Risk

My husband and I went hiking along the river the other day. I'm a terrible klutz who can trip over her own shadow, so I tend not to veer off the trail. And yet, perversely, when I see a precipitous path off a well-marked trail, part of me longs to pursue it. At one point the rather tame trail we were on branched into two. One prong was clearly marked DANGER -- TAKE CARE, as it ran along a precipitous slab of sandstone that jutted out over the river, while the other ran between the safer side of the stone and a grove of conifers.

We took the safer path, but a tiny part of me wanted to try the hard one -- for the challenge, the sheer exhileration you get from taking your life in your hands. And it made me remember Devil's Lake in Wisconsin.

Almost seven years ago, on our eldest daughter's tenth birthday, I decided to swim across Devil's Lake. We were traveling across the States at the time, stopping to visit friends and relatives, and on our daughter's birthday we happened to be in Wisconsin visiting my best friend from fourth grade.

For those of you who haven't had the privilege of experiencing long-distance car travel with children, let me assure you that while it has its moments, some of them last a little too long. By the time we hit Wisconsin, my stress levels were elevated and I desperately needed to let off steam. As we ate our picnic by the side of the lake, I sized it up. It looked to be about a mile across, and as I have swum several miles in one go, I knew I could easily swim across, then swim back.

"Anyone want to swim across?" I asked a good hour after our picnic finished.

Nobody did.

I tested the water, and it was a little chilly, but I knew that was no problem. For a long distance swim, cold water is what you're after; warm water will make you overheat in no time.

"Well, I'm going to give it a go." My friends had seen swimmers in the lake before; they knew it was safe. It was the middle of May, and no one else was swimming in it, but the sight of that expanse of glittering water was too much for me: I had to try it.

I stripped down to my swimsuit and put my goggles around my neck. "Okay -- see you all later!"

God, the water was cold. I swam for about ten minutes, watching as my friends and family on the shore grew more and more distant. Then I saw my husband wade into the lake and swim after me. "If you're determined to do this, I might as well do it with you."

We swam side by side. It was a beautifully warm day with starched popcorn clouds in a pale blue sky, but by the time we got to the middle of the lake, I had made a discovery: the water was the temperature of newly melted ice and I could not feel my feet.

"Can you feel your feet?" I called out to my husband.

"No," he shouted. "Because it's f***ing cold!"

"Just keep swimming, I guess," I managed.

"Mmm."

And so we did. Our friends and children were specks on the distant shore; we could no longer even tell if they were waving. We swam and we swam and we swam, and when I looked ahead, I could not see that the opposite shore was growing any closer.

In retrospect, it could not have taken us over two hours to get across -- possibly it was less. But in my mind's eye, I am swimming there even now. At one point, I thought that we would never reach the other side. My arms and legs, vainly struggling against the water, seemed not to propel me forward. I kept my eyes on my husband, who like me was working hard to keep up a steady, sustainable pace, and I had the horrible thought that we would both die, on our daughter's tenth birthday, frozen in the middle of a Wisconsin lake because of my foolishness.

And then to my amazement, the opposite shore grew closer, and as it did, the water grew shallower and warmer until we could see rocks and algae underneath. Our feet found the rocky bottom and clumsily we began to wade to the shore. I felt remarkably uncoordinated and confused; later I realized that this was because of hypothermia.

A man on the shore watched us in amazement as we stumbled towards him. "Where did you come from?" he asked.

We pointed across the lake and his jaw dropped. "Not from over there?" he enquired, pointing to the adjoining beach. We shook our heads.

"There were people out there in wet suits yesterday," he told us. "The lake only just thawed last week."

Jesus, Joseph and Mary, we'd had no idea.

The man drove us back to the other side in his SUV. I feebly suggested that we could swim back after a rest, but my husband wisely nixed this.

"So where are you guys from?" the man asked us.

"Well, I'm from California."

There was a long, pregnant silence during which I distinctly heard his eyes roll. I'm willing to bet that this story has made the rounds in Wisconsin, so if you're from there and you happen to have heard about this, we're the idiots who swam across Devil's Lake the day after it thawed.

There's a lesson in this of course. Life is all about risk. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't swim across Devil's Lake in the middle of May. But not every experience in life can be vetted, approached cautiously, then rejected for its potential danger. Sometimes you're going to just jump right in and give it a go -- and find yourself wishing with all your heart that you'd let discretion be the better part of valor.

But you can't give up; you really can't. You might just make it to the other side.