Shivering joy, blue minds, and a very scenic sauna
Little swim stories (swimgnettes?) that are drops in the ocean.
If you don’t already subscribe to Nick Cave’s newsletter The Red Hand Files, where he answers readers’ questions and ruminates on life, I highly recommend doing so. He recently responded to the question ‘What makes you happy?’ with – you guessed it – a celebration of wild swimming. He describes it beautifully, and of course, being Nick Cave, with great intensity:
“When I am in London, I wake up early, walk through the woods with some other wild swimmers, and jump into the lake. During winter, with water temperatures dropping to freezing, this is nothing less than a catastrophic outrage to the nervous system and an excruciatingly intimate engagement with one’s mortality. This encounter obliterates all anger and worldly woes… This sense of delight, this shivering joy, will remain with us as we go about our day.”
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Speaking of writers and water lovers, this week brought the very sad news that Wallace J Nichols has passed away at just 56 years old. Nichols was a marine biologist, author and ocean advocate who wrote the 2014 book Blue Mind: How Water Makes You Happier, More Connected and Better at What You Do. I just found this reluctantly positive review of the book from The Guardian, which is worth a read in itself (that final paragraph! Whoa).
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I always enjoy new swimming experiences, whether they’re part of a major event such as an overseas swim camp (sorry, I’ll stop talking about it!) or a more local one, such as night swimming. Well, last week’s new experience involved a mobile sauna. A Wellington-based business called Scenic Saunas transports its portable sauna to various beaches over the winter months and offers bookings, $30 for 1.5 hours, with a maximum of 10 people at a time. The idea is, you ‘glow’ in the wooden hut for a while and then run outside into the cold water. It had been frosty overnight and the weather was sunny and still, with a calm, glossy sea that according to my friend’s thermometer was 12.5°C at midday. It was the perfect reintroduction to cold(er) water after being in Queensland. I’d never tried the whole sauna/cold plunge thing and now understand why it’s so popular. I’m not completely au fait with the physiological stuff, but I think you sweat out toxins and then get the cold rush. I’d assumed 1.5 hours would be much longer than required since I generally don’t enjoy saunas – why be hot when you can be cold, right? – but I ended up staying for the whole thing. The excellent weather undoubtedly helped but it was also fun chatting to people in the sauna and then running back and forth into the sea. I think we did that 4 or 5 times. Five stars!
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Funny how things come back around (in a nice way) when you’re not expecting it. A year ago, a friend of a friend was visiting New Zealand. We got chatting about sea swimming and I sent her a message saying if she wanted a swim buddy while in town, I was happy to oblige. I never heard back and assumed she was busy/didn’t want to, then forgot all about it. Last week, more than a year after my message, she replied! Here’s part of her reply, which I’m sharing without identifying details:
“[Dear Shona], this is an email I loved receiving and held in my inbox until today - more than a year later!
It meant a huge amount to be invited to swim in the clear cold with you … I'm sorry I didn't reply - please know I wanted to.
While we didn't get to hang out and swim together, I did - on the basis of this invitation - dip my toes in … It was a still, fresh day, and I remember it with deep joy.
I hope life is treating you well and that you'll say hi to the horizons of the moana for me.”
Isn’t that lovely? And it just goes to show, it’s never too late to reply to an email.
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Yesterday morning I tried out a new pool swim squad. Even though I’m pretty used to swim squads by now – they’re basically an hour of drills and laps – I still felt nervous because it was (mostly) new people and a different coach. The squad is held twice a week at Freyberg Pool which is 33.3 metres long, a slightly weird measurement but that’s because it’s an old pool, by NZ standards at least, and was built in the 1960s before NZ introduced the metric system in … (quickly googling) … 1976. It’s the pool I first taught myself to swim in as a four-year-old (doggy paddle) and I remember being proud that I could swim up and down the long lane. I was less proud of getting my head caught in the stair railing, but that’s a story for another time.
The pool is right next to the beach and so after the lesson a bunch of us went for a cold dip. That did it; I was sold and have signed up for next term.
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Listening to: the ‘Swimming the English Channel’ episodes of the Bizarre with Mick Molloy and Titus O’Reily podcast which are a wonderfully thorough and entertaining summary of all the mad and marvellous channel swims over the past 100+ years (it’s a four-parter, so start with Part One and let me know if you need links to the rest). Shared by Irene, a swim buddy.
Feeling inspired by: the TV segment on the 90+ year-old men breaking a record for a swimming relay. That’ll be me in the 2070s. (Another link shared by Irene!)
Definitely not watching: the shark in the Seine movie on Netflix. It’s meant to be quite good but I just won’t watch shark-in-water fictional things. Personal choice, though :-)