Once More to the Lake

                                                           Once More to the Lake

Upon reading E.B. White's Once More to the Lake, I too started to be overcome with nostalgia. To me, lakes are the source of a great number of memories, good and bad. In many ways, my experiences mirrored what White wrote about in his memoir. Similar to White, I can relate to seasonal visits, "We returned summer after summer-always on August 1st for one month". In Canada, this is referred to as "Cottage Season", from Victoria Day(May 24th) until Labor Day(first Monday of Septembre). Another visit down memory lane arose when White describes his son putting on a damp and cold bathing suit, as he prepares to jump into the lake, "Languidly, and with no thought of going in in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death." White captures this experience perfectly. Putting on a cold swim suit, is very unpleasant. In my opinion, the chill of death experience refers to the anticipation of jumping into the cold water of a lake. You have to be out your mind to voluntarily jump into 60oF or 70oF water. The immediate experience is shock. The best method is to jump in, because the pain is over relatively quickly. Some people meander in, claiming that they want to acclimatize themselves slowly, inch by inch. This method is as close to torture as I would ever like to come.