Fri 29 Jul 2005
Visitor or veteran, the best thing about Langewood is Little Lake. Surrounded by our land and fed by underground springs, this clear, deep lake is completely private. Bordered all around by 30 feet of Wisconsin bog, the only swimming or boat entrance is the dock on the southeast bay. The largemouth bass fishing is good, and we know all the spots where you can usually get one. Before the advent of the single Langewood shower, Little Lake was also the Big Bathtub, and back in the 70′s local rumor had it that Langewood was a nudist colony.
This land was logged at the beginning of the last century, and some of those virgin timbers are still floating in this lake, having never made it to the lumber yards. I grew up having log rolling contests on these huge things, and now Andrew and Audrey have done this, too. I don’t know why they don’t rot. One corner of the lake has a sunken boat from some time before I was born, but that is almost completely gone now. The floating logs remain. There are several chunks of floating bog, too. If the wind doesn’t blow them to your side of the lake you can always drag them back with the rowboat (if you can find them) and have your own floating island to swim from for the day.
As much fun as Little Lake is, it has a dark side. The bottom is black, and this makes the water look black, too. When the light shines at certain angles you can see into its depths, but you can never see the all the way to the bottom. You can never touch the bottom either – unless you are very brave and can hold your breath. At just 25 feet from the shore it is already 12 feet deep. At 50 feet from the shore it’s anyone’s guess how deep it really is. In order to find out you have to drop down deep into the cold water. The deeper you go, the colder and darker it gets. After 15 feet it’s too dark to see anything, and the chill of the water seeps into you. If you keep swimming down into the darkness you sink into the soft black silt on the bottom. The silt layer is two feet thick and could hold any number of dead bodies thrown in the lake by some Chicago area gangster who needed a secret place to drop off his latest hit job. If you get through the silt you might hit the sandy bottom. But I wouldn’t know. The layer of dead bodies in the silt has always stopped me.
