Describe the Taste of a Fresh Water Lake

Looking up at a rather remarkable peak across the lake.  Can you cut up across that bluff there?  There is almost certainly a trail.  It looks like a smaller version of the Storm King, which I know to be in that same general direction only a few miles further on, down by the river.  Appropriately someone is down on the dock playing the Allman Brothers on an acoustic guitar.  No, it isn’t “Dreams I’ll Never See”, which would be uncanny.  But “Statesboro Blues” sounds just about right and this guy can carry a tune. 

I dove straight in and suddenly it tasted like camp.  I remember that taste.  How to describe the taste of a fresh water lake?  Is it metallic?  Is it woody or decomposed leaves or simply water that has risen-up and out of the earth from a spring?  It tastes like an old New York in the sepia tone photos of YMCA teens in the 1920s with their 1920s bathing suits on.  My Uncle Harry is telling me that he was the guy standing in the back there.  The water tastes flat and safe and familiar.  I probably don’t want to know what is really involved in making Hudson Valley lake water taste the way it does. 

I swim straight out to the floating dock.  There’s no chlorine to hurt the eyes and no salt to sting them either.   The temperature is pleasant, uniform.  My little one and my nephew are slowly making their way out here now too:  one in a watermelon floaty and one held up by an inflatable doughnut.  This is the second lake we’ve swam in this summer.  The other, Lake Malawi, was big and foreboding. 

Next stop; the rope swing over by the tree.  The floaties are in hot pursuit.   I take the rope from the tree and consider how it works.  There is a moment of consideration and then I blindly proceed, assuming this rope will hold my weight.  It does and I release my grasp just before the rope begins to pull me back towards the shore. 

The floaties are closer now.  A bit closer.  Back on shore I see a beautiful water moccasin swimming along the shore where I just stepped out from.  The ten-year-old inside me is thrilled to see him pass.  The ten year old in me wants to catch him and consider him.  I consider the snake's head and look for the angular shape that lets you know it is venomous.  I tell the floaties to head to the other shore.  “Why?”  I tell the pair why and there are no questions asked.  Neither of them are particularly interested in snakes other than as things to avoid.  We were warned about snakes in Lake Malawi.  Snakes in the lakes of the Hudson Valley have some mystery, but not much.  Nothing much martial around here. 

Saturday, 07/15/17