America's Dead Sea

When I was a little girl, my mother described to me the marvel that is the Great Salt Lake.
"You can't sink in it, even if you try."
I was enthralled, but yet, when I moved to Provo, Utah for college at the age of 18, I didn't ever bother to find my way to the Lake...it may have been a simple matter of not knowing how to reach its shores, compounded by the distractions that engulf a teenager, away from home for the first time, and in an utterly foreign landscape, society, and living arrangement.
Small fishing village on the coast of Maine, meet highly-populated suburban mecca of the intermountain west!
I was overwhelmed, and distracted, soon-to-be utterly heartbroken, and the last thing on my mind was the enormous, heavily salted lake to the north of me.
Several years later, when I had abandoned my reasons for moving to Utah in the first place (think: R.E.M's "Losing My Religion"),
I drove around with Nine Inch Nails blasting, windows down in an attempt to displace some of the hot, thick air that pressed in around me.
I was in search of access to the enormous, visible, but out-of-reach Utah Lake.
I drove for what felt like hours, hurtling down each road that seemed like it might lead to the lake, each time discovering either a dead end or a boat dock.
What I wanted, no, what my soul NEEDED was a beach. A place to swim, damnit!
How hard should that have been??
Growing up on one of the fingers of land on the edge of America that reached out into the Atlantic ocean, amidst lakes and rivers and ponds and quarries had given me a false sense of entitlement to wander into nature and stumble across a place to swim. Even better, the beaches on the ocean offered instant relief from the heat that Maine was burdened with a few days a year.
But this place, this "high desert" was leaving ME high and dry, if you'll pardon the dorky play on words.
I was in tears by the time my search for ingress to Utah Lake had ended, a failure.
And it never really occured to me to try to find my way to the Great Salt Lake.
My one brush with its greatness--a 1996 Silverchair concert at Salt Air, with its boardwalk out into the lake, where we stood in the cooling darkness, flirting with the boy with the seatbelt holding up his pants, and his hot roommate...

I don't remember when it occured to me that a memorable thing to do with my kids (whom I was picking up after having flown them out sevearl weeks before) would be to float in the Great Salt Lake, but it was not long before I arrived there, a few days at the most.
At that point, instead of a hot car and an unwillingness to ask a gas station attendant for directions, I had AC and Google!!
So, together we discovered that Antelope Island State Park has a lovely beach with showers and bathrooms and picnic table pavilions for all your Great Salt Lake needs!!
I was thrilled, and a little amazed that I had lived there for 15 years and never even attempted this wonder of nature--floating in America's Dead Sea!!

And what a beautiful day it was...
It was hot, sure.
(Only outside).
But the sky was that rich, aqua-blue that I've only seen in Utah, contrasting against red rocks or jutting brown mountains.
The water and salt flats stretched out, shimmering on either side of the causeway that leads out to the island, antelopes grazed near the water, as if to say, well, duh? What did you expect?
I was swept off my feet by the place, entranced.
We made our way down the beach, laughing and full of wonder.
We passed through the veil of flies near the water's edge, turned back to leave our shoes on the dry side of the fly barrier, and passed through them again, watching them press away from us in gentle black waves.
With a bit of hesitation from some members of our party, we stepped into the stew of brine shrimp and salt-cloudy water, wading out and out and out--
shallow (ah, yes! That's why I lost interest so many years ago in seeking this experience--a drought caused its levels to lower and I heard it just wasn't interesting/good/worth it anymore!).
But that was years ago, in the lifetime before my last lifetime...I'm like a cat, I guess...I'm onto my 4th, now.
And soon we were chest-deep, and giggling at each other--
Are you ready? Should we try it? Who's first?
Well, me, of course...
And the giggles that erupted from how odd it was to have this familiar substance (water?) behaving so differently...hyper-buoyant, thick and giggling...
And afterward, water rushing through our swim suits, pushing all the ant-sized sea creatures off our sticky skin (well, not ALL), and cooling us back off...
It was everything I had never imagined it would be.
It was perfect.