Swimming Becomes Breathing

After several years of lake swimming in summer and a few years of swimming through the winter, I stopped writing about my swims. I haven’t posted a blog since January, my notes on my swims since then are cryptic, and the only record of most swims is solely the name of the lake in a square in my monthly planner or a photo somewhere on my cell phone.

This was the point at which wild swimming had, after several years, had become so integrated into my life that I spent more time swimming and less time considering each swim as material for my book. I stopped evaluating or rating each and every swim. Anytime anyone asked how the water was, I never hesitated in answering “Perfect, as always” even though the conditions varied greatly across the seasons. Every swim was different, every swim was perfect. And I meant it.

I am so grateful to live in a place where I can swim in clean, fresh water. Where swimming costs nothing. Where people gather happily to enjoy the simple pleasure of swimming, dipping, wading, or just gazing at the water. I had begun to take all this for granted, even though I know it is a rare privilege to live in a place where fresh water is abundant, clean, and accessible. Often taking something for granted, often through lack of attention or lack of appreciation, can precede that something disappearing or being taken away. Therefore, a few words of appreciation for two of my favorite lakes in Washington State.

Ross Lake during calm waters with a beautiful anvil of a cumulonimbus cloud in the distance. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

A late-August canoe-camping trip to Ross Lake was one of the most glorious swimming trips I’ve ever taken. The water color beautiful blue-green, clear, refreshing but warm enough (75-ish) to lure in the cold-water adverse swimmers. My husband and I swam three to four times a day—sometimes a quick dip from a place along the shore where we could tie up our canoe to a log, other times a longer swim into a ferny grotto to a waterfall, or across a side inlet. Because this is a drowned river valley, there are no beaches gravel bars per se. The water gets deep very quickly once you are offshore—a delight if you like swimming close to the trees and rocky bases of the peaks that rise steeply on either side of the lake.

The quality of the water was idea, but it was our physical proximity to the water and the ease of access that made this “swim-cation” so perfect. When we weren’t on the lake canoeing, we were next to the lake out our campsite. Our four campites were all immaculate and all equipped with a dock, groomed tent site, capacious bear locker, picnic table, fire ring, and privy (supplied with toilet paper!!!). Though considered “primitive,” these campsites rated as “luxurious” for me: we had views of the lake, the forest, the glacier-topped peaks, the skies—including spectacular viewing of the Milky Way and Jupiter.

Ross Lake is the Ross Lake National Recreation Area adjacent to North Cascades Park in Washington State. It is not a natural lake, but the result of the damming of the Skagit River in 1949 by Seattle City Light to generate hydroelectric power for Seattle. The lake is 540 feet deep (max) and stretches 23 miles into British Columbia. The lake is remote and access is boat-in or hike-in only (boaters can have their boats and gear shuttled by truck over the dam from Diablo Lake in North Cascades National Park). It’s work to get to Ross Lake and paddling can be challenging when the winds kick up in the afternoon. The reward for the work is some of the Pacific Northwest’s most stunning scenery and a gorgeous body of water you’re never more than thirty seconds from getting in.

Lake plus clouds=paradise. (Photo by M.M Ruth)

After my trip to Ross Lake, I thought my next swim in Ward lake (my local neighborhood lake) would be a disappointment. This morning’s swim proved otherwise. I put on my bathing suit, sweat pants, sweater, and sneakers and walked an easy 20 minutes to the lake. There were a few people fishing from small boats but no other swimmers. I swam to the center of the lake and turned to float on my back just as an osprey appeared overhead, shaking the water off its wings in midair. It had a fish in its talons. Naturally, a bald eagle soon appeared. For a good twenty minutes, the kleptoparasitic eagle pursued the osprey across the lake and around the perimeter of the lake. The deft osprey—a hawk considerably smaller than an eagle—outmaneuvered the eagle with every turn. Ultimately the exhausted eagle gave up and flew off. I lost sight of the osprey but hope that fish was delicious. It certainly was well earned.

I swam back to the dock, dried off in the sun, and walked home.

Another perfect swim. As always.

Swimming, Thinking, Reading

New Year got off to a brisk start with a very short barefoot walk across the snow and a very quick dip-swim in Ward Lake. The air was around 36 degrees F and the water 42 degrees F. While these temps might cause you to shiver, they are more “do-able”—even enjoyable—if you’ve been swimming every week or so year round. But believe me, there is no shortage of shivering and goosebumps among the swimmers!

