In the early years, 1998 through 2001, we didn’t have our own boat. We still enjoyed Saranac Lake, but in retrospect, it was nowhere near as much fun as having your own boat, tied up fifty feet from your unit, ready to hop into whenever you wanted.
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We were not the only ones to enjoy jumping off the bluff. It’s a popular destination for anyone out on the lake, and other families frequent it, although more locals than tourists, many of whom prefer the smooth aisles of the Lake Placid Benetton to the pine needles, tree roots, and uneven bedrock of Bluff Island. Many times, another family or another group would appear, and we’d all share that feeling you get when just you and a few other people know some secret.
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Saranac Lake, or more precisely, Lower Saranac Lake, is one of three lakes in a chain: Upper, Middle, and Lower. Almost all of the vacation events took place on Lower Saranac Lake, usually called just Saranac Lake, or more simply The Lake. The nearby town is also named Saranac Lake; it lies about ten miles west of Lake Placid.
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The next day, August 15, 2002; I was all enthused about the new destination, and shared it with my family and the Karps, Elaine’s cousin’s family that vacations with us at the lake. I described the rustic fireplaces, perfect for hot dogs and smores, the ready-to-explore island, the nice outcroppings for sun-bathing, and the jumping bluff.

It seemed to offer so many more possibilities than the Sister Islands, heretofore the only island we had ever spent any time on. Joe Pace and his family had discovered them, four tiny islets a mile and a half from Ampersand bay, just off Eagle Island: one pair only 20 yards from Eagle, the other pair out across a 150 yard channel. The close-in pair were too small for overnight camping, but offered a delightful spot to pull up your boat and picnic. Or use as a base for waterskiing. Or swim out to the farther pair. It was just barely feasible, although probably against the park rules, to build a small campfire in a shallow scrape, so we only did that once in a while.

Joe had noticed a makeshift stone fish weir, a circle of rocks in the shallow water, suitable for keeping one’s live catch, until the fish might find a gap, and escape. So Joe started the tradition of adding more stones to it. It’s a therapeutic activity, to build and rebuild a little structure, that we enjoy immediately and know that others also enjoy our anonymous labor. Big stones, little stones, it doesn’t matter. Just throw them loosely in the circle, letting the small ones fill the gaps naturally.

But we had been to the Sister Islands many times in the first few years, and a larger destination island, with more to offer, seemed to be a great idea. We made plans to go out to Bluff Island that afternoon with the Paces and the Karps. I was in the boat house contentedly fussing with the boat, when 11 year-old Nate came stomping in.

“We are not going to this Bluff Island. The Paces are going to the Sister Islands, and we are going to the Sister Islands. I do not want to go some other place. I just want to go to the Sister Islands.”

I tried to explain that we were all agreed to go to Bluff Island, and that Joe and the Paces were going with us. Nate was unimpressed, unconvinced, and not at all happy about the possibility of doing anything which might deviate from routine or separate us from the Paces.

Nonetheless, we packed our lunch and towels and bathing suits and life jackets and chairs and floaties and Swiss Army knives and books and whatever else we could cram into the 13-foot Whaler and shuttled out to Bluff Island. The small little Whaler, laden with such piles of gear, and adults who are distinctly not so small, chugged out the three miles to Bluff Island. We actually are not very organized in these outings; there’s invariably some delay, some over-packing, and some things are left behind. Pulled together on the spur of the moment, the food does not always include a appropriate full lunch, snack, drink, fruit, and dessert for everyone. This day we were taking Robbie with us, a kid from a family of extraordinarily skinny people. Well out in the lake, beyond the point of no-return on our second shuttle, I asked Robbie what he had brought for lunch. “Nothing.”

Once there, with the Paces and the Karps, any discontent melted away in the bright summer sun and the deep cool water. With the supplies and chairs set up at the far picnic area, we explored the island; Joe and Chelsea carved walking sticks. Many of us soon gravitated to the bluff. Joe had earlier explored the water underneath it with his boat’s depth finder, and assured us that it was deep all the way around.

We mustered up our courage, and one by one, we all jumped into the water, from a higher or lower spot. The bluff slopes up from the lake, so you can jump off a one-foot ledge, a twelve-foot ledge, or anywhere in-between. From the sheer front, it also slopes back up the hill, facing west to catch the afternoon sun. The water is quite deep, and the face of the rock is quite sheer, so it’s not so simple to get back up. But off to the right, where it slopes down, there is a natural seat just below the waterline. At least we think it’s natural; while extraordinarily convenient, it’s rough and rounded and gives no hint of being man-made. We took to bluff-jumping immediately, although not everyone jumps. The moms are notoriously resistant, but the dads and the kids of both sexes make up for it.

It is the greatest feeling in the world, to approach that ledge, look down the surprisingly high-seeming twelve feet, gather up your courage once again, jump into the water, bubble back up, swim over to the seat, pull yourself out of the water, run dripping up the ledge, plop down on a towel next a family member or friend, talk about something or nothing, and feel the warmth of the sun drying you off. The lake stretches out beneath you, extending off to the north, meeting the rolling Adirondack mountains.

