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The Thrills and Chills of Lake Swimming in Maine

June 18, 2008 - LIBERTY — Ever turn an ankle so bad it had to get dunked in a bucket of ice water?

That's lake swimming in Maine in early June.

Yet many Mainers who live miles from the ocean relish the adventure of lake swimming, and start their season as soon as possible.

On an overcast afternoon in June, chipmunks skipped over the granite blocks along Lake St. George State Park, waves rippled noisily against massive stone steps, and the green fields full of picnic tables sat empty.

Just after noon, a loon cried across the lake. (This state park may have the clamor of Route 3 beside it, but this is still Maine.)

However, moments earlier, under gray skies, some 200 students from Erskine Academy were playing volleyball, baseball and Frisbee on the green field... and swimming.

Adriana Love and three others were brave enough to wade in and soak in Lake St. George's water.

Despite the lack of sun, they walked around in bikini tops and shorts.

"You have more freedom than in a pool," Love said. "You have the ability to go to varying depths."

The senior and lifelong lake swimmer relishes the wild, wide-open experience in a lake.

"It's pretty elitist," Love said. "Not everyone does it. It's too cold. People can get sick."

Traditionally, the first lakes to warm up are the shallow and smaller ones. But the list might surprise some.

Pleasant Pond in Richmond and Range Pond in Poland both are shallow enough to allow the water to be inviting before July.

And Damariscotta Lake State Park in Jefferson and Mount Blue State Park in Weld are warmer before other, deeper lakes.

But the second-largest lake in Maine -- Sebago Lake -- also is on the list of warm early swimming holes, with the state park in Casco offering a pleasant, shallow place for a spring dip along Sebago's eastern shores.

"It's odd. Sebago usually warms up as fast as other places around that area," said Will Harris, director of the Department of Conservation's bureau of parks and lands.

State park lakes at higher elevations, like Moosehead Lake or Rangeley Lake, will warm up much later in the summer, Harris said.

Come the end of June, Harris said most lakes in the southern half of Maine will be as warm as 70-degrees.

But right now? Pretty much ice-cold everywhere.

"Those swimming now would be the hardy swimmers," Harris said.

NATURAL BEAUTY

Many of the students from Erskine come to swim at Lake St. George throughout the summer, because while it is colder than most lakes, it is unusually clear.

Love and others say the lake experience has little to do with cleanliness and more to do with becoming a part of something in nature.

It's a communing with wildlife.

It's the loons in the distance, the smallmouth bass at your feet, and even the proverbial creepy crawlies that lurk somewhere beneath the surface.

"You see fish. Some snapping turtles. And, people say there are leeches," said Erskine senior Nicole Brann of Windsor.

(At least you can see them in Lake St. George.)

The 1,017-acre lake has the distinction of being spring-fed with some of the state's cleanest freshwater.

Along the shores of Marshall Shore Park, the town park in Liberty, the striations in the huge slabs of granite make an unusual flat, hard shoreline perfect for sunbathers and waders.

Where the water meets the smooth rock shelf, the granite runs under the water for several feet, looking like an elaborate sculpted pool.

The clarity of the spring-fed water speaks to its chilly temperatures before summer.

Yet, despite the frigid feel of the lake in June, even some non-natives are drawn into the stone-covered lake bottom this early.

Andres Monsalve, an exchange student from Ecuador, has been in Maine just eight months.

He was among a handful of Erskine students who withstood the cold of Lake St. George during their senior trip, swimming in his Hawaiian-print shorts the first week of June.

In his native Ecuador, Monslave said, people do not swim in lakes.

And, as he concentrated on his English, looking out across Lake St. George, Monsalve said he enjoyed the experience.

"I expect, it would be more cold. It wasn't that bad," he said, and smiled. "In Ecuador, the ocean, is a lot warmer. I stayed in here maybe five minutes."

Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming, Portland Press Herald, June 15, 2008.


Lakes: Damariscotta Lake, Lake George
Regions: Belgrade, Mid Coast


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