Have you ever heard someone say that they were sorry they went for a swim? Neither have I. Even those hypothermic individuals hauled out of the water during this year’s Swim for Life were glad they did it. For most of us, swimming opportunities are beginning to dwindle as November approaches. Whatever else the off-season offers, this is one of its deficits.
Who knows if that last swim has actually already happened? The last of anything is poignant, reminding us that life itself is fleeting, a one-way trip; we have to seize the moment, take opportunities as they present themselves. Whether it is the last outdoor shower of the season, or something more meaningful like the last sail, or that expedition for blueberries, beach plums, cranberries, or striped bass — it signifies time passing.
Life, too, can present us with last experiences, and sometimes we may even be aware of them. Five decades ago, I had a friend, an older man, who was scheduled for open-heart surgery. The morning before the procedure, I observed him take a long slow walk down Kiley Court to the beach, a walk he took every day of his life here. I watched him take every step deliberately, looking around intently, evidently savoring every bit of the experience, trying to store it somewhere in his memory. Perhaps he brought it to the operating table: he survived.
Ever since, and now especially as I have reached a certain age, I approach everyday experiences with an eye to their uniqueness. And so it is with swimming.
We are land animals to be sure, but here we live by the shore, and the water beckons. On the water, and especially in the water, we are largely free from troubles and concerns. A few weeks ago at Herring Cove Beach, I watched a series of people, young and old, walk, slide, or plunge into the water and apparently find joy and solace in the act. There is a commonality in people swimming exceeded only by our common nightly launch into sleep.
The water offers a balm similar to sleep. We are as if sleep-walking: moving fluidly, dreamily, through a medium that sustains us. Like newborns, we enter the water nearly naked. We are joyously free of the clothes that so tyrannically enclose us most of our lives. In what other way do we get so close to the elements?
Water cleanses and refreshes us. Diving beneath the surface’s skin, we are in another dimension, one that is mostly without sound — except for the beating of our hearts. We are in a filtering medium that plays with the light, making it translucent and otherworldly. We also loosen gravity’s grip and experience buoyancy, which is downright fun. Visiting the bottom ever so briefly, we are charmed to encounter a school of small fish, or a side-scuttling crab: we are in their home and in their element. It is akin to visiting Mars.
All these thoughts occurred to me on what may have been my last swim a couple of weeks ago. Floating on my back in the harbor water in the East End, the big sky stretched overhead, I watched clouds float by and gulls winging their silent way beneath them. The horizon was at eye level. If I turned my head, I could just make out High Head to the east, the breakwater to the south, and MacMillan Wharf to the west. Numerous boats, some with sails spread, were in distant view. The water sparkled with diamonds as the wavelets danced about my head. My ears were full of the sound of my breathing.
Floating like this is a rare opportunity to be fully conscious of this life-sustaining act, each breath like a declaration. Physiologists tell us that we take roughly 20,000 breaths every day, but unless we challenge our bodies with exercise or meditate (neither do I do) we are not really aware of them. It is that kind of awareness, that being in the present in the water, that reminds me that life on land can benefit from the same attention.
While this may have in fact been my last swim, I hope that swimmers follow after me — including my grandchildren and their grandchildren. But even when we are all gone, may the dolphins and whales come back to these waters, as they are beginning to do. God help us, whatever we have done to this planet, may it be, as Melville writes at the end of Moby-Dick, that the “great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”
