al force of gravity. Being raised in Central New York, it’s likely that I’ve been immersed in a high percentage of the various lakes, ponds, rivers, and pools here, and may be deemed somewhat of an aficionado, having personally experienced the pros and cons of each. Earliest photos show me in Power Dam on Mohawk St. in Washington Mills; Oneida Lake; Hatch Lake; Heckla Quarry; or the St Lawrence River. But un-pictured are the willow-framed creeks and tiny pools in cow pastures and woodlands near my childhood home on Stop 7 Road in Westmoreland that the neighborhood kids and I frequently splashed in. Some of them were not exactly healthy bathing spots, but this did not deter us. In my teens, when a diving class was offered at the Clinton Town Pool, I sometimes walked the four and a half miles from home to participate if I couldn’t get a ride that day. The Addison Miller Pool in East Utica was probably the biggest pool in the area in the 1960s, holding swimming and diving competitions occasionally. I entered one once. It was terribly exciting and scary with the loudspeaker and people milling about, but my performance there was uneventful. That would come later when I had an excellent coach in college and succeeded in my freshman year (1966-67) to place fifth in diving and third in the 50-yard freestyle among the SUNY colleges participating in a state-wide competition. But spending four hours Peg tries out a Jet Ski a day in the college pool, doing laps, dives, and synchronized swimming was not why I went to college. My grades suffered and I had to change my focus. But it was so interesting to me that I’d enter the pool feeling terribly fatigued, but would leave it, after swimming hard for two to four hours, feeling totally ener-
with friends and nature. In late summer, our garden abounds with an abundance of vegetables and flowers, but weeds as well, because this time of year lures us away from homesteading to the important business of making adventures and seeing friends. I miss my time fussing with plants, seeds, and tending the soil, but am also glad to have a break from it. For Tim’s August birthday one year in the 1990s, our creative brother-in-law gifts us 20 minutes on a new machine called a Jet Ski. I hesitate because I’ve had some difficult moments with boats, machines, and water. The giant water slide ride he gifted us a previous year resulted in me being incapacitated by a stiff neck for the next few weeks. I tried water skiing as a teenager, but had a pretty uncomfortable times when my legs got too far apart to hold me out of the water, and I didn’t think to let go of the rope. And I recall capsizing in a sailboat more than once in my youth in the great channel of the St. Lawrence River. I have other tales of water-borne calamity that I won’t get into today. However, it’s hard to resist a new adventure, and the Jet Ski thing looked interesting. Instruction was good, the waters of Lake Erie were calm, and I didn’t go too fast. I survived this ride without painful repercussions, but I still prefer just me and water, that strangely buoyant confusion that usually includes fish emulsions, plant particles, and many substances I don’t want to know about. It’s simply lovely to slide through silky, cool, viscous liquid on a tropically hot day, floating, paddling, bending, twisting, free to move in any direction in any position without the dictatori-
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Peg does a dive at Westmoreland pool
Peg on left with her family at the St. Lawrence River
gized. Tim and I both lifeguarded for quite a few years at summer jobs, and I also got into teaching swimming when I was hired as assistant director at the new community pool in my hometown of Westmoreland. It’s so important for everyone to learn to swim as early as possible! Tim likes to have a challenge; he asked me to follow him in our kayak so he could swim the choppy waters of Lake Erie in the channel between the break walls that all boats (including the gigantic coal ships) must go through in order to port in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio (Tim’s hometown.) Following a swimmer in a boat is a pretty boring activity that one only does for a very good friend, and this was even less enticing to