The Ramp in the Lake

Pro skater Bob Burnquist built a skate ramp in the middle of Lake Tahoe. Not on the shore. Not near the water. In it—a curved, floating structure sitting out in that blue-green stretch on the California-Nevada border, nothing around it but altitude and open sky.

The footage of him skating it in full sun, carving the transitions and occasionally dropping straight into the lake when things go sideways, lands somewhere between sport and something more private. The fall into the water isn’t failure. It looks like the whole point. There’s a version of this that’s just a rich athlete showing off an expensive toy, and there’s the version where a person figured out exactly what they wanted—speed, heat, cold water, open sky—and built the specific object that delivers all of it at once. Burnquist clearly went with the second version.

I’ve kept this on a list in my head for years: things to construct if money ever stops mattering. The floating skate ramp sits near the top. Not because I skate particularly well, but because the image of it just sitting out there in the middle of the lake, waiting—that’s the image. Inaccessible, unnecessary, completely its own reason for existing.