The Lake and Campus Life

Pushing Off

There’s something bracing about a day on the lake.

"Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us."

--Kenneth Grahame,
The Wind in the Willows

It's one thing to skip rocks from shore or gaze out over the bluffs, and quite another taking to the lake in boats.

"There's a certain quality to the water," says Colleges' President Richard Hersh (pictured). He and his wife, Judy Meyers, get out on the water roughly once a week, sometimes more. Actually, they sit slightly under the water in single sculls — sleek racing boats 26 feet long and 10 inches wide. "We row mostly in the canal and on the north end of the lake itself, with the herons and ducks, in the early morning and evening hours."

Bill Scandling ‘49, instead of taking to the lake with boat, has taken to his boat with the lake. Scandling cruises the world in a 110-foot yacht named Seneca, and maintains membership in the Seneca Yacht Club. It’s a different way of keeping the Seneca connection alive.

Whether sculling the canal, drifting in a rowboat, or beating south into a 20-mile-an-hour wind on the HWS William F. Scandling (formerly known as the HWS Explorer), boating gives perspective. Boating is a time not to talk, but listen. From the 1915 Pine:

"Ella and I went silently down to the shore, and stepped into the row-boat. I pushed off, and the keel grating against the pebbles sounded loud in the quiet of the evening. Out on the water we were loath to break the magic silence that fell again like something palpable over the lake." — P.R.

The Seneca Lake series was researched and written by Dana Cooke and Peter Rolph '85 — writer/editors in the Office of College Relations. Portions of the series also appear in the Fall '97 issue of The Pulteney St. Survey. To request a copy, e-mail Susan Murad at murad@hws.edu.