When I was ten years old, my family moved from Minneapolis to a small house on a lake in the suburbs. That summer was difficult. I missed my friends back in the city, the way I could bike to their houses and play all day. I ended up spending time alone, reading in my room or down by the lake.

After we’d been there a few weeks, my stepdad built us a swimming dock. It was situated in the water 30 feet from shore and had a small trampoline on the end.

I stood uncertainly at one end of the dock, but before I could overthink it, I felt my body move, wood skimming underneath my soles before I planted my feet on the springy black fabric, bending my knees to get the biggest push possible and leaping into the thick air. In the split-second before I hit the water, I felt something powerful: The moment after you’ve leapt, before you land, when your body reverberates with the feeling of taking a risk. It’s a feeling I’ve become addicted to, jumping into bodies of water whenever I see them, from cliffs in Slovenia to rivers in Alaska to lakes in Finland.

And of course, the lake in our backyard. Because after my body plunged into the lake, I felt alive. I swam to the start and jumped again and again. Back on shore, similar little leaps of courage brought me friends, new activities, a new school, and turned the once-strange place into our home.