The dock and a canoe and an eagle flying down from the mountain up ahead.  The music loud–and the neighbors joining–a surprise to us–we thought there was a noise bylaw.  This year, the water fowl have gone to the lake south, leaving our lake a pristine, still, and quiet place–for one summer at least.  There is only four more weeks we will be in the little cottage here.  We share rooms when we are here, unlike back home, in the city.  There, everyone has a bedroom for themselves.

This year, we remembered to bring an alarm clock….  One that doesn’t need to be plugged in….. we missed the early morning hike to the waterfall, which if you walk behind, underneath the rock face, the sunrise shines through the falls and creates a beautiful rainbow to look through.  My brother wants to catch the sunlight at the angle that makes the whole cave wall a rainbow.  So far, we haven’t caught it yet.

We got hungry one day, just wandering on the lake.  We had planned on only going down the path that winds between nearby cottages, but, we ended up taking our walk beyond the end of the path.  We continued our walk, sticking close to the lake.  There were places where the lake water had come up higher and it left many stones and pebbles.  It was more difficult to walk, but we like to pick stones and see if we could skip and the right-shaped one further than three hops.

This year, my parents allowed me to invite my boyfriend up too.  He was my first boyfriend, and we were very much friends with each other, so my parents trusted us together.  We were not the type to fool around.  The appeal was the fact of having someone of the opposite sex close, knowing  secrets, and valuing the other for more than it being fun to hang out.  So, I was actually having a very good summer.  When my boyfriend would go back to the city, we promised to call each other.  I had a fleeting thought of writing letters…  but it soon became undoable….

One day, during the week that my boyfriend was with us, he whispered to me that he wanted to try skinny dipping in the alcove of the lake further down, beyond where the path ended.  We were not allowed to share a bedroom, and I was sharing my bedroom with my sister, while my boyfriend and my brother roomed together.  So, the problem was escaping early in the morning…  when everyone would not be up yet, so we could skinny dip in some sort of privacy.  My sister would probably just groan at the alarm at 5am, and I guessed that my brother would probably just sleep right through it.  I did guess right as both of us, my boyfriend and I, ran into each other coming out of the bedrooms.  We immediately started shushing each other, as we both started quietly to close the bedroom doors.

Like me, my boyfriend had a t-shirt and pair of shorts on.  I had two towels also with me, as I was sure I wouldn’t like to be wet in my clothes.  When we slipped out through the door, locking it, we were surprised that the early morning air was so much cooler than during the day.  So we started running, my boyfriend being larger, he ran a little faster, and it made me whisper loudly at him to slow down for me.

Once we were out of  the sight of the cottage, and giving ourselves some breathing room, we started to slow our pace and eventually we slowed to a comfortable, slow, walk.  It was beginning to be quite bright now.  And there was a haze as lake water rose with the temperature.  It was still cool.  We walked side by side, thinking and wondering if we could even wade into the water.

The alcove we both knew from a previous walk  down the path, was about ten minutes from the cottage.  Just like that walk, we were both in flip-flops, and  our feet were becoming dusty from the dirt and sand path.  There was the occasional stone, but nothing that would make us twist an ankle or fall if we began to run.  If we walked lower down closer to the lake water, we would be walking on rocks and stones….  finding it impossible to avoid them.

As we got closer to the curve in the lake, and the ground became more level with the lake, my boyfriend started to run-jog, kicking his flip-flops off and taking his shirt and shorts off.  He yelled at me to hurry up and follow him.  And I couldn’t resist his exhortations and started to run after him too.  He had got himself naked by the time he was at the edge of the lake.  Although I didn’t tear my clothes off crazily, I also didn’t bother picking up his discarded things.  I stood there, beside the lake, watching him wade in, and I began taking my flip-flops, shorts, and t-shirt off too.  It was less than thirty seconds that I was doing this, and, soon, I was in the lake with him.

He didn’t wade in very far, but the water was at his waist, so I saw his chest.  He was very angled and chiseled like most teenage boys, and it didn’t take me long to run through the water to get to him.  The water came a little higher on me, but I still was very anxious and embarrassed about being naked, despite the water.  He stopped splashing around and had started to walk towards me, and soon, he splashed water at me.  I instinctively held up m hands and ducked, screaming.  I started to tell him to stop as the water was beginning to make me cold.  When he stopped, and I looked up, at him, he started to grin in a silly way, and he said, “You know, you really are very beautiful….  Can I come a little closer?”  My arms covered my chest and I was hugging myself.  I said, “You are such an idiot!”  But instead of stopping there, I pushed a wave of water at him.  Screaming and yelling from both of us ensued as we continued to splash each other.  Suddenly, because I had not noticed in the dawning of morning, my boyfriend had his arms around me annd he held me until I knew to be still.  He bent his head a little, and kissed my forehead, my nose, and then my lips.  We savoured our kiss, and slowly, let go.

This walk to the lake and the skinny dip did not take us long.  We dried off, were dressed, and back at the kitchen in the cottage within an hour.  No one actually noticed that we had gone missing for an hour.  We made ourselves and everyone else breakfast and savoured our secret.