I started lake swimming when I moved to Washington State 15 years ago, then made it a summer habit 10 years ago, and a year-round habit 3 years ago. In that time, “wild swimming” has become an international craze, especially in the northern climes of the globe. The Outdoor Swimming Society is responsible for much of the popularity of this pastime, with an inspiring and useful website as well as a Facebook page with nearly 88,000 followers. There are wild swimming groups near me—Olympia Wild Swimming and Western Washington Open Water Swimmers among others—with regular swims in Puget Sound and local lakes.

We all seem to agree that full immersion in really cold water is good for our health, well-being, and sense of camaraderie, especially during the pandemic. It’s easy to stay at least 6 feet apart from fellow swimmers—though masks really don’t work. For some, neoprene covers every inch of their body except the face. I don’t think the CDC has issued any guidance on the efficacy of wet masks. Yet.

For the past several years, I’ve also been talking about writing a book on lake swimming in Washington—a combination of natural history and personal narrative. But, surprise! There are many wild swimmers out there with stories to tell as well. In fact, there are so many books on wild swimming that an unofficial genre has emerged: the swimoir. Here’s a list of a few new titles.

Just some of the wonderful already published books—non-fiction, guides, and “swimoirs” on wild swimming. (Photo by M.M Ruth)

As a reader, this is fantastic! As a writer, this is a problem. It makes me wonder what there is left to say. It makes me doubt the world (or the world of niche of readers) needs another book on wild swimming. It makes me question my purpose for writing such book. It adds more pressure to write something that justifies the resources and risks associated with publishing, marketing, and selling it. These questions should always be asked, over and over, before and during a writing project.

One of the main goals in mind for my previous books—A Sideways Look at Clouds and Rare Bird—was to connect my reader more deeply to the natural world and to draw attention to overlooked natural wonders (clouds and an endangered seabird known as the marbled murrelet, and to inspire my readers to learn about and protect some part of the natural world that spoke to them. The goal for a book on lake swimming in Washington is essentially the same: to connect people to the lakes and rivers we typically just walk around, hike to, picnic near, or cross over but never dip a toe in. Seems like I should have finished that book by now, right? (The answer is yes). But, when when I wrote my books on clouds and the marbled murrelet, I didn’t have to reset or re-evaluate every six months when a new cloud book or murrelet book was published. Because none were published. Wild swimming is a different beast. And, the mightiest of beasts so far is the extraordinary lovely little 2020 chapbook by Alexis Wolf called Body of Water.

Body of Water by Alexis Wolf finds its perfect form as a chapbook—”smaller and simpler by design.”

A chapbook is a small paperback book or pamphlet—a perfect format for poems or short essays. The essays in Body of Water are as pure, refreshing, and brief as at the perfect cold-water swim. This chapbook, published in 2020 by Two Plums Press in Portland, is just 81 pages long—but several fewer pages of actual writing thanks to front matter and actual blank pages. Such restraint! Such a suitable format for Wolf’s spare, precise, evocative writing about her experiences swimming in lakes and rivers near her former home in Seattle and new home in England. I do not know if Alexis Wolf aimed to write a 200-page book and then shrunk it down or preferred not to publish her essays in literary magazines or as blogs. But I sense that Body of Water is exactly as long as she wanted it to be—not one word more, not one word less. Wolf’s essays are brief and, like a real-life swim, the effects continue to ripple long after your immersion in and emergence from each.

And now, a new year to navigate the ripples and waves—literal and figurative—in a changing world where the need for true words and meaningful actions has never been greater. Onward!

Body of Water is available through Two Plums Press. Learn more about Alexis Wolf on her website.

The Original Wild Swimmers

What happens when you join other writers and communicators at the Bayshore Preserve to experience the peak of the chum salmon run is that you find yourself, strangely, at a loss for words.

At least this is what happened to me while standing on the banks of Johns Creek staring down into the shallow water watching fish after fish after fish swim upstream to spawn. 

Being at a loss for words as such a time has its benefits. If you’re not chatting or asking questions, you can close your eyes and listen for the chum, which are sometimes hard to see unless their dorsal fins rise above the surface like a shark’s in the ocean. With your eyes closed, you can hear the difference in the sound of the splash of the creek flowing downstream and the thrash of the salmon heading upstream. The sound of a wild fish—its tail driving its whole body against the current—is distinctive. When you hear it, you open your eyes and look for the fish slicing through the water in an energetic burst that lasts mere seconds.

