Walden Pond is a...Lake

One of the most delightful and serendipitous of my summer’s wild swims of 2019 was Walden Pond just outside the town of Concord, Massachusetts. The Walden Pond made famous by Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, or Life in the Woods. Now that it’s November and my local lakes in the Pacific Northwest are nearly unswimmable without a wetsuit, it’s the perfect time to reflect back on my wild swim in the mild waters of Walden Pond.

Since first reading Walden in high school, I have always imagined Walden Pond as a pond—a smallish, shallowish roundish body of water. When I first visited Walden Pond when I was in college, I do not recall being struck by the pond’s lake-ish look. I was there to cross-country ski on the trails above the pond, which was completely covered in deep snow.

When my older brother recommended a swim in Walden Pond while I was rambling around New England in September. I thought he was joking. Who would want to swim in a scummy-though-historically-important pond? My brother was not joking and my husband and I set off for the premier destination for a wild swimmer, English major, nature writer, and tiny-house coveter.

Most people who come to Walden Pond do not come to swim. They come to see the pond, to see the cabin where Thoreau lived between 1845 and 1847 in a cabin he built by hand. An estimated 600,000 people visit this site every year to pay homage to this writer and philosopher and to imagine what life was like in the mid 19th-century. Walden Pond and 462 acres of surrounding woods are now protected as a Massachusetts State Reservation (state park) and also a National Historic Landmark. The original cabin the 30-year-old Thoreau built by hand on land owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson no longer exists but a fine replica has been built for visitors to step into and step back in time.

Despite what our poor memory and imagination want to tell us, Thoreau’s one-room cabin was not in the wilderness. Nor was it remote. Nor was Thoreau a hermit during his two-year stint living here. Thoreau went often to the town of Concord (one-and-a-half miles away) and was visited by friends and family regularly. He lived simply and intentionally at Walden Pond for two years (1845-1847). (Photo by M.M. Ruth)

From Thoreau’s cabin, a paved path leads across a busy road and down to the lake. Yes, lake.

Lakes and ponds are both are slow-moving bodies of water surrounded on all sides by land. Walden is 61.5 acres big and 103 feet at its deepest. That qualifies as a lake in my book and my book is Ernest Walcott’s Lakes of Washington, published by the Washington Department of Ecology in 1973. A body of water with a surface area of less than one acre is a pond. Walden doesn’t come close to being a pond. But “Walden Lake?” That doesn’t sound right. Thoreau’s tiny cabin and story of his two years of life in the woods belong on a pond.

Thoreau’s original cabin was sited on one of five coves of Walden Pond, a cove likely to have been warmer than the rest of the lake and also weedier, muddier, and at times stagnant. Historians believe he accessed the lake from a gravelly beach nearby 432 feet away. Thoreau enjoyed the views of the pond, watched wildlife, went boating and fishing, drew his drinking water, and bathed in Walden Pond. “I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did.” I am not sure if “bathing” meant taking a bath or taking a recreational swim for Thoreau. As a back-country camper, I think they may have been one in the same.

Thoreau devotes two chapters in Walden to Walden Pond. He waxes most poetically about the remarkable clarity and depth of the water. “The water is so transparent,” he wrote, “that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty-feet.” And the color!

The water was palette of blues and greens and ochres that Thoreau marveled at: “Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the colors of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint net to the shore…then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond.” He discerned a “matchless and indescribable light blue…” (which he goes on to describe). Wild swimmers dream of such water!

I walked slowly, almost ceremonially down the path from the cabin for my first real view of Walden Pond. The colors were just as Thoreau had described.

Walden Pond is full of surprises, including its clarity, range of cool colors, and seeming lack of change since Thoreau’s day. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

Not wanting to rush my Walden Wild Swim, my husband and I sat on the beautiful stone wall above the main beach and just took in the scene—a handful of open-water swimmers steadily stroking their way down the to far end of the pond and back, a few kids playing on the wide beach, small groups of walkers, and some late-season sunbathers. We then ambled along the 1.7 mile “pond path” above the lake, stopping at side trails that lead down the steep hills to small pocket beaches. These small beaches as well as two large beaches are not sandy, but stoney, giving the lakeshore a naturally paved look. Thoreau puzzled over all this stone and suggests in Walden that they originated from broken-down piles of stone created when surrounding land was cleared (for the railroad and other purposes). Thoreau supposes that the name Walden may have originally been called "Walled-in” Pond.

