Swimming in a Rainbow Dream

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

The last Pennsylvania mermaid rides again. . . .

My husband and I had been very disappointed when all of the state park swimming areas closed rather early in September. There is still plenty of good swimming to be had long after that; I've preferred those years when a few of the state parks kept their beaches open until mid-October. October swimming is absolutely amazing around here. You get two wonderful gifts: the gift of cold water and all of its comforting and healing properties, and the gift of the glorious autumn foliage, made double by its own reflections on the lake.

Suddenly, we were in the midst of a run of what they used to call, when I was a child, "Indian summer." We have warm, sunny afternoons, with temperatures in the 70s F. What did it make us want to do? Go for one last swim! All of the state park beaches are closed, but we know of a few wilder swimming holes in the big woods. So that's where we went. We grabbed a pair of hoagies and headed up into the mountains. Took a tour of the colors. Went for what we are billing as "one last swim."

My husband found a chair lying around to replace the blue bag chair I broke over the weekend while backpacking. So we took our chairs and a cooler and our floaties and swim fins, and our swim suits (I wore the red one I started the season with that made me the star of Amish Baywatch on the day of our first swim, LOL!) and towels and our friends, Tiny Tiger, Little Moose, and Anteater. And off we went. We didn't get there until around 2 p.m., and there was a guy doing some stuff there who shortly departed, leaving us with the whole place to ourselves.

The last time I used it, my floatie was losing lots of air. So the first thing I did before leaving the house was to take off all of the old tape and replace it with new. Yes, my floatie is almost as much tape as anything else! But the result was good. It took me a while to blow it up but it stayed pretty well inflated for the whole gig.

I was the first one into the water, of course. Walking down a hill in swim fins is a real hoot; it sorta works better if you do it backwards. I grabbed my pink floatie, pushed it into the water, stepped into the water myself in my fins, and launched myself. I used the floatie to hold onto, and swam that way. The floatie itself sort of protected the bulk of my chest from the coldness of the water. While my feet were a bit chilly, the rest of me was pretty much fine. The water wasn't a LOT colder than it was a month ago.

My husband followed me, in his little round blue donut-hole floatie. He sat up in it like it was a chair, and made multiple laps around the lake that way, while I swam and floated among the colors. It was like swimming INSIDE a rainbow. As I swam, I wished for my camera, as I so often do, so that I could show you how glorious it feels to swim among all of those colors! 

A bit later, I had gotten out of the water after what I suspect was the actual last swim of the season. Then my husband stepped out, and as he did, his swim fins disturbed the water and sent ripples out across it. It marred the reflections and set them a-twitter. It was perfect, and beautiful, and amazing, and glorious, as the reflection images made and remade themselves. (Later on, at home that night, I would make this observation: "Some people want to swim with dolphins. I want to swim with autumn foliage!")

Here are two photos for this day of grand autumn adventures and cold-water swimming. One is of the pond where we swam, and the second is a reflection abstract, made of light, and trees, and water. In honor of a story about swimming with rainbows, I wanted two rainbow tunes. So here are two favorites. First is Kacey Musgraves, with Rainbow. Second is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, with Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.

Bonus: my Instagram set, my top 10 reflection shots from this visit. :-) ENJOY!!!