CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK – What a day. Brilliantly crisp blue skies, calm and clear enough that from the rim Crater Lake and its caldera walls twinkled like facing mirrors. Warm enough for shorts and T-shirts. And because the summer crush is over, only occasional hikers making their way uphill as we descended the Cleetwood Cove Trail to the lake.

A week earlier our trip to Crater Lake’s waters for my annual swim, something I’ve done for more than 40 years, had been frustrated by an early-arriving storm that created bone-chilling temperatures, blew in smoke from regional forest fires and created whitecapped waves better for surfing than swimming.

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