When we reached the far end of the pond at Long Cove, I stripped down to my bathing suit, handed my husband my clothes, shoes, and hat and stepped onto the sandy bottom and into the water. It was pleasantly warm (~80 degrees F).

The length of Walden Pond from Long Cove—a lovely entry point for a Wild Swim. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

And off I went swimming in the water Henry David Thoreau swam in. I was absolutely giddy. I was in water that buoyed not only Thoreau and possibly his friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, but also all the people who visited this pond over the decades since 1847 who knew Thoreau, who read Thoreau, who studied Thoreau, and who thought about his life and legacy while they were swimming. This was a unique swim for me—one that had cultural and historical significance. I cannot think of another pond or lake that holds such an esteemed place in American literature, history, and culture. I was swimming in a shrine.

And when you swim in a shrine, you don’t want to get out. I wanted to swim back and forth all day long as if I were running transects so that I could experience every inch of Walden’s sixty-one acres. Instead, I swam a zig-zagging line into the coves—Ice Fort Cove (a nod to the commercial ice-block harvesting on the pond) and Thoreau’s Cove (site of his original cabin). I popped up often just to look around and the forested hills encircling the pond and to slow my progress toward the end of the swim (had it not just began?) I floated on my stomach and looked through the crystal-clear water to the bottom of the lake. I floated on my back and looked at the cloudless September sky. I think I was bathing as much as swimming this day. Eventually, I swam over to the Red Cross Beach (where swim lessons were taught by the Red Cross) to meet up with my husband who had been walking the path around the lake and taking a few photos from the trail. Here I am (below) swimming in all this gorgeous color and clarity and history.

Thoreau wrote about the wildlife around and in Walden Pond (including the petite Mud Turtle) but failed to mentioned one particular wild resident. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

Just in case you missed it. I’m the long white splash in the upper right. The SNAPPING TURTLE is the massive oval shape in the lower left.

This snapping turtle was basking at the edge of Walden Pond when my photographer-husband spotted it from a clearing on the trail above the pond. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

While the snapper may look tiny in this photo taken well above the water, this fine example of a was about 18 inches long. Snapping turtles aren’t aggressive in the water but I might have lost a finger or two if I had come ashore on this beach where it was basking. I dressed and joined my husband to walk the trail back to the spot where he photographed the snapper. There it was, still basking at the edge of that stunning water. We lingered for a while, oohing and ahhhing and feeling very grateful.

Here’s a very short video of the snapper sliding into the water —to my delight and the delight of a group of 11-year-old boys on the trail with us (and who were carrying a small dead fish they named Wilbur, which they decided to toss into the pond for the snapper).

I hadn’t expected to be swimming with a snapping turtle in Walden Pond. Earlier in the week, in Vermont, I had gotten myself all worked up about encountering during my lake swims there. I knew they were “a factor” for wild swimming on the East Coast, along with water moccasins and lake-side poison ivy—factors we don’t have in the Pacific Northwest. I think perhaps my mind was so focussed on Thoreau, his life of simplicity and stoicism, his contribution to environmental literature, and his near-mythic status among those who know that “back to nature” is the only way to go. Though I know Walden Pond has changed since 1845, I’m grateful that its waters can still hold snapping turtles and swimmers in its liquid embrace

“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into it which the beholder measure the depth of is own nature.”

If you are anywhere near Concord, Massachusetts, please make time to visit Walden Pond. You can swim, canoe, fish, walk, sunbathe, cross-country ski, snow-shoe, and pay your respects. Here’s a link to a map and information from Massachusetts State Reservation.

