bonnie tsui


August 30, 2002
In Crossing a Lake, a Watershed Moment

When I first started going along with my boyfriend, Matt Elliott, to his family's cottage on Lake George, I noticed that everyone in the family had a particular way of crossing the lake. The mile-long crossing is not at the widest part of the lake—it's at Silver Bay, an old Y.M.C.A. resort. But it's far enough to be a trip.

Uncle Chris, an avid kayaker, likes to paddle his way across. Grandpa Halliday has a special affection for tooling around in fishing boats. (He has owned three in his lifetime: the Ultimate Folly I, II and III, each larger and more elaborate than the last. To our knowledge, however, he has never actually caught a fish.)

Matt's mother loves to float around in a rubber dinghy—she's not exactly a lake crosser, but she's at least a shore dabbler. Her husband, a marine surveyor, traverses the lake on a windsurfer. And Matt's younger brother, just becoming adept at handling the 13-foot Boston Whaler, recently earned a boating license to strike out on the waters by himself.

This cottage and this lake loom large in family history. Silver Bay is a classic weekend resort of the best kind, with rows of cottages, shuffleboard courts and a harbor full of canoes and catamarans.

The $1 ice cream cones at the general store are just up the hill from the spot where Matt's parents first set eyes on each other. Better yet, it's also the place where his grandparents met—63 years ago, on the raft that still floats at Bay Beach.

Up against all this romantic tradition, my anxiety about being accepted in those early visits was acute. I wanted to share in all of this, of course, to be a part of the family and fit in. But how was I doing? Did I measure up? With an eyebrow ring and hair cut as short as a boy's, I didn't exactly blend in with the natives. Matt's grandparents were kind and welcoming, but even after several visits I didn't feel secure. I felt that I was missing an element of the lake culture.

One morning over breakfast, Grandpa Halliday casually mentioned that he and his friends used to swim about a mile across the lake to Diver's Rock, for generations the spot where children have made a heart-stopping jump into the water.

"That was the thing to do back then, like swimming the English Channel," he said. "If you said you'd swum across the lake that day, that was something."

My ears perked up. I swam competitively for 10 years, from age 9 until the day I departed for college. This was something I knew how to do. And I loved the idea of joining the generations of lake crossers before me; the act was at once old and new. I was ready to go that afternoon, and Matt agreed to cross with me.

We were careful. When we pushed off from Silver Bay, Matt was swimming and I was beside him, paddling Grandma Halliday's old blue kayak, so he wouldn't be run over by speedboats.

We made our way out past the sailboats and motorboats bobbing in the harbor; past the raft at Bay Beach; past the tiny island of Scotch Bonnet, where Matt's parents were married; past a man in a boat who chastised us through a megaphone, saying swimming in the lake was hazardous to our health, what with all the boats and Jet Skis racing about; finally reaching Diver's Rock, a stony cliff where each member of Matt's family has made the jump. Except for the intrusion from the man in the boat, it was a veritable swimming tour of the family history at Lake George.

We arrived at Diver's Rock breathless but gleeful. We performed the solemn ceremony of jumping off the ledge, and then it was my turn to swim across the lake.

When I finally beached myself on the shores of Silver Bay, I felt initiated. Each member of Matt's family had made this crossing in some way or another, and I'd claimed part of the tradition for my very own. I thought I finally understood something about what the place meant to Matt, and to the company of lake crossers before us.

Three years later, we continue our Lake George swim. Several times a summer, we drive up to his grandparents' cottage, and during each visit we jump into the lake and swim across. There have been variations, of course (Matt and I held the first meeting of the Silver Bay Polar Bear Swim Club—total members: two), but the spirit remains the same. We cross the lake in a way that's both ours and a part of the familiar family ritual.





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