Swimming Holes

There’s a deep, blue pool and a rope swing hangs over it. You can picture it in your mind, can almost feel the cool relief of the clear water as you and your best friend follow the overgrown trail, the tall grasses dry and bleached in the beating sun. You’re hot. Uncomfortably, disgustingly hot. Sweat drips down the back of your shorts. Your drenched t-shirt clings. Your bare feet squelch inside your shoes.

They come in all shapes and sizes, swimming holes. There are rock quarries and shallow ponds, steep banks and pebbled shores, rocks piled high and mud that oozes underfoot, clear high mountain lakes and tiny pools only slightly larger than a puddle. There are diving rocks and rope swings and docks that float just far enough from shore to taunt you into swimming out to them, no matter how frigid the water.

The one thing they all share is a kind of summer magic, an enchantment