There’s an unique sense of freedom to the Swedish summer. While we were there a few weeks ago, celebrating Sofia’s cousin’s wedding, I took the opportunity to revisit one of the places that grew to mean a lot to me last year during our wedding preparations.
The night before we got married, a few of my friends (Dave, Luke and Chris) took me for a late night swim in a lake close to where we were staying. It’s a tradition that began with Dave’s wedding the year before, and which I see as something of a rite of passage, a final blast of your old way of life as another is about to begin.
That particular evening Dave and Luke swam out far, and when I caught up they were contemplating the depths beneath: ‘what creatures could be living in those murky waters?’ We dipped our heads under the water and were immersed in a silent blackness.
This time it was daylight and I had the lake all to myself. As I paddled in, the stillness of the surface was broken by gentle rings.