Lake Chelan Wild Swim

At its south end, Lake Chelan doesn’t say “wild swim” the way other lakes do. At Don Morse Lakeshore Park, it says “recreational lake for summer tourists, locals, and Coppertone.” Which was fine. I’m all for people getting outside enjoying and recreating in nature. This was my first trip to Lake Chelan (pronounced by most as Shuh-lan) and I wanted to experience both this popular municipal beach near the (over)-developed south end of the lake and the remote shores of the north end 55 miles away near the remote village of Stehekin.

While a swim from the municipal beach was easy (almost a drive-up swim), getting to the remote north of the lake required more planning. Stehekin, like every place along the north half of the lake is accessible only by boat, floatplane, horseback, or by hiking trail.

In the wake of the Pleistocene…a ice-gouged valley and a 1,485-foot-deep lake. (Photo by M. M. Ruth of map on display aboard the Lady of the Lake passenger ferry.

Lake Chelan is 55 miles long, between 1 and 2 miles wide (except at the narrows where it’s just 1/3 mile wide), and snakes its way across three separate Green Trails topographic map sheets (Nos. 82, 11, and 114). This lake is an unfathomable 1,485 feet deep at its deepest . It is the largest naturally-formed lake in Washington, though it cannot be called a natural lake due to the small dam built in 1928 at the south end. Lake Chelan developed in a broad glacial valley during the Pleistocene, about 2.5 million years ago. Everything north of the town of Chelan was buried under the Okanagan lobe of the ice sheet that covered the northern third of Washington. Lake Chelan is steep sided and surrounded by rugged wilderness areas, national forests, national recreation areas, and North Cascades National Park.

Most tourists do not come to Lake Chelan to swim, though there is a “family fun” open-water 1.5-mile Lake Chelan Swim event every Saturday after Labor Day from Manson Bay, eight miles north of the town of Chelan. They come to recreate around Chelan and to take the Lady of the Lake passenger ferry up the lake. Some passengers are bound for Holden Village, a former gold- and copper-mining town and now religious retreat operated by the Lutheran Church. Others deboard at “flag stops” (i.e. flag the captain and he’ll stop/crash the boat along the shore, extend the ramp/gang plank, and send you and your backpack on your merry way into the wilderness).

The Lady of the Lake passenger ferry runs daily trips from Chelan to Stehekin. It’s a grand way to enjoy the scenery, mingle with fellow travelers and residents, and enjoy the ferry captains’ informative narrative. Plan on making unscheduled stops for interesting sights and to drop off and pick up passengers hiking and camping in the wilderness areas surrounding the lake.

The majority of passengers are headed to Stehekin to spend just a few hours exploring the town, the valley, and famous Stehekin Bakery by shuttle bus. Others set off from Stehekin to hike the trails (including the Pacific Crest Trail) in the surrounding wilderness. Overnighters can camp along the lake or stay at the lovely historic North Cascades Lodge. Some will rent kayaks or canoes to explore the lake.

Kayaks rented from the North Cascades Lodge in Stehekin make a great way to explore Lake Chelan but be aware of shifting winds that can make paddling northward a slog. Photo by M.M. Ruth

Stand-Up Paddle Canoeing isn’t the rage yet on Lake Chelan but I recommend it for a pleasant change in perpective of the water and the clouds floating in it. Plus it gives the stearnsman a ridiculous photo op. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

During the two days I stayed at the lodge, I did see two other swimmers (“bathers” might be a better term) but I think I was the only person who swam for pleasure.

“Pleasure” might be a bit of an overstatement. The water at the north end of Lake Chelan at Stehekin was much colder than at the south end. A short hike south on the Lakeshore Trail lead us to Flick Creek campground and a decent-enough access point. And by “us” I mean me. My three companions were not interested in sharing my obsession with wild swimming on this day.

