Why I Swim When Everything Is on Fire

Swimming can be a temporary relief from anguish and anxiety. It's a short respite from the 1000 tabs open at your job, in your brain, or in your soul. Some people find swimming to be a great way to regulate their emotions by becoming tired enough feel grounded again, or becoming too tired to feel anything. Others leave their watering hole motivated and inspired.

For me, it's a mix of calm and fatigue. My thoughts gain clarity during distance workouts, and my mind goes blank during high intensity workouts. I leave tired enough to have just enough peace and patience to make it until my next chance at communion with the water. In open water, I find myself unable to focus on my to-do list or problems outside of the water, mostly because I'm too worried about what the thing touching my foot could be, or trying to do swimmer math to calculate how far I've swum against the current if I haven't moved in the last 10 minutes).

Selkie Sam glides through calm open water in the Columbia River at dawn.

Swimming in open water is pretty different from doing laps in a pool. Managing changing environment, like waves, changing temperatures, and currents, means you need to stay alert and ready to adapt. Battling the environment can help too, by getting some endorphins going and getting lost in the "loud quiet" of hearing nothing but moving water around you.

The Disconnection

My spouse and I both have family members in war-torn countries overseas. We live in a city where our neighbors are being followed, terrorized, and disappeared daily. We've watched federal agents murder people simply for trying to speak out against injustice. Each day, I wake up to another headline in what's continuing to devolve further into a horrific dystopia that no one can escape from... not even Greenland.

Swimming has offered me opportunities to disconnect from reality. I've joked with my spouse that if we have to run for our lives, we could try to use a waterway, given our swimming abilities... we have might enough Quackpackers in stock that we could try to make a floating raft to escape and just float off into the sunset.

Jokes aside, it is absolutely bananas that I'm still trying to run a business. It seems to superfluous with so much violence and crime against our communities. For the past few weeks, I haven't been able to bring myself to even send an email that might divert attention from the headlines - how can I suggest that you should purchase a duck instead of contributing to a community organization or legal defense fund?

But, some days, there are little glimmers of hope and levity. Recently, a family walked up to me on the beach after seeing Sam swimming with a flamingo that said it had been the highlight of their day to see something so cute and bright. I've had swimmers tell me they'd lose their minds if they didn't swim. And, what am I going to contribute to my community if my livelihood continues to be tied up in all the inflatables we have stored?

Swimming gives me a little chance to disconnect, and make everything happening in day-to-day life a problem for when future me gets out of the water. Seeing friends and commiserating in the water and helping Sam plan their ice mile attempt gives me a short respite from feeling helpless against an overfunded, undertrained, and illegally operating group of thugs intent on inflicting immeasurable pain without recourse.

All this to say, I swim to find a little peace right now. If you do too, and you want to use one of my tow floats while you're swimming, I'm over the moon about it. If you're struggling to function in this dystopian nightmare, maybe swimming will help you breathe a little easier for a little while (even when you're huffing and puffing from a hard workout). If you're white-knuckling it, maybe getting in for a dip will help you relax so you have the strength to white-knuckle it some more.

Footnotes: Finding a Little Joy

In case you need an inspiring story that shows how swimming can bring together a community, I highly recommend Sian's story of starting cold swimming that has both delighted and horrified passersby: