The haunting R.E.M. song “Night Swimming” never fails to move me – I really don’t know the lyrics, except that “night swimming deserves a quiet night.”  It takes me back to a night when I was in my twenties, living in Cornwall, NY, having followed a “bad boyfriend” out there after college.  There were a lot of good times, but I never really fit in, and ended up returning to Illinois.  At any rate, the group I hung out with seemed immune to real life.  Their parents had money, they didn’t seem to do much but party, although they all had menial jobs provided by their parents and their parent’s friends.  None of them had gone to college despite their opportunities, and there was a sense of them looking down at me because although I did have a college degree, here I was no better than they, working minimum wage myself in a little town in the Hudson Valley, an educated fool.   The world was their oyster – they were immune to all the dangers of youth and somehow I thought they knew something I didn’t and so I would be safe. I got involved in some crazy shenanigans with them.  It was okay.  I was exploring my life.  I have no regrets. 

One of the guys in the group had access to the Black Rock Forest.  It was private property owned by Harvard University and because his father had gone to Harvard, he had a key to the gate that let us onto a dirt road that wound through the forest.  A quick Wiki search reveals that it was used for research and although now it appears that it is a little more open to the public, back then it was private property.   I recall feeling rather privileged.  I was impressed that I knew someone, even secondhand, who went to Harvard.  We often snuck in there during the day to wade in the pools and observe the beaver dams.

One dark summer night five or six of us loaded up into a car and headed out for the forest.  I was loathe to break the law, still am, but it was exciting to be sneaking into the Forest at night.  It was pitch black with only a hint of moon, and at one point E turned off the lights of the car while still driving along the dirt road – I was scared and thrilled and begged him to turn the lights back on. 

We arrived at the lake. It was a still, hot night and the lake was an inky glass sheet.  I could not have been more frightened and challenged.  I wasn’t supposed to be there.  They wanted to go swimming.  I was sure that the Hudson Valley equivalent of the Loch Ness monster was waiting for me in that black expanse, or that I would be hauled off to jail by powerful people from Harvard who could have me put away for a lifetime.  

One by one my friends took off their clothes, then slowly my courage rose and I did the same.  The water was not cold, just cool and refreshing.  I was afraid to make noise – what if we got busted? Even my feckless friends spoke in whispers, we kept the splashes of our water treading to a minimum, our giggles muffled, lest some unlikely security personnel hear us.  I was more concerned at that point that we would awaken the fish and slimy critters that surely lived under the creepy black glass cover.

When I hear that song I am taken back to that magical night, when there seemed to be no consequences to doing something not morally wrong, but against the rules.   I see my friends silently slide into the water ahead of me, and then finally,  I am there as well.  Night swimming.