My brothers and I have an ongoing joke about our Dad. He's constantly on work calls, which results in anxious pacing around our house. When he gets tired, he stops in place like a statue, so we love to snap photos of him when he's frozen. Sometimes we find him blocking doorways, in the middle of the road, or in front of the open fridge. It's like he's sleepwalking, so in the zone that he's completely unaware of his surroundings because of how much he loves his work. So when my Dad and two brothers arrived at Eagle Lake in Ontario, Canada, I was shocked to see my Dad seemingly set free from his usual real estate daze.
Now I had protested this trip for quite some time. Summer was ending, and I'd be moving into college just five days after we were planning on returning home. While I usually had my Dad wrapped around my finger as his only daughter, he didn't budge. So here I was, a tackle box in my left hand, fruit cup in my right, and five hours from the nearest international airport, ready to fish from 8 am to 5 pm for a week straight.
Just as I had avoided the trip, I boycotted our first day on the lake with great prowess. It was only until I saw the inner child of my workaholic father come out that it occurred to me that, if anything, I could sit on the boat for ten hours to make him happy. We loaded up a bright red cooler with a variety of fixings: finger sandwiches that seemed to be from the grab-and-go sections of the airport, ketchup-flavored potato chips (which is apparently a Canadian classic), and my personal favorite, O'Henry candy bars. After filling up our boat with enough gas for the day and much-too-alive bait, we flew across the water in our 15-footer, searching for the biggest and best walleye and muskie Eagle Lake had to offer.
We located our first fishing spot thirty minutes from the lodge, and it was nothing like I had ever seen. Here I was, living my Animal Planet dreams, absolutely taken by the rush of the Canadian flora and fauna coexisting with our now seemingly microscopic fishing boat. Here I pondered philosophical tenets that had never crossed my mind, like how have humans altered the physical parts of the natural world? Or If wilderness lives at the edge of civilization, where am I? I even witnessed a bald eagle swoop down from a 30-meter tree, perfectly skimming the water to snatch a freshly killed walleye only a few feet from my fishing rod. The raw beauty of nature got me thinking about what was important to me, who I am at my core, and all of the things around me that have become mundane because I see them so often: my incredible and loving family, the idyllic nature I am surrounded by in my home and the places I get to visit, and the valuable gift of time.
After the awareness I had experienced on the first day on the lake, I woke up the next morning excited about going through the same motions I had the day before. I then realized perspective was the most crucial piece: how can I take an experience and focus more on the positive components of the present versus all of the things I wish I could change? That day, I shifted from "I have to" to "I get to." As we sought out our next fishing spot, I helped use the underwater camera to jig around pockets of fish. I learned how to hook my bait (without screaming), jammed out to Jimmy Buffet with my Dad and brothers, and caught a 27-inch, picture-perfect walleye. Later that day, I was caught off-guard by our guide asking us if we wanted to cliff jump at a spot he knew of on the lake. Cliff jump? Is this guy crazy? My mind wandered to articles I had read about everything that could go wrong with this sudden shift in events. Not only the act, but everything throwing myself off a cliff represented, sent shivers down my spine. There were a million things to question: what was beneath the surface? What if I didn't jump far out enough? What if I got to the top of the ledge and couldn't bring myself to jump at all?
The idea of cliff jumping also had to do with all the facets of my life that I have precautions about jumping right into. My brothers are always hiding their most poor-judgment decisions from me because they know my Dad would say yes 100 times before I give them a "maybe." Whether that be about buying fireworks to launch off our patio, hypothesizing about throwing our dogs into the deep end of a pool to “see what happens,” or cliff jumping off of a 30-ft ledge into the depths of Eagle Lake, I've always lived by the mantra "Better safe than sorry." It was when I was able to let go of these words that I was able to get off of our boat and begin to summit the rock formation we had stopped at. By the time I was at the top of the cliff, the thoughts of panic swimming around my mind began to settle. Here, I felt a release, a previously undiscovered clarity, that propelled me forward to the edge, ready to jump before both of my formerly confident brothers. I remember looking down and then never looking back, jettisoning my entire being feet-first into the unknown, with all the people I loved cheering me on. I felt catharsis I had never experienced before, a release of every single worry I had about being away from home, going to college for the first time, and doing things like fishing and cliff jumping that felt foreign and uncomfortable. This jump was a gateway to some recent developments in my life, all of which I would never have tried had I not let loose a little more to appreciate all that is around me.
