I'll always come back
They’re hazy, each one perforated with skips in time and forgotten moments. But they’re there–the memories. Days from a childhood spent mostly at the lake, it’s fading existence delicately adorned with small, sandy feet and squeals of terror from a rogue lakeweed’s attack. The memories aren’t scenes or any chronological sequence, but rather present themselves as flashes from indifferentiable days with a common feeling of warmth and pure joy, all providing a connection back to one or another lake. My parents took me to Lake Champlain, and my grandparents took me to their lake camp in Maine. From Lake Champlain, Vermont to Bottle Lake, Maine, I was a child of the fresh, soft, greenish-blue water.
At the beginning of 6th grade and at the end of 8th grade, we took a field trip to the lake. I organized an abundant and successful potluck with about 15 friends in preparation for the second trip. On the first trip, I dug a big hole with my friend Zoey. Both times, I remember a feeling of familiarity when I first saw the lake beyond the thick blanket of trees, like I was waving hello and it was waving back. This summer, after I’ve turned 16 and my friends finally have driver’s licenses and 6 months, we’ve spent most of the summer driving to and from the lake, laying on towels in the sun and just talking, and splashing around in the water as refuge from each increasingly hot day.
A watershed is just a chunk of terrain with a slight decline to provide a place for runoff and rainfall to gather–a lake is the result. But the slope doesn’t just bring water to the lake, it brings animals and humans, perpetually pulling them towards it with the promise of refreshing, essential, water and sheer gravitational force. My mother is one such victim of this pull, I’ve never seen her so happy as when she’s in a lake: she frolics and floats around with the grace of an otter. She’s subconsciously shown me the simple, childlike joy that comes from a quick swim, and thus forged my seemingly inseverable connection to any given lake. At some point, the short sleeves and swim shorts turned into one pieces, which then turned into bikinis. I’m growing up, and the lakes have watched it all happen. The slants of the watersheds have always tumbled me down them, and I go willingly. I make a solemn and silent promise to always let them, and always come back to the lakes.