Back in April, I found out about a unique storyteller event that’s taking place in Silverton next Thursday night (6/14/18). Our session of “The Raven Narratives”is an opportunity for storytellers to relate various tales related to the topic of “water” in our area. When I read the initial article giving the details of the Narratives in Silverton, I figured it would be fun and decided to apply for a spot as one of the storytellers.

 

When I wrote the original essay that ended up in the “Silverton Style”book of childhood essays back in 2015, this essay was “water” themed, and immediately upon reading the article about Raven NarrativesI envisioned telling this story on June 14^thif I applied and got accepted to participate. Pleasantly enough, that happened, and in preparation for the event, I went back in and re-wrote major changes to the original essay (enhancing certain topics, deleting others, etc., etc.). Here’s the result. This essay is just the main bullet points, and an oral retelling of this tale will probably contain certain different details. Regardless, enjoy.

Word Count 957

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Land of the Free,

Home of the Brainless

(Main Bullet Points)

 

My youth in Silverton often meant the start of a different sort of summertime activity that some people would definitely consider eccentric behavior on my part. Searching out and participating in an action that in retrospect probably should’ve been done in a more tropical, or sub-tropical type environment. Swimming, or at least attempting to indulge in the sport.

Now you might be asking yourself, how is it possible for someone to go swimming around here without jumping into a car and driving twenty-four miles over the mountain to use the hot springs pool in Ouray? From a reasonable and theoretically at this point in my life, more mature perspective, I ask myself that same question these days. Fortunately, I was able to avoid this maturity thing on a regular basis during my teen-age years.

From a fourteen-year-old’s perspective, my friends and I found all sorts of ways to override the Ouray travel option. Who’s the wise old sage that said youth is wasted on the young? More appropriately maybe that philosopher should’ve coined the quote, “Ah, to be young and dumb once again,” instead. Oh wait, I’m the one who just said that aren’t I?

The initial way we often indulged in the swimming thing was to round up some inner tubes at the local service station and take our chances riding down the mighty Animas River. This option was limited, but the San Juans also include all sorts of ponds, lakes, and other standing bodies of water that you can jump into and dog paddle around in an attempt to look like you’re having fun.

Many was the time we’d be valiantly swimming our way from one end of the lake to the other, and one of us would casually mention that the person next to them had a purplish-white tinge to their skin color. Why is that? Maybe that ice on the far edge of the lake had something to do with it?

Then my cousin who was doing summer geology fieldwork told us about the swimming hole at Lime Creek. This amazing plunge pool where Pole Creek empties into Lime Creek, has a seemingly bottomless depth to it. Cliffs on both sides of the waterfall, varying heights you can jump off of, and crystal-clear water. The plunge pool had to be fifty feet from one end to the other, and the waterfall itself was massive. Numerous odysseys to the Lime Creek swimming hole is one of my fondest teenage memories.

You start out jumping into the pool from a ten-foot height, and then as you get braver and more accustomed to the bird-sized horse flies and bone chilling temperatures, you climb higher and higher up the ledges. Pretty soon you’re jumping off the forty-foot perch and your buddy even attempts to do his best Acapulco cliff-diver impersonation from the fifty-foot ledge. He almost stuck his chest out as far as they do too.

After multiple visits to the Lime Creek Hole, we got even braver (or is it stupider, depends upon your perspective I guess?). This resulted in me plunging off the edge of a rock into the center of the hole, and actually diving down into the depths in an effort to see just how deep the hole actually was. Either the water had gotten warmer, or my senses had managed to tolerate its ice-cold temperatures for as long as it took to dive down into the depths. Probably Theory #2.

The deeper I got, the more intense the assault on my senses became. Five feet down; very dark and one or two degrees colder. The next trip, ten feet deeper and closer to total snow-melt as far as water temperature goes, even more into the black range of the color spectrum. Finally, I dived to around fifteen feet in depth; which meant it was one or two steps closer to pitch black and almost too cold for me to move around.

Fortunately, I was still able to do this and discovered what looked like some sort of lead bullion. Reaching out to grab one, I actually tried to bring the block to the surface. Unfortunately, it was too heavy and I dropped the bullion in the process of bringing it up. Are those bullions still down there? We can only speculate as to their existence at this point, unless of course someone is willing to visit the Lime Creek Swimming Hole and dive down into its depths to search for those bullion.

It won’t be me. Five years ago, I jumped into another swimming hole, landed on a rock, and basically pulverized my heel. This required calcaneus-foot surgery with the insertion of thirteen pins to reassemble the bone. In a nutshell, I’m essentially bionicwhen it comes to the right heel of my foot.

This was actually a blessing in disguise as the experience taught me a valuable lesson. I’m getting a bit too old to be doing stuff that used to come naturally in my youth. Can’t walk through walls like I used to in my teens and twenties.

Then again, I also like to think of that Aldous Huxleyquote; “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”Damn right I’m going to make it back to the swimming hole at Lime Creek before I’m eating everything through a straw, and of course I’ll jump into the water.

Very few pleasures in my life beat leaping into water frolicking spots here in the San Juans – once I’d spent a sufficient amount of time in the water so I could deaden the chill of course. The Lime Creek Hole is one of the best swimming spots in this neck of the woods.

 

 

Read time (out loud)– 4 minutes 6/4/18

 

Reading time – 8 minutes 6/5/18

 

Reading time – 9 minutes 6/7/18