When I was in Canada last summer (their summer not ours) I met up with a friend to stay in a tiny house, have many outdoor adventures, hang out and make memories. One of those adventures on long and hot days was lake swimming.
I’d been lake swimming in Canada before but the two lakes we ended up at were Alice Park and Browning Lake at Murrin Park. It’s something we did a bit when I was young in Australia because being from an inland town means the free local water bodies are usually lakes. One of those is Lake Calembeen which I did one of my favourite ever blog posts at. You can check it out here.
I seriously struggle with feeling confident in swimwear. I always have. It was around 2 years of blogging before I blogged a single summer swimsuit and I was very proud afterwards. Last time I went to Canada our first lake swimming day was made extra challenging by some dude hassling me which ended in him throwing an American football at my head while I was trying to quietly exit the water without too many people watching. I was so absorbed in how visible my body was that the ball clocked me pretty hard in the head with no warning. This time I had more time to prepare a swimsuit that I would feel confident in and ended up falling in love with one that was available from Australian brand Rip Curl in the months prior to leaving. I was only going to be hanging around a woman who is a very dear friend to me so I didn’t have to worry about any negative company. All the same, I wanted to feel confident and centred and me.
I went with my bestie to the Rip Curl outlet in Torquay and tried on the swimsuit I was interested in. The attendant at the shop was lovely. She asked if I was going on holidays.
Me: Yes
Her: Where?
Me: Canada
Her: Lake swimming?
I was surprised by this and even more surprised when she knew Squamish and surrounds well. It turned out she had lived in Pemberton for a while. We both laughed when I asked ‘what were you doing living in Pemberton? It has a train station, a pie shop and a thrift store and that is it.’ She said that’s why they lived there because it was cheaper and they worked in Squamish while living there. Anyway, it was sweetly coincidental that before I had even purchased the swimsuit that the lakes around Squamish, BC were already part of its story.
The first swimming day was after Hanna and I had had our first day climbing together as courgeous beginners, outdoors, with no professionals to guide us. We climbed until we were tuckered out and the crag got busy and then we went and got out swimwear to swim in the nearby lake. It was one of our first days in Squamish and I was camera happy. I took a billion photos of Hanna and then I guided her in framing and whatnot in order to take some pictures of me. When I first saw a couple of them I was very much woah! I couldn’t believe I looked that good in a swimsuit. It was very wholesome. We hid our stuff and my camera under our towels and swam out to the centre of the water where we just hung out for quite a while until we noticed lots of people near our stuff. It was then we felt a little security conscious and swam back in.
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| Hanging our swimmers up in the tiny house to dry |
The second time, we went to Alice Lake. This was after we hiked to Garibaldi Lake where we had intended to swim, found it was too cold, but definitely needed a swim at the end of the epic hike. We got back in the car after the hike and went to Alice Lake. I made my way straight to the water, stood tentatively on the edge and began moving in, one centimetre at a time. Then, in a magnificent example of the difference in our personalities, Hanna ran in flat out before she had a chance to decide if it was cold or not. I loved that moment because whenever I’m around Han I feel like anything I would normally do tentatively she will sweep me up in her action and give me extra courage to jump right in. She’s bold as heck with a wild heart and I wanted to make every moment with her last forever. We swam in the sunlight as the sun dipped below the pines. Eventually, the shadows went from one side of the lake to the other and everywhere we swam was overwhelmingly cool so we made our way back to shore and drove back to Squamish in the setting sun.
– Liana
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| Hanna driving us back from an afternoon of swimming |
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