“I’ve got my beach bag full of all the necessary items for a day in the sun,” – John D. Loudermilk

If I close my eyes, I can still see, hear and feel them all there, whoever they were – the people lining the sandy shore, sitting on brightly colored blankets and towels, party coolers or aluminum-framed beach chairs. Except for my sister and my parents, I didn’t know any of these locals and out-of-towners, with their white toothy smiles and dark sunglasses, who were drawn here like we were to splash, float, stand or jump in the cool waters of this big inland lake. It was a hot summer evening, with the sun starting to fall west in the orangey-blue sky, but still a good while before dark.

It probably was a weeknight, after my dad had hung up his mailman’s delivery bag and walked home from the post office after another day. A weekend evening at the lake likely would have been too crowded for consideration. The sounds I recall were of the water splashing, kids yelling, laughing and screaming, gulls crying overhead and adults talking and joking. This summery aural landscape was grounded within a softer buzz of competing transistor radio broadcasts of baseball games, news reports and summertime radio hits of the early-to-mid-1960s.

There was also the delightful, almost wind-chime sound of the metal links on swing set chains creaking as they moved. The metal slide was white-hot under that red sun, threatening to scorch anyone willing to brave its 10-foot drop. It was probably somewhere within that first dreadful hour – the slowest, dragging hour in kid life – the one after eating your pasty and ketchup or your grilled hot dog and bag of potato chips supper when you were supposed to sit waiting faithfully until your parents said you could get into the water. I felt like I imagined a dog does waiting for its master to throw a ball.

I used to think my parents were complete freaks to make us wait that hour until I realized that pretty much all parents did the same thing to their kids, which was even weirder. Humans are so damned strange. It’s one of those things, I don’t want to be part of it, yet I can’t outrun it. Yeah, the monkey speaks his mind. I was sitting on the old, waterlogged dock sipping an off-brand lemon-lime pop in a can that I had pulled from the icy bottom of our cooler.

The dock extended maybe a hundred feet from the shore out into the water. There was also a floating raft out there that the swimmers loved to dive off. They looked like drowned rats crawling up out of the water onto that bobbing, floating platform. Some would take a couple of quick breaths and then dive again. Others would lay flat and lounge like seals on the dock before either rolling off into the water, diving or holding their noses shut and jumping. You also had the “cannon ballers” – usually young boys targeting young girls – who rolled themselves up like a pill bug, as tight as they could, to try to affect the greatest possible splash wave when jumping into the water.

I refer to all these people as “the swimmers” to help point out the big thing distinguishing them from me – I could not swim. I didn’t learn how until I was an adult. I think that early fear of the water might have been instilled on an earlier visit to this same swimming beach. I remember standing in the chest-high water, feeling the soft sand beneath my feet, getting up the nerve to try to swim. I reached my arms out in front of me and pushed off the bottom. But instead of floating or gliding or swimming, I sank and swallowed about a gallon of lake water. Just thinking about that now still makes me feel like I need to cough.

The air smelled like suntan lotion and the unspecific air of freshwater. An old country doctor was known for touting the health benefits of this specific swimming beach. He convinced the big mining company in the region to turn the property over to the public, which happened in 1956. Even before that, people had popularized this place. A concession building and a beach changing house had been built here in the 1920s by the governing township.

Beyond swimming, this big lake – measuring more than 4,200 acres, 70 feet deep and crudely shaped like a numeral seven – is a great place for boating, paddling and fishing for a wide variety of fish – from pumpkinseeds and walleye to muskies and brook trout. Away from the shoreline, up an adjacent hillside, giant white pine trees shelter a campground that was almost always packed full during the summertime.

Nearby, there were picnic tables that were also popular, and a pavilion for getting picknickers out of the cold, wind and rain that sometimes temporarily darkened summer days as they swept across the lake. There were stairways fashioned from old, dark logs with wide steps that were often covered in fallen, chestnut-colored pine needles. I learned early on that this place – known today as Van Riper State Park – was a fond destination for my parents and especially my relatives on my dad’s side of the family.

When either of my two uncles, who lived downstate and in California, or my aunt came to town from Ohio, the plan was always to get some pasties and meet up at the beach. This remained a tradition until my uncles and aunt eventually died, followed a few years later by my dad. My favorite recollections from those beach and picnicking days involve the absolute freedom I felt as a kid to run, jump and explore or just sit on the dock with my lemon-lime soda and a beach towel wrapped around my shoulders. I loved to swing on the swing set – especially there.

The swings we had in the backyard were very fun, but these were so much taller and built with heavier chains, with flexible leather seats that folded around your sides, like a soft taco shell. I used to love to lean my head backward as the swing went back. Then I’d kick my legs to get higher and faster. At the front part of the ride, I would soar so high up over the beach.

I also enjoyed playing in the sand, within that strip of beach that was close enough to the water to get wet, allowing molding and shaping of the sand into beach-pail castles and other structures, like water-filled moats. When I was doing that, the whole crowded beach scene simply faded and disappeared, obscured by my intense focus on having fun.

Sometimes, people would fly kites at the beach. It was fun to watch the colorful polygons dance and dive in the big blue sky. I admit that it was also thrilling to watch a kite caught in dive, toward the lake, trees, the dirt or other significant obstruction. In some cases, the kites would crash horribly. In others, the string holder was able to somehow pull the kite out of the dive within the last few seconds before impact. One unexpected additional pleasure for me at the beach was that there was a railroad line running just off the far end of the sand.

As a young boy, swinging on the swings, hearing the engine’s whistle and seeing the train pass by was another very satisfying part of these familial outings. At this point in my life, I’d say my beach days are mostly behind me – at least the water splashing, cannonballing, sandcastle building and swing riding activities. I’m still happy to lay on a blanket on the sand, listening to a ballgame on the radio with my sunglasses on, taking in the heat and maybe even a nap.

And who doesn’t love a good pasty? It’s a different kind of outdoors experience for me. I wouldn’t trade it for the quiet and solitude of misty mornings on a trout stream, a late-night campfire or a hike to a mountain ridge or stargazing in the desert.

But it’s a thing. It most certainly is a thing.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.