I remember being out there, face down in the lake.

I don’t remember the campground, the tent we slept in, the hotdogs we ate, who was there.

The contrast was vivid. Above the sparkling cut of the waterline towered bright blue sky, a brutal sun. I wore an oversized t-shirt to cover my shoulders, but the backs of my calves burnt to pink.

Below the surface it was a boneyard, eerie; deepening, darkening round the edges of my view.

A thick soft creamy layer of silt covered everything. Drowned logs, like ghost bones, lay strewn about that watery underplace. It was near silent. The silt was light brown, the dead logs were brown. Even the light piercing through the water was a warm brown, fading away to olive green in the depths.

Stumps stuck straight up from the silty bottom, sliced cleanly across their tops.

The forest was logged before the dam was built, before the water piled up and made this watery graveyard.

Rubber fins let me dive deep, get my fingers round a knobbly branch and hold still, in the dim and the watery silence, in that foreign pressurized place.

One stump reached to just below the lake’s surface. We’d race out to it, splashing and screeching, climb atop its slippery top then push each other off, tumbling into the water. From a distance, standing still upright upon it, my sister looked like she stood flat on the surface of the water, like Jesus or a ghost.