78. New Year's Day Plunge

About 10 or 12 years ago a friend talked three of us into taking a New Year’s Day plunge into cold Wallowa Lake. Four became nine or ten the next year, and progressed to over seventy last year. It’s become a local tradition, with farmers, ranchers, government workers, shopkeepers and college students home for the holidays all gathering to greet each other and celebrate the calendar’s turn.

 

As I’m one of a couple who’ve made it every year, I get calls about it from the newspaper, and from others who can’t remember the time we jump, or whether the event is even on again in 2015 or 2018 or today. 

 

Last year’s seventy-plus was a big gaggle of plungers, towel holders, and onlookers on the boat ramp waiting for the countdown, diving in with screams and shouts, and drying and hugging, congratulating and Happy New Year’ing afterwards. When people started asking this year, with Covid on their minds and mine, we decided to stagger it. I quickly divided the alphabet by four and suggested a 10 a.m. start, and then 15-minute intervals for the rest. The newspaper and Chamber website picked that up—and off we went!

 

The first group was the largest—some people didn’t get the word, and there were a few alphabet cheaters—but the 25 or 30 in that group implicitly understood Covid and the crowd and acted accordingly. They went in small family and friend groups, separated from each other and the next group by recommended distances without saying it, shouting Happy New Year and Good Bye to 2020 to the sky, and then hustled to warm cars.

 

The fifteen-minute intervals were too long—they could have been five—but the idea was solid, and groups two, three and four, with 10-12 in each, made their runs. 

 

And it occurred to me that this was exactly the way to begin 2021. Not with midnight music and too much to drink, crowded dance floor or arm-in-arm Auld Lang Syne, but with an outdoor event with friends, neighbors, and visitors talking and laughing across distance, doing something together, holding the health of others and wishes for a better 2021 in common. 

 

And if the few dozen of us at Wallowa Lake this morning can continue such good-natured contagion for the weeks and months ahead, we’ll be doing our part to still this pandemic.

 

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