Yes, 46 degrees Fahrenheit. This was the water temp of Munn Lake (Thurston Count, WA) on Tuesday. THis is 10 degrees cooler since my last wild swim in late October.
I feared that missing my weekly wild swim for nearly two months would have softened me up too much and turned me into a summer-only swimmer and hygge devotee. But my brain remembered that getting into very cold water was not life threatening and could even be pleasurable. So I was all in when my wild-swimming buddies and I planned a swim on the sunny day after the rainy winter solstice..
An hour before our swim, my brain began whispering a panicky ”bail out!” That’s when I knew it was time to put on my bathing suit, my layers of fleece, and my wool hat and socks. Time t o put the tea kettle on. Time to pack my towel, thermometer, dry robe, cell phone. Time to vacuum the house while singing to drown out that little voice in my head. As long as I kept my body moving, I gave myself no opportunity to stop, think twice, and cancel.
The lake was beautiful and calm and 46 degrees according to my thermometer. The air was a bit cooler though the sun and lack of wind made it feel warmer—even warm. Stripped out of our fleece and dry robes, my two friends and I waded slowly into the water in our bathing suits and wool hats. “Slowly” is key here as a “get-it-over-with” plunge can cause body shock and other problems (see risks here). My friends and I like to feel the water on our goosebumpy skin. So we don’t wear wet suits, swim socks or gloves, or other protective gear. We just slip in, stay pretty close to shore, and try to feel the water, the cold, the buoyancy. We like to loll, tread water, look around. When seabirds do this it’s called “loafing.” We also like to marvel at where we are (seabird may do this as well). And, best of all, we like to feel the warmth of the winter sun on our closed eyelids. With a bit of imagination, you can imagine that warmth radiating all over your body. We know it’s possible to confuse “warm” with “numb,” and even “warm” with “cold,” so we don’t stay in long—usually five or ten minutes in winter.
Today, I might have lasted four minutes. I have to admit my numb lower half was fine, but I put my arms in too quickly and they were not happy (aka they hurt). I retreated to the shore; my friends went out further and stayed in longer. One even put her head under (no cap!) which made her smile even bigger after her brain freeze thawed.
Once together onshore, we shared hot tea and conversation in the sun. We talked about “blue mind,” (the theory that being near water makes you happier), about the few people fishing on the lake, about the bald eagle flying over (were they nesting already?), the osprey calling nearby (was it mating season?), and very low angle of the sun, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, about the holidays and the new year.
Standing there at the edge of the lake, I thought about how we mark time these days. Early in the pandemic, we joked about “Blursday” describing the days of the week that blurred into each other as our routines were upended, our weekends lost their place, the hours we set aside for work and play became more fluid. For me, it was a novel and not so unpleasant way to experience time. But then the fall and winter presented us with new questions: how do we mark the seasons if we cannot celebrate the holidays the way we always have? Stripped of the usual transcontinental travel at Thanksgiving and Christmas, of gatherings with family and friends, of stringing up lights, of preparing feasts to share, how would I mark these holidays? What did these holidays mean when whittled down to the bare minimum? What new and perhaps more meaningful traditions could we start? There’s the rub. Traditions take time and should evolve organically and not just dropped in to keep us distracted. Which brings me to Jupiter and Saturn and a radical idea.
Our two largest planets, which are normally hundreds of millions of miles apart, have been moving closer to each other all month and have just recently overlapped in the sky. The last visible conjunction of these two planets occurred 800 years ago (in 1226). Our healthy obsession with seeing this phenomenon in the sky reminds me of the total solar eclipse of 2017 when people gathered by the thousands in and near the “totality” zone to witness this spectacular event. These distant events mark huge expanses of time and, being relatively rare, garner the attention rightly due to them. But, but, but…what about the moon and its phases? What about the tides—low, high, spring, neap, king? What about the migrating birds, the leafing trees, flowering plants, cooling lakes and frozen rivers? Knowing the timing of these and other natural phenomenon used to help us mark time across the day, months, and seasons. Can we reconnect with some of these time-honored (is that a pun?) ways of marking time? Can we feel the way time flows through us and the rest of the natural world and without being accused of “going all pagan” as we try to get in better sync with our planet?
There at the lakeshore, we celebrated the lake, the eagle, the osprey, the air, our skin, the sun. We looked fondly on the cottonwood tree—once green and fragrant, then gold, and now bare. We leave the lake warmed, connected, re-connected. With a deeper sense of place and time, we move into brighter days.
