I feel at home in the water, thanks to summers of swimming lessons in the pool at Arrowhead Springs, where my parents attended their organization’s staff training and I went to summer camp.

The pool was huge, surrounded by grass and cabanas, a place you could imagine glamorous Hollywood bathing beauties of the 30’s lounging and playing.  At the entrance, there were graceful curving steps lined with bushes covered in  small, white pinwheel flowers, filling the air with the delicious scent of orange blossoms. The pool had curving edges with shallow shelves for reclining in the water. At the deep end, there were three bouncy diving boards, two low boards and one high dive with steps up the back,  leading to heights that seemed terrifying as a child.

Under the watchful eye of life guards in red trunks, big straw hats and white, zinc-oxide-covered noses, swim lessons started in the shallow end with basic strokes and water skills, and moved to the deep end over successive summers. Those lessons seem pretty intense as I look back on them now.

The test to pass the highest level required us to tread water and do the dead man’s float for several minutes, swim the length of the pool in the basic strokes, and dive off the low diving board. Challenged by the instructor, I dove off the high board once as well, even though I was only brave enough to dive from a sitting position. I got a bloody nose when I hit the water–sort of badge of honor, I thought–but I never tried anything but a cannon ball from the high dive again.

My favorite stroke from those lessons is the side stroke.  I can still hear the instructor telling us to reach forward, pick an apple, then pull it back and put it in the basket.  For some reason, I don’t see anyone else doing the side stroke when I swim laps at the pool at the Y. It definitely isn’t in the Olympics. 

We spent many hours as a family at the pool just playing. My sisters and I sat on the bottom in the shallow end, holding our breath and pretending to have tea parties. We played chicken with my dad and my cousins, putting the lighter kids on the shoulders of the older ones, and trying to dunk each other. My dad would swim with us on his back, or stand us up on his shoulders to jump or flip into the water. My mom preferred to sunbathe and read in a chair on the grass, not wanting to get her hair wet. 

We thought it was hilarious to bring all our  hair in front of our faces under water and then come up and flip it back in a neat roll and pretend to be George Washington. Sometimes we would throw coins in the  pool and dive down to the bottom to retrieve them. We had contests to see who could stay under water the longest or who could glide the farthest under water by pushing off the side. We never got tired of being in the water.

When we had to take a break from swimming, we hunted for lizards around the edges of the grass, and make temporary pets of the little blue bellies among the rocks. One little lizard I caught died from fright, or maybe I squeezed it too hard. I hoped it was just playing dead, like they did sometimes, and put it carefully on  rock to recover. When I checked on it later,  it hadn’t moved, and I felt sad about hurting it when we only meant to play. 

If we stayed until after dark, we would occasionally cross paths with huge, hairy black tarantulas crawling slowly in the road, seeking heat after the sun went down. They seemed almost friendly in their careful, awkward walk, but we screamed and ran, loving the thrill of it.

My older cousin and I loved to go the steam caves, which had natural hot springs running underneath and heating the little caverns. The caves had a range of temperatures, from cool to hottest, and we dared each other to stay in the hot ones and breathe the steamy air. The smell of sulfury steam mingled with the scent of the wet wood benches and grates is a distinct one I can imagine even now. Those memories must be the reason I still love the stinky, steamy air at geothermal sites like Yellowstone.

At the end of the day, a deep breath was sometimes painful,  making us cough. We called it “getting smogged,” the result of breathing the dirty Southern California air of the 70’s. At school, we were not allowed to play outside on the worst smoggy days, but during the summer there were no restrictions. The feeling would usually be gone by the next day, and we wouldn’t hesitate to head back to the pool for more.

Memories of those sweet days of sun and swimming and playing with my family make me love being in the water even now. I don’t care if no one else is doing the side stroke.