This was one of the briskest swims I took all summer. I’d say it was below 60 degrees—but the clouds and the wind made it seem colder. I guess if meteorologists can talk about “wind-chill factor,” I can talk about “cloud-chop” factor. I swam in 52-degree water in March, but the water was calm and the day was an unseasonably warm and sunny 80 degrees. There is some interesting research on our perception of “cold” water. The air temperature, wind, cloud cover, our mood, our caffeine level, our previous night’s alcohol consumption, and other factors influence not only our perception of the water temperature but also our ability to tolerate it.

Advice: If you are a) solo swimming in a 1,486-foot-deep lake and are b) not wearing a wet suit and c) not accompanied by anyone interested in or willing to get in the water and d) the water is really really cold and choppy and e) it is cloudy and cool…do not stay in long or go far from shore. This swim in Lake Chelan qualified for a-e and so was under ten minutes. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

And shortly before getting on the ferry to return home, I took a swim near the boat docks in front of the North Cascades Lodge. A very easy access point and I had enough time to swim to this mooring log and back. I’m so glad I did so I can keep living up to my motto: Never give up an opportunity for a wild swim.

Yeehaw!

Next Up: Wild Swims on the East Coast, including Thoreau’s Walden Pond (which is a lake).

“I Need to Show You This Lake...

…only I can’t tell you where it is and you can’t tell anyone once we show it to you.”

Over the summer a few of my fellow lake-swimming enthusiasts have been kind enough to take me to their secret lakes as long as I promised not to provide the name or directions to others. I’ve found these secrets easy to keep because Washington state boasts thousands of swimming lakes. I feel lucky to live in a landscape so pervious, pock marked, glacier scoured, and potholed that the secret holders are not depriving anyone of the experience of lake swimming.

Most of our swimmable lakes are accessible by public boat ramp, dock, beach, or trail. The secret lakes require way-finding skill and sometimes a bit of bushwhacking. Trail markers and cairns are entirely absent.

None of the secret lakes I’ve been to have official names and don’t always appear on maps. They become known because someone discovers them and then they tell a friend who tells two friends and so on. And, while I might tell you about these lakes, I cannot for the life of me retrace my steps to return to them or describe the roads and routes and landmarks that would get you anywhere but lost.

Photo by M.M. Ruth

So it was this past when when two friends guided me on a hike-scramble to this beauty. It was the clearest water I have ever swum in—so clear that it is easy to forget it is water. So clear that, as one friend said, “it’s hard to remember not to breathe it.”

It was what I might once have called “freezing” but now, after months of lake swimming, I’ll call it perfectly delightful cold. We swam, floated and swam some more. When the clouds parted and the sun shone down on the lake, we warmed up on the rocks on the far shore. The lake was silent save for the occasional squeak of a pika and the clattering wings of the grasshoppers echoing against the rocks and cliff. There was no human presence at all—just wilderness all around.

While the sun warmed our skin it also warmed the thin skin of the lake. When we slipped back into the water, the top few inches of the lake had noticeably warmed. To preserve that layer of warm water, we swam slowly without kicking and churning up the cold water beneath. I stretched out on my back and floated, spinning slowly around to memorize the contours of the shore, hill, and peaks and to take in the last bit of summer’s warmth.

I left the water and walked down the sandy shoreline toward my towel, lunch, and thermos of hot tea. I walked slowly, scanning the edge of water for newts. Something caught my eye. There on the beach, scrawled in the sand in all capital letters:

ONLY

WITH

SOUL

Alpine Lakes Wild Swims

The most extraordinary wild swim of my Summer ‘19 so far—and most arduous hike to it—is Jade Lake, one of the more than 700 lakes in the 415,000-acre Alpine Lakes Wilderness. I would have been happy/ecstatic if I had just loafed around on the shores of nearby Marmot Lake where my husband and I had pitched out tent, but I’m glad we heeded the advice of all the hikers we talked with on the trail: “Go to Jade,” they said. “You’ll be richly rewarded.” Indeed.

