Lake Michigan, USA

My Watermark is Lake Michigan.

I grew up north of Chicago and my family every summer went to Southwest Michigan, (to Sawyer, Michigan), where they all have moved to now. I remember we used to pull in Friday evenings after my parents got off work, and we would get in late and usually miss sunset, but I would run out to the lake the second we were close enough to be there. Every time my dad would beg me not to because I was still in full clothing -- I did not even try to wear a bathing suit: jeans, a hoodie, everything -- and I would go chest deep into the lake because I couldn’t even go seconds without being in it. And that was Lake Michigan.

My family is still all around Southwest Michigan and so that lake is still apart of my home. Since then I’ve moved to Gary, Indiana which has a lakefront community called Miller Beach and that is where I bought my first house. I’m still within a block from the beach and I've kept Lake Michigan as probably the largest part of my life.