ENDLESS SUMMER

During a week of campfires, perch prepared every which way, caught-in-time Main Streets, and enough wakeboarding wipeouts to last an eternity, Ashlea Halpern learns to love the Minnesota lake life

- Ashlea Halpern

I'M zooming across Gull Lake in a Malibu Wakesetter 22 LSV powerboat, which I've been told has enough torque to rocket me to the moon. The water is 77 degrees, warmed by a sun that just won't quit. Captain Amanda Nash and instructor Matt Soundy barely look old enough to drink, yet both are skilled wake surfers, excited to show me their Tik Tok moves. They're living the wet, hot American dream here in central Minnesota: zigzagging across six-foot swells, sucking down root beer floats, and partying every night after work. They re fun gossips too, pointing out the rumored lake homes of Tom Cruise and some med-tech bajillionaire who allegedly imported his own beach sand because the lake sand wasn't "white enough." I enjoy the chitchat, but I'm here to launch my own wakeboarding career—one of several ways I'm trying to embrace the "lake life" I've heard so much about since moving to Minnesota six years ago. The state is the "Land of 10,000 Lakes," as its license plates proudly attest, but as my New Yorker husband, Andrew, and I learned, that motto rounds the number down: There are actually 11,842, if you want to get persnickety about it.

After arriving in the Twin Cities, Andrew and I fell hard for their restaurants and diverse cultural tableaux, but I could never wrap my head around the singularly Minnesotan obsession with lakes and being in them, on them, and near them. I like lakes. They're nice. But bragging about your lake house or pontoon boat to somehow signal that you belong in a state? I didn't get that.