This is the path on the way to a lake I have no idea the name of. But it's very quiet and the water is black. It's surrounded by pines, blueberries and huge granite rocks protruding out into the water.

These are some of the smaller rocks around where I was swimming (actually, wading is more like it). But some of them are much larger and you can jump off into the water which is really deep. I, however, did not do that because I am scared of deep, black water. So I just sat on the edge of the rocks where they were submerged but not quite all the way into the scary black part where, of course, there is some kind of lake serpent thing waiting to eat me.

Here you can sort of see the rock under the water, it's the brownish, shadowy lumpy thing at the bottom of the picture. That's about as far as I will go. But there were a bunch of people jumping off and some swimming all around in the middle of that thing. Crazy bastards.

Maybe if I had been with a bunch of people and knew there would be some of them around me in the water, maybe I would have dared it. Next time. Maybe.

When I was younger I stayed down in the Florida Keys with my friend Camilla. The beaches there are strange, at least in some parts. It's shallow for ever, and murky brown colored from the fine sand I guess. And then suddenly it drops off into the middle of the ocean. And it literally is the middle of the ocean. By the time you're in Key West, it's only 90 miles to Cuba. I'm not sure how far it is from mainland Florida, but it's far. Creepy ass mangrove islands.

I obviously would not linger far from shore, but Camilla would walk all the way out to the ledge and swim right off it while I was wringing my sweaty hands for her safety on shore.