freezing; what was this? The last test before I was interviewed by a guy named Peter? This wasn’t going well.
I took a deep breath and gazed across the lake, absorbing its calmness. I would enter the Zen of the lake, merging effortlessly, slipping into the void of water created as my solid presence forced its liquid counterpart aside, a perfect union of yin and yang.
I breathed deeply, envisioning a cocoon of spiritual protection surrounding my body, anesthetizing me to the cold. Raising my arms to the horizon, I took one last breath, and dove.
Suddenly, immediately, my entire being went into reverse. I powered my arms to halt my momentum through the water. All spirituality vanished; the anesthesia of Zen didn’t’ so much “wear off” as claim never to have been administered. I gasped to the surface, my breath outpacing my pulse, adrenalin replacing the blood in my veins.
Skipping across the surface, I clutched at the ladder, thankful that I had positioned myself strategically near. Standing with towel in hand, I tried to remember whether I had used my legs to climb the ladder or had pulled myself out entirely with my arms.
As I dried off, my breathing began to settle. The sun shone brightly, warmly. I remembered earlier times in cold water, the second and third dives so much easier than the first. You could get used to it.
Looking over the edge of the dock at the clear, calm mountain water, I asked myself: should I take that second dive? The answer surfaced from the depths of my being, two simple words: “No way!”
The air was warm; there was no need for a shirt as I walked back toward my cabin. Looking past it, beyond the horizon of treetops, I could see the mountain above, its face given character by the snow packed crevices that ran like the wrinkles of age. Trees along its slope beckoned, showing me the way.
I stopped, considered the proposition and answered myself with an image of a cascading waterfall — mountain fresh, hot, bursting forth from the showerhead in my room.