I pulled my Dad aside after dinner that day. Alongside my gratitude, we shared our fears about the coming years. He told me about his time in college and how he was scared to live as a divorced man in our house without my brothers and me to keep things interesting. We laughed about my childhood, especially the summer I had scraped my entire face from being dragged across the pavement trying to walk our yellow lab, Rufus. He told me secrets, ones I am still keeping, and I realized there was so much more to learn about him, puzzle pieces of who he is that his work tended to hide in their entirety. I loved the sides I saw of him in our little paradise; I couldn't remember the last time he told me he was proud of me or impressed with what I had accomplished, and by the lake, I was all that and more. However, what resonated with me most about our conversation was that he saw this new side of me, too. A girl who could let go of her parents’ not-so-recent divorce, a girl who could accept that her grandmother had stage IV pancreatic cancer, a girl who could take on what was thrown at her with grace. I had become a girl that could process her grief and loss in healthy and rejuvenating ways because I had people and activities I loved supporting me. During this conversation, I saw for the first time how much the turbulent and toxic American work culture had been to my Dad. He worked so hard, so often, and there are only so many hours in the day for him to take time for the things he loves. All of those work calls, while important, limited exploration and suppressed joy. I vowed that no matter the workload I would take on in the future, the thing that gave my life the most value was everything I loved—fishing, cliff jumping, and the hobbies I had the ability to discover.
By some form of time travel, it was somehow our last day in Ontario, and while this was the day I had anticipated counting down to for the entirety of the week, I wanted to stay there at the lodge forever. The protesting I had done when we departed for Canada reared its head in a new and mutated way, and I refused to leave. I pitched alternate solutions and ways I could get out on the boat one more time before we left for the airport in three hours. I begged and pleaded but to no avail. Fortunately, my usually unopinionated brother piped up and suggested, "Why don't we go to the point?". The point was a close drive, a beautiful hike that led to an unexplored alcove lined with some of the most picturesque cliff jumping spots you could imagine. The water was always flat and glassy, and the walk required to reach The Point was enough to keep anyone else from entering the space. It was here that I was the happiest, an unbothered form of myself that hadn't come out amongst the chaos of my high school years. My last moments in Ontario were spent cold plunging into the lake, climbing up to cliffs of varying heights, and throwing myself off of ledges up to 45 feet. I felt alive—a final taste of my personal paradise to end a life-changing week.
"It doesn't have to end here," my Dad pitched optimistically. I looked at him with eyes full of hope. "This could be a yearly tradition, your Great Grandpa Sunny and I used to fish every summer for a month."
"You mean that?" I managed to get out. My brothers cheered, and suddenly the goodbye was not so bad because it had become a see you next year. All these amazing things I felt at the lake: passion, freedom, joy, fear, and thrill. They didn't have to go away. It was wholly and entirely up to me to find new cliffs to jump from in my future endeavors: in college and beyond.
After the eye-opening experiences I had this summer in Canada redefining my perspective on work versus play, I did everything in my power to maintain this mindset when I took on college. If I had to give one piece of advice to the class of 2027 who will join us at Notre Dame in the fall, I'd tell them a thousand times to say yes. This attitude has unintentionally led me to all kinds of opportunities on campus. Some of my favorite times I have tried things that scare and push me have been joining the world's largest women's boxing club, serving the country in Army Reserve Officers Training Corps, and putting myself in new and uncomfortable social situations that have led me to some of the best friends I've ever had. The college workload is an incredible amount to juggle, and discovering new outlets will enrich everything you do academically, on campus, and beyond. It is important, now more than ever, as we step away from home for the first time and take on physical distance from our families, that we find time for the communities on campus that are here to welcome us, to make us feel at home and loved. Just as I had forgotten what it was like to hear my Dad say, “I’m proud of you”, extending words of pride and kindness go a long way in a place like Notre Dame that is full of difficult and time-consuming work. These ideas of hard work and free time can coexist just as I did in nature, and saying yes to them gives each thing you do have value. Say yes to clubs and sports teams, say yes to the cliffs that seemed insurmountable and unjumpable, and say yes to fishing in the middle of a barely explored part of the world. While there is so much to fear, there is much more to gain when you jump into the things that scare you, excite you, or make you ask questions. You'll be amazed at the beautiful ways you can evolve and transform.
After the fishing trip, my brothers and I agreed that the Dad that fishing brought out was the one he had been suppressing for too long. As grateful as we were for the time he put into his job, his work calls, and the all-work-no-play concept society has deemed necessary, our newfound interest in what he loved, fishing, helped us realize that he, too, deserved to let loose more often. And while my Dad can't unravel his workhorse habits in a matter of months or even years, I hope that vicariously through me and my exploration, he too will find some enlightenment in the passages of his life that we spoke about that day by the lake. Love, joy, passion, fear, freedom— he deserves those things. We all do. It just took a little fishing and cliff jumping to help me understand that.
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