A headline on the news a few days ago caught my eye: “Open water swimmers to be banned from America’s deepest lake for two years during restoration project.”

I wondered what lake that might be, thinking it was one of the Great Lakes, but found to my surprise it was actually a place I have been to! – but not gone swimming in -- Crater Lake, in central Oregon.

I had a business conference in Portland, Oregon, some ~20 or so years ago (more on that in a later column), and took a couple extra days afterward to drive four hours south to visit a close friend of mine from college I had not seen in many years. Denise was single, when she first moved to Oregon, several years after we both left UGA in Athens, her hometown; by then, she was married and had a lovely 14-year old daughter, was a very talented artist and a published author.

My wife went with me on that trip, since all I had to pay for was her airfare, food and incidentals, and we had a very interesting time. I was not aware of Crater Lake before we went (the internet not yet having been invented), but saw it (or the signs to it, rather), on the way down to Ashland (home of a nationally-known Shakespeare Theatre Festival) , where Denise and her family lived.

We decided on the spur of the moment to leave Ashland a day early, in order to stop off and see Oregon’s only national park on the way back to Portland.

We were very glad we did. It was breathtaking! The lake was formed, thousands of years ago, when a volcano exploded, and the subsiding magma eventually cooled to form a caldera, which hardened. Over the years since, snowfall and rainfall eventually filled the caldera to become the lake we now see today.

Crater Lake is at a high altitude, some 12,000 – 14,000 feet above sea level. At that altitude, snow that falls in winter is mostly still on the ground in the summer, when we were there. I was astonished. We were there in mid-July, and found snow drifts that were still 3-4 feet high! I had never seen that before.

I later read that “precipitation” (rain and snow) minus “evaporation” only resulted in a 20-foot difference in the lake level, year to year. Amazing!

The air was so remarkably clear, that high up, you could see clear across the lake, and it looked like it was maybe only a mile across, and maybe two miles wide. We later found out it was seven miles wide! I was astonished.

There are two approaches to Crater Lake: the North Rim trail, and the South Rim Trail. Both, as I recall, are closed off during late fall to early spring because of treacherous driving conditions. We came in on the South Rim Trail, driving up from Ashland, which opened up in the spring, weather permitting, There was a trading post and a handful of cabins facing the south end of the lake, at the top of the rim. A steep, narrow stairway cut into the rock wall of the caldera, leading down to a small boat ramp on the lake, where one could take a boat to a small island (the “tip of the caldera still protruding up out of the water”) in the middle of the lake.

We did not have time to do much more than walk around that southern rim trail a bit, taking in the enormity and beauty of that incredible place.

As we approached the trading post at the top of the stairs coming up from the boat ramp, a family of five came up the staircase just ahead of us: two parents, a grandmother (“Babushka,” in Russian), a young girl of maybe 12, and a younger brother of maybe 9 or 10.

I heard them chattering to themselves in what sounded like Russian, which I recognized from having studied that language for two years at Savannah High School, many years ago, so I called out to the young boy, as he climbed up the steps in front of us – “Are you Russian?” (In Russian, of course.) He replied, “Yes!” (In Russian.) I then asked, “How are you?” He said, “Fine!” and then ran off to catch up with his family.

I don’t know who was more surprised: My wife, to hear me jabbering away in Russian to a young boy we’d never met before; or me, that I remembered enough of the Russian I’d studied, all those years ago, to have that much of a conversation!

In truth, I was glad he ran off when he did; I do not think I could have gone on any further! It had been too many years; but I was glad that I remembered as much as I did. Mrs. Cope would have been proud to have heard that exchange.

What an extraordinary experience! First, to have seen the country’s deepest lake, caused by a volcanic explosion thousands of years ago. And then to have run into a family of visitors from clear across the globe – from Russia, no less! And to have been able to have had a conversation, if in brief, in their own language.

All because I took two years of Russian in high school, some 50 years earlier, and remembered enough of it, years later, to say “Hello!” to visitors from somewhere on the other side o the world.

Life is sometimes just amazing! 

Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He and his wife live in eastern Liberty County, and are long-time Rotarians. He writes on a variety of topics, and may be reached at rafe_semmes@yahoo.com.