Kingsland Bay

My friend Sarah once told a story of jumping into the lake from the dock at Kingsland Bay that had an image so strong I took the story for my own. She said that just as she was mid leap, she saw a huge Northern Pike swim right where she was about to land. There was nothing she could do but surrender to the hard fishy feeling of landing on a fish.

I was eight or so when she told me, and wide eyed when I heard the story. It struck something so deep inside, something primal, who knows why? Without even knowing how or when, I started telling the story as if it were mine. "There was this one time when I jumped off the dock at Kingsland Bay and landed right onto a Northern Pike. There was nothing I could do."

I loved going to Kingsland Bay with Sarah and Lauren. We would roll the windows all the way up on the drive there, in order to get really hot, so that jumping in the lake would feel extra cool. I loved the way their mom made us a picnic lunch, with tuna and grapes and other things in little tupperware containers, and we would eat, sitting in the grass, both shivering from the air and warm from the sun.

The lake wasn't safe and contained like the swimming pool, it was mysterious, deep and alive. There was always this moment, mid jump, where the anticipation of being cool and free mixed with the dread that an unknown thing might brush up against you, or get tangled for a moment in your toes. At the end of the day I always left feeling refreshed, but also sort of like I survived something.