Away We Go: Baptism in Lake Mead
Six people stood shoulder to shoulder in cotton t-shirts ringed with wetness of Lake Mead's blue-green waters up to their ribcages. At first I think, this is one of those staged family reunion photos and they’re about to jump out the water simultaneously or make weird faces for a camera-toting member of the group. But then I see one of the people float towards the middle and realize it’s something a little more ceremonial. One by one, most members of the group are dipped fully underwater and words are spoken over them. It's a baptism.
The desert sun was strong and it was one of those warm days in the shallows. Shimmering water with shimmering heat waves just above. Canyons cut far beneath the surface, never meant to hold this water. Not all at once, anyway. An improbable thing at best.
A little like faith, an abundance of which it must have taken to dream, decide, and put into action the plan to stop the flow of water to begin with. It’s a good place to choose to cement your status in the realm of the soul since it’s an in-between. A liminal space that shouldn’t really be here. And it might not be in a few years based on the line on the rock that shows where the water line used to be.
A place of dichotomy, a lake in the desert. Something that filled the whole landscape where there was nothing before. Something that breathed more obvious life into a place where it was previously dry and baked and harder to survive. So the location was thoughtfully chosen.
To stand right in this spot and let someone plunge your head in this stopped-up river in the middle of the desert is an act of belief and the acceptance of a thing bigger than us. For them it might be a capital G god. For me, I find that feeling arise when I watch the water dripping from my paddle or the air from my lungs steam in front of me on a winter day.
All of which is ephemeral – that the water will continue to aggregate in a pool in the desert, that we humans will be here at all to ensure that it does. It’s as much of a mirage as the heat waves coming off the water and the hills in the distance. Reacting to the sun then dissipating. In my darker moments I am scared this is all I will be. An evaporation from the sand, away I go up into the air. Perhaps these are the kinds of feelings that lead to the occurrence happening in that circle of humans in the water.
It's a dual transformation: this valley into a lake, this person into another version of themselves. Neither are permanent but for just a few breaths on this clear, sunny morning I remember they don't have to be.
This story based on an experience in Boulder Beach, Nevada.