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I was lost in the lakes and the shapes that your body makes
I have been thinking a lot about beaches lately; there’s a plan in the works to go “up north” to the beach with my sister once I get back to ontario. nova scotia beaches are lovely, but they’re ocean beaches. I long for the bruce peninsula beaches of my childhood, that rocky freshwater group of seven shit.
like wasaga beach, which is incredibly shallow and warm. the sand of the lake bottom is packed down hard and the currents have drawn it into wavy lines that massage your feet as you walk; but if you step on it wrong it can hurt more than you think. my parents met at wasaga eons ago; it hasn’t changed all of much.
or sauble, which is cold and deep and has big rolling waves that you can body surf. you can’t stay in for long though, because it’s so cold. but it’s not as busy, because of it, so once you get in and suitably numbed you can have it all to yourself.
or the waterfront at my friend’s cottage on georgian bay, which wasn’t a beach at all—it was sloping, slippery rock we had to pick our way over to get to the water. you had to go in off the end of the dock—and preferably all at once so the cold didn’t scare you off. but once you were in you could swim out to the water trampoline. it was hell trying to get on top of it, so naturally we spent a lot of time trying to push one another off.
or the beach at my parents’ friend’s cottage on simcoe, which was another series of sloping rocks. you have to wear shoes in the water though, because the rocks are so slimy and covered in zebra mussels. that kind of rock is really specific—the striated rock packed and cut by glaciers.
or the swimming beach at camp, demarcated by the rectangle dock and relentlessly groomed for anything distasteful to seven year olds. that old dock was so sodden and ancient it wasn’t even a splinter hazard anymore. The metal edges were murder to pull yourself up on though, so I waded out through the shallow end and up the beach whenever I could get away with it. once in a while otters would get in through the nets under the dock and everyone would run to look.
I want to go there; there and there and there. not back but forward.
