To get to my childhood home you enter a Provincial park, drive very slowly on a moss-lined road through it, and pop out the other side, onto a mile of road that dead-ends into a deer farm. There are houses either side; on the left the lots are bordered by the Pacific Ocean, and on the right they back onto forest. I lived on the forest side, but my best friend Lisa lived across the road in a big house with a hot tub on the deck right up against the rocky beach.

One summer we formed the Dunk-A-Day club. We pinky-swore to go in the sea – at least for a dunk – every day of the summer.

The raft floated out front of Lisa’s house, made from blue plastic barrels and two-by-fours. When the tide was way out, it sat smack dab on a sand bar, its anchor line curled limply alongside. But most of the time it floated near or far from the water’s edge, and was a worthy goal for a swim.

Once we got there, we’d quickly haul ourselves up the short ladder and onto the deck of the raft. It was fairly stable, but with a few kids on top we could make it heave and slosh and list to one side then the next, to our screeching delight. A big dive off the edge made the raft push back softly across the water until it pulled taut against its anchor line.

When the tide was flowing fast, the seaweed skirt that girded the underside of the raft would stream out to one side, and from the shore you could see the ripples of a faint wake forming downstream. Those days we’d strike out strongly, moving energetically against the water, pointing our bodies upstream of the raft, to account for the current against us.

When it stormed, we wouldn’t aim for the raft at all though, but simply wade out and play in the blue-grey waves, under a slate sky. Whitecaps were blown off waves and into our laughing faces. We marvelled at how the water didn’t hardly seem cold when the wind was blowing the heat off our bodies; it was warmer in than out. These were exciting heady swims, with the big smooth stones beneath our feet and waves knocking us about.

After a near infinite summer, but always too soon, the weather began to turn. Lisa’s mum and dad brought the raft ashore, to rest under a tree safe from the autumn gales.