Lake Lore
Sunday, July 6th, 2025
LAKE VERONICA circa 4:00pm—“Who’s here for Lake Master?” announces Waterfront Director Annika Crowley to a busy shoreline. Nearly a dozen campers clamber to respond, raising their hands and talking over each other. “Let’s sound off starting here with ‘ONE’.”’
“ONE,” declares the foremost camper. “TWO,” goes the one behind. The rest of the throng intuit their own numbers in succession. A quick recount confirms a total of nine participants.
“You think you can handle nine?” asks Annika of Lifeguard Bella.
“I can go with her; nine’s kind of a lot,” offers Lifeguard Jojo.
Before long the group of eleven is waterborne, the sound of their voices fading as they circumnavigate the lake’s perimeter buoys. The shoreline is quiet, perhaps for the first time this afternoon. In this chlorine-free aquatic setting, there’s so many natural aromas that are discernible—hints of pennyroyal, notes of graham cracker. The cattails create flickering diamond patters as they rock out of phase in the warm breeze.
I take the opportunity to snag some flippers and a pool noodle for a quick visit to the raft which floats in the center of Lake Veronica. There I encounter Lifeguard Milo Costello, standing alert with a large red floatie.
“The lake is great! Is that a good quote?” says Milo. “Today has been very busy, probably fifty kids or more. It’s good to see our lake regulars—our lake-ulars. My favorite station is at the platform because you can see the whole lake with the patterns the wind makes on the water’s surface.”
I paddle back to shore where I encounter Lifeguard Lucien Lamb. I ask if I can take a photo. He agrees without moving, his eyes trained on the campers playing in the shallow water.
“There’s been an insane amount of Lake Masters this session,” says Annika. “I think the challenge is appealing to them. It’s mostly tons of fun. Anytime I get in the lake I feel like a new person. It refreshes you like nothing else at Camp can.”
While commiserating with Annika, two teenagers appear, brimming with all the enthusiasm of underpaid gravediggers.
“I didn’t choose to lead the lake walk; I was assigned,” says Teen Staff Bean. “I have a lot of things to do and now that I’ve been to the lake, I have to shower on top of all of that.”
“It was between this and K1, and I hate K1,” says Teen Staff Trixie. “But I liked lake walk as a camper, so I feel like I should give back.”
“I am looking forward to our Teen Staff day off,” adds Bean. “It will be nice to have a break and bond with our peers.”
I depart the shaded picnic table to pursue a tip from Lucien. Apparently, his grandfather, the late-great Tinker, had written his name in one of the concrete piers that held up Camp’s waterslide when it was installed in 1986. Tinker is a ubiquitous name in the Camp community, as a longtime handyman for Camp as well as an original Hog Farmer.
With the waterslide now gone, the piers are easily viewable along the dry, grassy hillside. I scramble upward through a corridor of madrones, my socks amassing burrs as I go. Soon the piers reveal themselves like dinosaur footprints, ascending in a regular zigzag. There must be dozens. Some indeed bear insignias, though they are hard to make out through the dirt and moss that has collected on them for 39 years.
The waterslide came to Winnarainbow as a donation from Marine World Africa USA in Redwood City as it planned its relocation to Vallejo in 1986. The slide itself was one of four slides that comprised the Tiger Mountain Rapids feature. It was 350-feet long, clearly visible on satellite mapping. In the picture below it is the slide on the far right.
Arriving at the top-most cluster, I find something promising: an ‘R’ followed by a ‘Y’. Tinker’s government name was Jerry, so maybe this is it! I kick at the dirt to try and reveal the rest. Another ‘R’! An ‘E’! But alas, for all my kicking I can’t uncover the first letter. I resolve to return with some wire brushes another day. In any case, there is definitely more than one “Jerry” in the Hog Farm family, so the results for now are decidedly inconclusive.
I scramble back to the shoreline to assist with the lake walk. The group of campers was just barely too large for the assigned number of staff, so my presence is accidentally helpful. A group of about fifteen, we stroll down the easement back to Camp, stopping at water stations along the way.
“The lake is beautiful,” says Atreyu, 12, Blue Tipi. “It’s got great views and lots of animals. There’s fish, and sometimes you can see frogs sitting on the lily pads. My favorite thing to do is jumping off the platform. I like to do long jumps, pencil dives, bananas, and cannonballs. The water at the lake is soft; I can’t really explain it, but when you jump in it barely hurts at all.”
“The lake is nice, big and fun,” says Maya, 11, Red Tipi. “I like jumping off the platform. We play the game called Fork-Spoon-Knife. That’s where when you jump off, someone yells out one of the things and you have to do the hand motion to match it.”
“People say there’s a bus at the bottom of the lake,” continues Maya. “Then there’s the Kraken, of course. My theory is that campers who don’t get picked up at the end of the session are fed to the Kraken.”
“The lake is cold like microwaved ice cream,” says Dalila, 11, Red Tipi. “In order to get Lake Master, you have to swim one lap around the lake. Then you get to use the floaties and you can go anywhere in the lake, not just in a straight line. My favorite part of the lake is the water. Otherwise, it would just be a hole in the ground.”
Stay hydrated,
—J. Payseno, Editor
