Notes on Swimming, # 1
Route and Repetition
My daily swim is not a hobby. I don’t do it for fun, or recreation. I don’t even think of it as exercise, even though it’s definitely that. For me, open water swimming is a ritual, a practice, a discipline, a meditation. It’s an absolute. I swim because I must. It’s a basic need, an essential part of my makeup. I swim so that I am.
Similar to the way my pictures are connected to place, so are my swims. I can get by swimming in a pool in the off season, or in a surrogate lake if I absolutely have to, but when I say “my swim,” I mean Upper Goose Pond, with a specific route. That’s my swim. It’s not convenient, and it’s not quick. It’s a 45 minute drive from my house, then a 35 minute hike. There are no roads leading to this lake. It’s remote, which is part of why I like it. With some slight variation for weather, when it’s lake season, I do the exact same swim every day. It doesn’t get boring, and it doesn’t get old. The repetition is part of it.
Having a fixed route that is familiar is key, and there are multiple reasons why. One is there is fear and real danger involved with open water swimming. There are various factors involved with that: unexpected weather, lightning, water temperature, air temperature, wind, and sun. These things can all make you disoriented. Having a route and sticking to it mitigates these factors. You can’t always tell from a map or from shore what a distance is going to feel like on a swim, and you don’t want to get partway in and realize you misjudged. But beyond that, the route is important to me for other reasons — more artistic reasons. My creative thoughts and ideas exist within that route, in a way that could be compared to something like a memory palace. Because I only breathe to the right side, I navigate by focusing my gaze on a series of fixed elements: a small island, then a rocky point, then two white pines, then a small rocky beach. Each one offers comfort, and also has the wellspring of thoughts and ideas from hundreds of preceding swims attached to it, as well as the inspiration I hope to find there on hundreds of swims in the future. Spending an hour and change in the water revisiting them every day allows me to tap into something I can’t otherwise. It’s the basis for everything.
I’m not a technical swimmer. I have one speed, and one stroke; not slow, not fast, and always slightly crooked. People have tried to “fix” my stroke, but it’s pointless. I’m not interested in having a perfect stroke, or even in improving it, or in getting faster, or more efficient. I don’t want to think about my stroke. I swim so that I can think about other things.
Upper Goose Pond is not arbitrary. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my father bought some land in Becket, MA. In order to do so, he enlisted the help of some other families we knew. We built a cabin there. There was a small pond on the property, which we called Upper Upper Goose Pond, fed by a spring. A stream flowed from Upper Upper to Upper Goose, which you could follow through the woods, bushwhacking as you went. My brother Michael and I did it a lot. It was an arduous journey, and you’d be scratched and bitten by the end, but it was worth it when the forest finally opened up to this amazing crystal-clean pond that seemed to go on forever. Upper Goose still offers that sense of childhood wonder for me. My journey now is not the same, but it still takes time, and patience. I now walk in via the Appalachian Trail at the other end of the lake. The forest still parts at the end of the journey to the sight of water, and a sea of possibility, and promise.
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This read was a lovely surprise. Thank you so much. It resonated deeply… For I too swim nonstop for an hour and 5 or 10 minutes every day, save the weekends. It’s part of me and I look forward to it everyday. In the summer months when I’m on the north Atlantic coast of Spain in Asturias, it’s an open ocean swim in 21 degree Celsius water (just shy of 70 degrees Fahrenheit). No wetsuit or fins needed. Just my swimming bonnet and goggles are used. And it’s 7 in the morning with nary a soul…it’s my morning prayer ritual, beginning with the sign of the cross, as I carefully make my way into the sea by foot, always surveying, assessing and observing the mood, rhythm and force of the sea, splashing past shore breaks and once safely clear, then plunging forward into the water and beginning my trek on past the final outside break. You immediately sense the power of nature enveloping you…it’s a force you’ve come to respect and learned to harness to your advantage. The saltwater helps with buoyancy as you now begin your nonstop swimming stroke, kick and breathing routine. Depending on the day and sea conditions, the next hour you are carried, pitched and rolled by currents, swells and wind, 200 or 300 meters offshore, depending on the tide. That solid hour is my prayer time as my breathing becomes more central and a conduit to my head, heart and soul reaching out in solemn prayer, my stroke and kick already syncopated and running on autopilot. I’ve intentionally drifted into a zone ready to commune with my Creator. I always begin with the Lords Prayer followed by either a makeshift yet meditative rosary or a penitential Jesus Prayer. Just the other day as I was finishing my hour swim, I was cycling through the Jesus Prayer and inadvertently spilled out in my head the word “swimmer” in place of “sinner”…
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a swimmer….”
The pleasing irony and humour it fostered right then and there has since kept me all smiles and grins in joyous cheer, regardless of fog, rain or wind. The Cantabrian Sea is indeed a force to reckon with, her myriad moods and temperament change willy nilly, pell mell, and sans arrête…yet when the sea is calm, those open ocean summer swims have cast a spell on me unlike any hour in an indoor, heated pool in the throes of winter will ever do.
Beautiful piece that certainly resonates with me.
I also swim 4-5 days a week during the summers for 45 minutes in a pond in Massachusetts, albeit a more crowded one than yours - Stiles Pond in Boxford, MA. It’s a similar ritual for me although the landmarks are different - a shed with a red door, a small curved bay, a shallow section where I can watch the fish playing and a single hidden boulder keeps me guessing as it looms up to meet me an inch or two below the waterline, and finally a small rocky islet half a mile across where I typically tread water for a few minutes before turning around. I’m no particularly strong swimmer either and I consistently pull a bit to the right, but somehow it’s a similar ritual for me that clears my mind and gives me space to think about things that otherwise don’t seem to enter my mind.
Winters are a depressing time, I’m not one for the pool. In April I get hopeful and start sticking my thermometer into the waters. By September I’m grieving. One last swim, usually in October, as the trees on the shoreline are turning and an occasional scarlet leaf floating on the surface reminds me it’s time to pack it in and hunker down.