Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Three summers ago, my parents were visiting, we went to the South Beach of Lake Willoughby, and I decided that I would swim across the cove, about a half-mile there and back. And I did. In the very definition of a slippery slope, I proceeded to say, "Maybe I should practice till I can swim across the whole lake!" which is 5 miles/8 km from end to end, North Beach to South.

I've always been good at swimming. In education today, you speak of "talent" at your peril, but I do truly have "natural talent" for swimming because my body shape makes me extremely buoyant. Where others have to work to keep above water, I just have to work to move through it. If I am in water over my head and stand upright, I will float naturally with the water just below my chin. (There's a picture of me "standing" in 300 feet of water below!) Of course, this makes swimming in deep water far less nerve-wracking. It is controversial how deep Willoughby actually is, but most can agree that it is very deep and very cold--over 300 feet deep, or about 100 m--and all can agree it is at least one of the deepest lakes in Vermont, if not the deepest entirely contained within the state's borders. Furthermore, there is all sorts of creepy folklore: an alleged monster (which may or may not be the same monster in Lake Memphremagog) and underground caverns that connect it to other glacial lakes in the area (which is how the monster moves between lakes). There is a story of a team of horses that fell through Willoughby's notoriously thin ice, only to be found later in nearby Crystal Lake. I have swam across some of the deepest sections, and it is a little uncanny to float with an abyss open beneath your feet, like something primordial may well emerge from beneath and nibble your toes. Even in the middle of the lake, you will come upon cold patches, the presumable exhalation of a subterrane untouched by sunlight.

All of this made Willoughby attractive to me, who loves the shadowy corners of the human imagination. It makes people pause when it comes up in conversation like none of our other dozens of lakes do: the cold, the legends, the breathtaking scenery that leaves little to the imagination about how the glacier ripped open the earth to make the lake ten thousand years ago, leaving raw rock as yet unhealed by vegetation.( Read more... )