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| Newfound Lake, New Hampshire, photo by Merlina McGovern |
My mother-in-law has a fridge magnet with a brown bear in a red and white striped swimsuit. It says: The lake is calling, and I must go. In the hot, sticky months of summer, the lake calls to us. Newfound lake, with it's fried seafood shacks and crowded summer homes at its foot and happy boaters zooming up and down its length. (There are muddy undercurrents here in the lakes region, though, with drugs, socio-economic battles, association frustrations -- all topics for a different kind of blog, not one where we're chasing dragonflies!)
The night we drove up, fat, dark rainclouds boiled over until rain splattered everything, big boomers echoing across the mountains. The thunder, lightening, and rain prepped and cleansed everything for a clear and dry day. Not really a boating or swimming day, but a beautifully clean crystalline summer day on the lake.
When you walk into the lake on our little beach, you have to walk past some slimy muck before you get to the sandy ground a bit beyond the shore. Swimming where the boats are moored, you feel warm swirls of water dipping and swooping atop colder curls of current. If you have a boat, you can take a ride to the ledges, the deepest part of the lake. We skim over the bumpy wakes created by the other boats and finally get to the spot. Turn off the motor. Float. The sun gets hot. Balance on the back of the boat. Deep breath. Plunge into the icy cold water.
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