We accepted the challenge and with our day packs, lunch, and a pair of hiking poles between us, we set off for Jade Lake. It is not a hike but a steep, slow, ankle-twisting scramble across a talus slope that extends from just south of Marmot Lake all the way to a flattish stretch of boggy land on the approach to Jade. There was no trail, just a very spare but thoughtful series of cairns to guide us toward our destination. The only difference between the rocks used to build the cairns and the other rocks all around us was that the cairns were distinctively horizontal. Once we reached the first cairn, we just stood there scanning the wide slope from edge to edge looking across a field of mostly chunky squarish boulders and rocks for some anomalies: discreet piles of flat rocks—usually just four or five. Talus slopes are dynamic and it’s likely there were more and possibly taller cairns (or even trail markers once upon a time) that have succumbed to gravity, the push of rain, ice, and snow that covers these slopes most of the year.

We were in no hurry to cover the two miles. The weather was dry and sunny and the longer we baked on the hike, the more delicious the icy water would feel on our skin.

Though we had seen photographs of Jade Lake, nothing prepared us for the moment we first saw the lake. The color is laughably stunning and surreal. “Jade” doesn’t quite capture it. Turquoise? Teal? Aquamarine? Swimming-pool Blue? Maybe we should just call it “Jade-Lake Jade.”

The color known as “jade” comes in many hues, tones, and saturation levels. None here or in other color charts I consulted match the water I swam in.

The color of Jade Lake is attributed to the fine, almost talcum-powder-fine crushed rock worn down by the scouring of the glaciers and carried into the lake by the meltwater. This “glacial milk” or “rock flour” as it is known remains suspended in the lake water like silt and causes the most stunning color of blue-green of the sun’s visible light spectrum to be reflected to our eyes. The other colors, the longer wavelength reds and oranges are absorbed in the lake and not reflected back to our eyes.

Other lakes in and beyond Jade Lake—and some rivers as well—show this beautiful jade color, but none is quite as thoroughly jade as Jade.

After a good long while of oohing and ahhing by the edge of the lake, it was time to swim. I dipped my feet in for a quick test of the water temperature. It was probably around 55 degrees F, maybe more. I’ve been swimming since March when an actual thermometer read 52 degrees F so I had a sense of what I could tolerate and enjoy safely. I slipped in and felt that ear-to-ear smile break across my face. I dog paddled with my head above water, spinning around so I could see the entire shoreline of the lake. I was in a vast bowl of cool liquid jade. The bottom of the lake wasn’t visible—the lake is opaquely jade but I could see my feet as if the water was crystal clear. I swam a little ways off shore, testing how far I could go toward the middle without the risk of becoming hypothermic and not having enough muscle strength to get back to shore.

One of the most challenging aspects of swimming in such beautiful water in such a remote wilderness (and working hard to get there) is knowing when enough is enough. I wanted to stay in for hours. It might be my once-in-a-lifetime visit to Jade Lake but I also didn’t want to turn myself into a shivering mass of hypothermia. I floated around a bit, then swam a few strokes, the floated some more while spinning myself around to take in the scenery. I was in a total of fifteen minutes or so, no more than 50 feet from the shore. Little did I know the best part was still to come.

Sitting quietly in the sun on the warm rocks, my husband and I heard the calls of an osprey on the far side of the lake. We eventually spotted it as it flew from the top of one tall evergreen on the far shore to another, its white wings bright against the dark green trees. Back and forth, back and forth. And then…

And then it flew over the edge of Jade Lake and the underside of those white wings and white body turned the color of the lake. A Jade Bird. It floated over the water just long enough for us to do a double-take and then fully take in this glorious natural sight. I attempted a photograph but that kind of light, that kind of ephemeral beauty, just can’t be captured.

Before you go to Jade Lake, please read the trip reports on the Washington Trails Association (WTA) page here. It looks like this lake is getting more love (and less respect) that it needs. Please tread lightly, camp quietly, swim without whoopin’ it up.

In addition to swimming in Jade Lake on this trip, we swam in Marmot Lake, Hyas Lake, Little Hyas Lake, and Lake Clarice. I had plenty of time to stare into these beautiful lakes, especially Marmot Lake where we camped. I’m eager to learn more about the different effects on our brains of the sight and sound of rippling lake water, flowing river water, and wave-rolled ocean water.