Cold Water

We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us -- because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptiness that carries us. (Attanasio)

How can I explain what happened to me? And how, when or why? Many of you who swim under the open sky in rivers and lakes and seas don't need to hear my clumsy attempt. You already know what I'm talking about.

But I'll excuse myself anyway in advance and repeat, or at least paraphrase a great quote, "words are but symbols of symbols, thus twice removed from truth." And I'll try not to get too ridiculous or overly esoteric as I go along. But i won't promise anything.

Oh you crawled out of the sea straight into my arms, straight into my arms

It was somewhere between Andy inviting me to do an outdoor swim with him and finding myself in the ocean 1/2 a mile offshore of Big Island 6 months later. It was as if a great big hand had gently reached inside and directed a light onto some hidden part of me.

Our tears and our blood have more or less exactly the same proportion of water to salt as the sea. We are affected by the same gravity and the same lunar phases. The earth's surface has roughly the same percentage of water as the body of an adult human being.

We are so absolutely and intimately connected with the planet we inhabit. It is (at best) naive to think that we can somehow separate ourselves from and subvert the environment we inhabit. At worst it is the height of ignorance, offensive, psychotic, damaging, antisocial, arrogant and spells our destruction.

Did i digress again? Let's get back on track. This blog is about love and water. Well we might still be ok.

Höhenfelder See 6.24am 24th June 2011

I started swimming in March 2011. Something keeps telling me to move towards my fear. My first solo outdoor swim in just trunks and goggles was on June 25th in a lake, in Cologne. I borrowed a bike and cycled there at 6.00 in the morning. Of course I swam straight out to the middle of the lake, panting, panicked and only just made it freezing, back to the side.

As I rode away I noticed a sign saying baden verboten.

That year I did two outdoor events one in July in the Thames at Marlow and the other in Bray Lake Windsor in September. I trained among wetsuit clad triathletes. By the end of the season I swam outdoors three or four times a week. I have no idea what the temperature was.

My nearly new £200 wetsuit had a fault on a seam and right at the end of September I exchanged it for a brand new one. I wore it twice (and didn't wear it in) before the lakes were all closed for the winter.

I was new to Outdoor swimming and I thought this was all perfectly normal. At least, I didn't know any better. I wanted to swim, all the lakes were closed. I went back 5 or 6 times a week to a hot, packed out, highly chlorinated indoor hell hole. Sorry I mean swimming pool.

I hung up on a peg in a cupboard my wetsuit in its fancy purpose made bag.

We spent Christmas in Fuerteventura. The God of outdoor swimming smiled on me and shut down (most of) the waves and wind for 10 days. It also probably saved the life of my best buddy, a novice kite surfer, although he couldn't really see it at the time. Probably doesn't appreciate it even now. (You know how these extreme sports people can be).

I swam through the sharp black reef around a headland daily. It was between 17 and 19C and I shivered after 45 minutes or an hour in the water. I stayed cold sometimes for half the day in the hazy winter sunshine.

I spent several days at home. Then jetted off to the faded swankiness of the almost completely artificial Waikoloa Hilton resort on Big Island, Hawaii for a conference. Long days I spent in a chilled conference room with a stunning view each evening of the sun setting on surf crashing onto a black sharp volcanic reef.

Luckily I managed to start every morning in a sheltered man made lagoon with turtles and brightly coloured fish.

We are here because the earth tolerates it, and only for as long as it does

And for the few days I had after the conference the waves died again. It was my consolation and it was my salvation those days to pick my way out through the reef into the open ocean. It looked exactly like Fuerteventura but was about 7C warmer in the beautifully clear water.

I knew there were sharks out there. On my last day I was far from shore, there was a good mile between entry and  exit points around the resort. I really was all at sea. I had let myself be consoled by my friend Julie saying that if  a shark was going to eat me that was just how it was, but that she doubted it was how I was going to go. I kept a sharp eye out just in case.

Notwithstanding the rubber insulated swims in the Thames, Scotland, Berkshire and elsewhere. Höhenfelder See, Fuerteventura, Hawaii and that mysterious and huge gentle hand that had nudged me awake convinced me to leave my wetsuit where it was and swim the next year without it.