Uncas is what I returned for a full day of on Wednesday as well, but I was barely out of the parking lot when I heard way too many voices. At the picnic table, a man was constructing sandwiches, and the shouts and shrieks were many and louder. I asked, "Camp Claire?" and he said yes. He told me he had 42 kids. Then he offered me a sandwich. This I declined with a smile as I beat my retreat. The beach cannot accommodate 42 bathers, and I also question even a relatively affordable camp sending only one adult, who is making sandwiches, to supervise that many children in the water. But I had options. There is a little pull-off with a path I had never explored, but which I knew must lead to a wee gap in the laurels along the banks: I'd seen people there from canoe and rafts and from longer swims. So I went there. It was just about big enough to fit my (sister's) chair and my gallon jug of water.
I stepped off a foot-high bank into a foot of water with a clear bottom. The gap gets enough use that the leaf litter flooring the rest of the lake is cleared away. I probably wouldn't be afraid of it, but it's slimy and I'm happier without it. I haven't been on the lake in a canoe for many years, and I usually swim blind, so quietly and not really breast-stroking out in sunglasses let me see more detail than I have for ever and ever. I could see both the boat ramp at the south end and the other little beach at the north end. After I swapped glasses for goggles I started swimming.
When I swim with goggles I often open my eyes only when facing down, to ensure I'm still going straight. Sometimes goggles leak, and that quick glance down means less pool water in my eyes. Also, if I can't see other swimmers I don't compare myself to or compete with them. This is not such a good strategy in the lake. I am perfectly comfortable swimming anywhere within it, as long as I keep several yards from shore and possible snapping turtles, but I don't want to look into its greeny-brown depths, especially when I'm alone. When I'm alone, sometimes I cannot shake thoughts of the Unc Ness Monster. And I hate harboring any fear of my lake, especially of monsters I made up 30 years ago. This time I tried to open my eyes only to the side to mark my place, but sometimes I messed up and looked down.
I swam nearly all the way to the boat launch, but if there was a gap in the lilypads I didn't find it. If lilypads are significantly less gross than the seaweedy stuff that grows in untended parts of the much shallower and warmer Roger's Lake, they're still gross. And then I turned and swam, well away from the main beach, to the north little beach, and back to the gap. The lake is maybe three quarters of a mile long and this is the first time I have swum it end to end.
I swam and read All the King's Men and ate bananas and Luna bars (the Old Lyme A&P doesn't stock Clif bars?) and in the middle of the afternoon I heard singing behind me: the Camp Claire children walking back to camp (two miles of forest road and at least a mile along Neck Road, a long and dangerous way and worse for that many inadequately shepherded children. I swam out in glasses again to scope the main beach, which did look empty, and as I stood in the shallow water about to clamber up, I spotted a small snake noodling through the roots under the bank. I stooped to examine it: dark brown with a series of paler brown triangles down its spine. Copperhead? Whatever: snake, and extra impetus to return to the main beach.