Descriptive Essay: Deep Blue Water

It’s the summer of 1945; the eight of us 17 crazy and running wild. It’s essay to forget about all the real world issues surrounding us, especially on a perfect summer night when the night sky becomes alive with an explicit amount of warmth overshadowing the dark cold bitterness that engulfs the night sky in the dead heat of winter. The eight of us, we come from the city of Marquette, Michigan located in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Marquette is home to about 16,000 people making us the most populated city in the upper peninsula. We sneak off to Lake Superior around 11:48 for a midnight swim. The water never truly get’s all that warm, but we seek our selves out to be rebellious because we believe that rebellion is the only thing keeping

us alive; for all we are is young, stupid, and reckless. We swim over to the black rock cliff; barefoot we start to climb, the rocks are cold under our hands, and a little slicker than what we had expected. Our fingers begin to blister with the clutching of every rock. We all finally make it to the high point; a ledge that hangs over the dark water reflecting back the light of the the full moon, lingering high in the midnight sky. At about thirty-five feet in the air, the summer breeze is no longer warm but instead cool like the breeze that carries autumn leaves. As we stand there our minds tell us to jump and to not think about it, to take in the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks and just relax. Closing our eyes, we jump one by one. However, I hate myself for launching out into a vast empty space of nothing because I begin realizing for a split second that it’s too late to go back, but then all at once I feel like I’m weightless, flying, sinking, all while moving in slow motion. God I hate the feeling of falling and knowing that no matter what I do, I can’t defy gravity. It was a moment of relief when the water caught me. I had become euphoric.

At first the shock of the water is electric and thrilling. I plunge deep down into the cold water momentarily held in by it’s belly. The water envelope’s my skin and there’s a brief silence that I find calming where everything stops, thought’s stop, it’s only me in the deep blue water; an empty envelope that doesn’t need to think, to move, to talk, or to explain. My mind respond’s to the feeling of being underwater. The bone-crushing pressure of gallons upon gallons of water, the way my lungs feel like their suffocated, and bursting. The way my brain beats pounding on my skull, the way my heart almost jumps out of my skin with the adrenalin rush I’m experiencing along the way. As I fight for the surface all while feeling void and alone with merely only all my thoughts amplified to their fullest extent that merges with the water, with not drowning being the loudest of noises and then I submerge with a huge gasp for air. I’m breathing, I’m fine and I’m very much alive. After coming to my senses I swim back to shore, all of us are laughing and joking about how stupid, reckless and brave we are. It was the best night that we’d never forget, a night that lets us all live our lives’ fearlessly and forever that night would stay in our memories not for the company but for everything we felt that

night.