DISCLAIMER: Open-water swimming is inherently dangerous. Open-water swimmers risk drowning, hypothermia, hyperthermia, heart attacks, panic attacks, cramping, jelly fish stings, fish bites, boat or jet-ski collisions, collisions with floating or submerged objects (including other swimmers), and other calamities that can be injurious, disabling or fatal! The "West Neck Pod" is an informal association of open-water swimmers who swim "outside the lines" with no lifeguard protection, it has no formal membership, organizational structure or legal identity, and its participants, including the author of this blog, make no representations and assume no liability with respect to its group open-water swims. All swimmers who participate in West Neck Pod group open-water swims do so at their own risk. Be careful out there!

Monday, August 9, 2010

Open-Water Swimming: A Love Story...

This story really begins in the fall, because although it is now the height of summer, my love affair with open-water swimming blossomed in the fall of my first season, some five or so years ago. Until then, I was a devout "poolie," whose distant memories of being knocked over by huge waves and bumped or entangled by terrifying but unidentifiable creatures or objects still made open-water swimming unthinkable. Eventually, encouraged by seasoned open-water veterans, who sympathized with my fears but didn't coddle them, I began to venture out with them into the open water, where I gradually began to overcome my ancient fears and phobias about the unseen sea creatures and god-knows-what that occupied the water and/or my imagination.

As I grew more comfortable in the open water, I came to revel in the day-to-day and sometimes minute-to-minute changes that made each moment of every swim unique and memorable...One day's glass-like surface became the next day's roiling sea, and an ever-changing palette of blues and greys and greens and pinks colored the water, waves and sky...I learned what the morning's challenges would be only when I stepped out onto the beach, to see which way the wind was blowing, which way the tide was running, how high the waves were breaking and how friendly or menacing was the sky. Some days the water was as calm and soothing as the bed I had recently torn myself from...other days I looked out onto chaos -- with white-capped waves coming from every direction and breaking wherever and whenever they willed. Those days -- my favorites, it turns out -- I was rolled and tossed about like socks in a washing machine, struggling to find a pattern to the waves that would allow me to swim in my accustomed rhythm....The struggle was exhausting, and eventually, after enduring endless wave-slaps in the face and inhaling numerous lungfuls of water while trying desperately to swim "my swim," I stopped struggling. I stopped thinking about my "technique" and started to listen to the water, to feel myself in the water, to feel myself part of the water...As I ceased to struggle and relaxed into the water, I found that there is a rhythm even to the chaos, that -- if you listen -- tells you..."stroke now"..."breathe now"..."kick now"...and that makes swimming a partnership with the water rather than a battle....


In that partnership, there are moments of perfect happiness: The moment when, still submerged, I turn to breathe and just before my goggles break the surface of the water, I look up and see the sun sparkling and glinting through the water like diamonds....or the moment when my arm glides forward for the "catch" and I watch the sunlight slicing through the stream of bubbles caught by my open hand...or the moment when I allow myself to feel my body resting on the surface of the water, buoyed and carried by the swells as they make their way home...In those moments, I really do experience perfect happiness -- a happiness that I get to revisit with every breath, with every stroke, with every swell...
But it was in the fall of that first year of open-water swimming that I truly fell in love...In that first fall it was dark when I would get to the beach, and I would put my wetsuit on and wait until the sky lightened enough that I could see where the water met the sand...Often there was a mist over the water, which was now warmer than the air, and I witnessed the magical and mystical transition of night to day and black water to a more welcoming blue-green. The swim lines and moorings had been pulled, and the boats had been hauled to dry-dock, and the open water was more "open" than I had ever seen it -- Now, striking out from the beach, with nothing in front of me but the horizon, I literally felt like I could swim forever...Somehow, in that first fall, the water became a church, and I its most devout convert. In the church of the open water I am at my most open, my most spiritual, the closest to god, and the most connected to the sea and its creatures and the community of open-water swimmers who share my love of it....

As the days shorten and this summer season melts into fall, I already feel the pangs of impending separation and loss...but when I slip into the water tomorrow, and turn my head upwards towards the rising sun, and take my first stroke towards the horizon, I know that all will be well, and I will be happy and at peace...See you in the Salt!

8 comments:

  1. What a beautiful description of the experience of being in the water and all that comes with it

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  2. Are you sure you're not a poet... this is a post that we will be re-reading in the depths of winter just to make us feel better! Thanks for writing it!

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  3. What a wonderful story. Much of my thoughts about swimming invoke a naucious Pavlov response from the accumulation of lactic acid in super hard IM sets with arms feeling as though filled with cement, soaked in gas and lit on fire. Of course this only happens Monday through Friday and then........ah, back to West Neck Beach, my sanctuary.

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  4. Thanks, Evelyn, Mike and Rob. Evelyn, I know you're already a member of the open-water church, and Rob, sounds like you need to come and join us in the pew on weekdays! And Mike, you should know that you're one of those "seasoned veterans" who got me doing this in the first place!

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  5. Carol, you have so perfectly captured those unbelievably sacred moments that those of us, who wake up too early, who dive in too cold, who swim through a spot thick with jellies or god-knows-what sealife even though it conjures up our worst fears, have known. Those ever-fulfilling glints of sunlight, the lilt of the water that carries us, and the waves that exhilarate, and make us feel completely enlightened for just one fleeting moment, and one with the world. Thank you for this. I can't believe I almost missed it...

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  6. (btw, hope you don't mind. I shared this link to my FB page. People so often ask how (and why) i do what I do. You answered that so perfectly. :))

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  7. And I found the link on Gae's Facebook page. This was, indeed, a lovely portrait. Thank you.

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  8. Thank you, Jody...If you find yourself in the neighborhood next spring, come join us in the Salt! It's contagious, I promise...!

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