The lake itself is special.

(The beginning of a book I’m gonna write.)

In the summer of 2006, I realized that I had a finite number of jumps off the bluff left to me. Of course, I would not be vacationing in Saranac Lake forever, and even if I did keep going there into my old age, sooner or later, I would have to give up jumping off the bluff. Jumping off the back bluff on Bluff Island is the signature event of our vacations at Saranac Lake, and the realization that the number of such events remaining to me was, in fact, quite limited, was a profound realization.

That summer, as our two weeks drew to a close on Friday evening, Elaine and Nate and I motored out in the Boston Whaler to Bluff. It was late and getting a little chilly and windy, with a slight chop on the lake. I grabbed a small towel and we took off. As Elaine circled in the channel between Bluff and Partridge Islands, I dove, or rather, jumped heavily, off the boat, into the bracing, cleaner-than-you-can-believe water of Lower Saranac Lake. Nate and I swam to to the bluff, found the natural seat just below the waterline of the granite, and clambered up, adding a few more droplets into the small pockmarks that the rain has begun digging into the surface. Up top, which is only about twelve feet high, we looked into the water, hesitated for longer than seems necessary, and jumped in. I sank down below the surface, and, as always, it seemed a long time before rising to the top.

I swam to the boat, pulled myself up on the swim ladder, shivered, and dried myself off inadequately, teeth chattering, but smiling broadly. One more jump. A fitting, but bittersweet, ending to another August vacation on Lower Saranac Lake.

As Elaine drove back, I focused on the sky, the clouds, the boulders, and the pine-covered islands: Halfway, Otter, Green, Fern, Eagle, and The Sisters. Nate took the helm after a few minutes. But as we overtook Eagle, I grinned and insisted that I wanted the wheel. I pushed the throttle forward and we sped through the Sister Islands channel faster than we do when swimmers might be around. As we neared Ampersand Bay, the wind blew the tears out of our eyes. Friday night, and it was over.

While being the central memory of our vacations at Ampersand Bay Boat Club (ABBC, a resort at the east end of Saranac Lake in New York’s Adirondack Park), we never jumped off Bluff Island in our first four years. From 1998 through 2001, we had puttered around in small rental boats and canoes, and satisfied ourselves with auto-accessible destinations. But on August 14, 2002, now outfitted with our own 13-foot Boston Whaler, I asked John, the low-key owner of ABBC, if there were islands on the lake that we could use. “Oh,” he brightened up, “you mean day use areas.” In previous years, we had seen the many islands dotting the lake, but they all seemed to be reserved by, and used by, overnight campers. To pull up a boat on just any old spot would be something like trespassing.

“Yes,” John continued, “there are day use areas, here on Eagle, here by the river, and here on Bluff Island.” He circled the spots on the map, which I gratefully accepted. That was John, low-key to a fault; he was friendly and helpful, and I loved him. But, if we hadn’t asked, he wouldn’t have volunteered.

Elaine, Ericka, Anna, and I boated out to inspect more carefully this Bluff Island, which we had seen many times; the south side of the island rises eighty feet above the lake, in a nearly-vertical bluff. “Nearly vertical” enough for people to jump off. Not necessarily middle-aged men with two young children, but crazy young guys. At Adirondack Medical Center, they have two usual causes for admissions to the ER: fishhooks jabbed into people’s soft parts and dislocated shoulders from people jumping eighty feet off the main bluff.

We circled the island once or twice, looking for a place to beach the boat. We’re a pretty cautious bunch of boaters: Elaine, Joe, and I. (And then there’s Derek.) So we reversed course at the big bluff and inspected the island closely, keeping it to our left, but at a safe distance. Nothing looked good as we rounded the eastern tip of the island. And as we tried to edge around the north side, rock buoys and smaller islets kept us off. Circling around to the northern tip, the bedrock sloped off into the water. Still nowhere to pull up. But, this was a day-use area, there had to be a spot to pull up a motorboat. Rounding the northern tip, we spotted the smaller back bluff. Much smaller, only about ten-fifteen feet high.

“There!” We spotted a promising little nook just left of the bluff, “I can see where people have pulled their boats up. Motor on slowly, and I’ll look out from the bow.” I throttled back and nosed the Whaler in cautiously. “It’s okay, okay, okay.” Elaine called out. “Watch this one rock on the left, and you’ll be fine.” I killed the motor and we drifted in the remaining few feet. As the boat thunked harmlessly onto the sand, we tied up. Ever cautious, I threw out the stern anchor too.

We were delighted. On the the northern spit of the island, a flattish peninsula about 100 yards long, there were three fireplace areas, each large enough to accommodate a group of several families. The main island large was enough for nine year-old kids to explore but not large enough to lose them, informal trails criss-crossing the whole place, all leading to the top of the big bluff with a magnificent view of the lake, the islands, the entrance to the river channel, and distant mountains. And best of all, the small back bluff for jumping.

It never crossed my mind that one day I would be counting the number of times I had jumped off the bluff, nor that I would be planning how to squeeze in one final jump.