There are therapists who have said that living by water is the key to mental health.

Maybe it’s true. When you live your life by a body of water like Lake Erie, as I have, the water becomes a part of your life.

I have felt claustrophobic and landlocked living in Columbus – after spending my entire childhood and my adolescent life in and around Cleveland’s section of Lake Erie – from the urban shores of North Collinwood to the woody suburbs of Chesterland, just driving distance away.

True, Lake Erie, even for some who live along its banks, is the butt of thousands of jokes about filth. It is connected at one seam – through the downtown Flats – to a river that has borne the bulk of the same jibes and criticisms, since it caught fire back in June 1969 because of industrial and commercial pollution.

Dirty or not, I swam and walked in it long before I or anyone else I knew began to notice large-scale effects of any improvement. My parents moved back from San Francisco early in 1981, with more than a healthy dose of holistic naturalism. They baptized me in it when I was six months old, and I have loved it desperately ever since I have come to its defense when others defined it solely by the unfortunate run-off and trash that sensationalized it to everyone who doesn’t know it personally.

I have fallen asleep by it, lulled peacefully by the rhythmic metronome of its tide. I have dreamt of the lake, swam in it naked with friends at night. It has been cleaned up monumentally, and for the most part, it is a calm lake – its glassy surface lapping the shores of the beaches and state parks that dot its coasts.

But it can turn to a dangerous, angry water. There is a special term for the snow that comes across the lake. “Lake effect” storms coming south from Canada can blanket every suburb east of Cleveland with masses of snow, incapacitating entire towns for days.

Also, the maritime maps are littered with wrecks and crashes, sunken remnants of misdirections mixed with tragic storms, fog and whitecaps. There are hundreds of lost recreational, commercial and military ships – enough for countless books – mysteriously hugging the weeded and silted bottom depths.

Its danger is well-known. The abandoned houses – hanging desperately over muddy cliffs – are a testament to the lust the lake has for reclaiming land, for taking back violently the coast its waters lap against.

And the coast is punctuated with lighthouses, foretelling the lake’s infamous ability to rise from glassy calm to chaos in minutes. Many are still active, still helping to guide the lake’s thick boat traffic away from the rocky coast.

As the white beacon at Mentor Headlands is, many are now abandoned, left standing proud and lonely. Many are now only tall, mythical locales of rumored ghosts and memories and history. Some, like in Mentor, have been boarded up – empty rooms waiting patiently on top of huge cement platforms for my friends and I to dive the 30 or so feet down into the dark Erie waters late in summer evenings.

I have felt its absence lately – especially as nicer weather has been slowly unfolding. I felt its absence before I went home last weekend to celebrate the holiday in a small lakeside cottage with family.

I am not sure why I felt its pull. In May, the lake is too cold for swimming, many times too cold for even casually walking along the tide-line with bare feet. I knew the weather would be bleak and gray, and even the sand of the beach would seem tired, as would the water itself.

But there are times I need routine, consistency. There are times when I need, passionately, that grand, gray sky fading into a distance blurred by clouds, a cold, windy beach and the peaceful rhythms I can always go back and listen to while watching the sturdy oar boats slowly pull themselves across the horizon.

John Ross is a senior in comparative studies. He can be reached at [email protected].