Listen carefully. (Video by M.M Ruth)

Being at a loss for words means you can stand, awestruck and amazed, taking in the sheer improbability and significant risk of such a long and difficult migration from the open water of the Pacific Ocean, through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and through the labyrinth of inlets and passages to reach Johns Creek. 

It’s thanks to the Capitol Land Trust that the public can reach Johns Creek, too. The Capitol Land Trust (CLT) purchased the 74-acre property on the western shore of Oakland Bay just three miles northwest of Shelton in 2014. Most of the property was a golf course back then, but slowly the fairways and putting greens are returning to native habitat through painstaking restoration efforts that also includes creating new tidal channels.

The annual chum salmon run drew many visitors to the edges of Johns Creek this fall, but the Bayshore Preserve offers delights and discoveries year round. Now--as we slouch toward the winter solstice and deck our halls with twinkling lights and flickering candles--is the perfect time to walk the preserve’s trails. Now is the perfect time for a quiet ramble to observe the subtler spectacles of nature—the grand profiles of the bare Oregon oaks, evergreen Douglas-firs, and bright-barked madrones; the newly planted oaks; the shorebirds and harbor seals; the eagles, hawks, heron, and gulls. 

Gulls festing on salmon in Johns Creek (photo by M.M. Ruth)

The preserve includes 27 acres of salt marsh habitat described by CLT as “pristine.” Indeed, when you follow the trails through the preserve and look out over the Oakland Bay marshlands, you may feel as I did that you are in a real place, an original piece of Puget Sound, a living landscape untouched by anything but water, wildlife, trees, clouds, wind, and tides. 

The Bayshore Preserve is open dawn to dusk year round. For directions and for more information on the preserve, visit https://capitollandtrust.org/conserved-lands/conservation-areas/oakland-bay-goldsborough-creek-watershed/bayshore-preserve/

It's the Water. Just Water.

The Summer of ‘21 was a good one for wild swimming. After two years of swimming in lakes whenever I could, I’ve finally broken down the barrier of “it’ll be too cold.” No lake or river was too cold for me this summer—perhaps because I’ve disassociated pain with cold, or because I have learned just how long to stay in before I get too cold, or because I am okay with a 30 second “swim” involving a wool hat and jogging in place afterward.

Beyond getting acclimated/habituated to the cold water, I have started to crave it. I still kinda dread it, but that’s a very small part of the whole experience.

I’ve swum in many new lakes and rivers in Maine, Vermont, and Washington this summer. All very cold and very wonderful in different ways. It was during a swim this summer in my local lake that I felt overwhelming gratitude for being in the water. It occurred to me as I was swimming under water that I was experiencing just one thing: The water. Just water. It was all I could feel, see, and hear. One thing.

The lake is too deep to see to the bottom so I was just looking into water and more water. With my head underwater, there was little sound but the splashing sounds I made. I was surrounded by one thing. I was moving through one thing. I was struck that this experience felt unusual. When was the last time I was completely enveloped in one thing? Even coming up for air exposed me to hundreds of things all at once—things I was lucky enough to experience, such as other people on the lake, the trees, the homes, the docks, the ducks, the boats, the boat ramp, the sky, and—of course the clouds. But I didn’t want to think about them just then. i was tired of thinking and processing.

Cold-water swimmers talk and write about the boost in mental clarity they often experience after a swim—one of the many benefits of this increasingly popular pastime. I think they are describing the after-effect of the swim, when your circulation is restored and “fresh” blood is pumping into your brain. I have certainly felt this—from feeling really awake to positively euphoric. I had not until my underwater swim wondered about the benefit of experience just one thing. Full immersion in the lake—even for a few minutes— felt like the perfect antidote to the “busy” mind, to multi-tasking, to a day of sensory overload, a day of too many screens and too many images. Meditation will also quell a busy mind but I am not practiced enough to have meditation feel like a very welcome sensory-deprivation tank.

For those readers who are wild swimmers or lap swimmers, may I recommend a few stretches of swimming underwater? Just a few breast-stroke/frog kicks through the water with no goal in mind except to experience the simple and extraordinary pleasure of one thing.