An early May dip in Lake Temiskaming...just days after the ice had just melted.

I've been thinking a lot about learning to swim lately. In part because I've started taking my seven month old son to swimming lessons (where we chase after purple boats and he practices his signature inchworm kick) and partly because when I swim on Saturdays, there's a boy who practices his dives and straight armed front crawl with a tenacity I haven't seen in such a young person. He swims for nearly a full hour, back and forth and back and forth. It's so inspiring.

I floated tonight, in one of those sensory deprivation tanks

It was the first time my neck—
all knotted up and sharing the weight on my shoulders—
has ever really let go

Maybe
if I go again
if I keep floating…
maybe my heart—
all locked up and covered in armour—
maybe eventually it'll let go too





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Illustration by Belhoula Amir, another piece of swimming art that I love.

It turns out, I have a water baby, which isn't surprising, given water has always been an underlying theme to his dad and I being together, he was born a Pisces, and loved swimming, even in utero. But the half hour of chlorinated, overheated indoor swimming a week isn't nearly enough. 
And so, we read about swimming, about water, whenever we can.

Our current favourites:



Swimming Swimming, illustrated by Gary Clement

We all know the song (sorry, you'll now be singing it under your breath for days!) but this illustrated version is so wonderful. It captures the excitement of heading to the pool, complete with putting your bag in a locker, and taking a pre-dip shower. And then as the song begins, it becomes a Where's Waldo-esque swimming pool. The "fancy diving too" page really is the best!

I love the little boy has spaghetti and meatballs, and feeds his fish after a long afternoon in the pool.

Why howl at the moon, when you can howl in the pool!

And the same could be said for all other bodies of water as well, such as ponds, rivers, lakes, oceans, creeks… you get the picture!

I’ve been working on a list of pools of water I would love to explore this year, that are somewhat close to home… home being Ontario. I’m also researching my dream destinations like Iceland, Chile and France, I’m just not sure I can get to all these places in one year. But who knows, never say never right?! It’s always good to have goals.

But until then here is my mini list of close-ish to home, bodies of water I would like to howl in next year:

1. The Centennial Aquatic Centre in Collingwood. I think I can get to this pool before this year is up. Look at this place… are the doors raised in the summer? Is this place for real? It looks awesome. How have I not been here yet!

2. Digging the look of the Grand River Conservation area outdoor pool! This one shall have to wait till next summer though.

3. The Elora Quarry was suggested to me by a good friend. Looks outstanding. Definitely road trip worthy! See you in July!

4. Going to try go to Tobermory and get my Grotto on again, because it’s ridiculously beautiful, and turquoise water. TURQUOISE WATER!

5. The Varsity Pool, at UofT in Toronto. Can I even get into this pool? Probably not, I’m not a student… but I’ve always wanted to try swimming here, or at least in the Benson Pool; The smaller younger sister to the Varsity.

I would love any road trip worthy suggestions as well! Any best kept secrets, or sublime swimming holes you would like to share, please howl them at me!

It's a bit too chilly to be swimming in swimming holes these days, the outdoor pools are closed, so the next best thing is reading about swimming!

Some of my favourite watery reads:

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton
This is everything I've always wanted in a book about swimming. There's a narrative that propels the book -- the author, Leanne Shapton's long-time relationship to swimming, from her younger years training for the Olympic swim trials, to her work now. 

Giving a fascinating glimpse into the private realms of swimming, and drawing, Shapton tells an intimate story of suburban adolescence, family ties, and the solitary underwater moments that now ground her artistic habits.

Theres's also an illustration of all of the pools she's swam in and it is the most perfect thing I've ever seen.

Great interview here!



Arguments with the Lake by Tanis Rideout

I am in love with Marilyn Bell, so when I heard about Tanis Rideout's poetry collection about Bell (who at 16 was the first person to swim across Lake Ontario) and her rival, Shirley Campbell, who fell short in her attempt to cross the lake, I knew I'd be a fan. Rideout deftly weaves the lives of these two swimmers together. It makes me want to jump in Lake Ontario (minus the moray eels, thank you...)



The Swim Team by Miranda July (in the collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You)
It's not a book, but it's one of the most perfect short stories I've ever heard (on the radio the other afternoon). In the story, the narrator invites a group of retirees to her apartment for swimming lessons. There is no pool, but instead, the students lying down on the kitchen floor, their faces immersed in bowls of water. 

There's a short film made of the story, but I haven't watched it as the image of elderly folk practising their dives into a bed are too perfect to mar with external visuals.

#theswimmingbook (title forthcoming) by Lisa Congdon
This book isn't out yet, but based on the illustrations Lisa Congdon has posted on her Instagram feed and blog, it is already one of my favourites! It will be comprised of essays, art, profiles of swimmers (Lisa put out an all-call awhile back!), photographs, vintage swimming stuff, hand lettered quotes and history!


Some more swim-lit over at the 49th Shelf!

The colour of water. We have pencil crayons and paint chips named after it.

We admire it when we arrive and praise it for being "that" colour — that colour being determined by your geography. Mediterranean Blue might be your favourite blue in all the world while you are in Santorini, but then forgotten and overshadowed by Caribbean Blue when you are swimming in it in Aruba.

We marvel when it mirrors and absorbs all of the colours of a sky and its surroundings. Sometimes it's a peacock sky with puffy white clouds suspended. Other times it's a quilt of stunning sunset pink.

In our mind's eye, water is a colour.

But isn't it crazy that no matter what landscape you're in... when you pick it up in your hand, the colour of water is always the same. There is no pencil crayon called "Clear".

And then I wonder, if I am made of 75% water as told in science class and countless issues of Shape magazine... what colour am I?

Swim Rituals: The Length Swim

1. Prepare swim bag:
    -Towel rolled up with suit, goggles and swim cap inside.
    -Flip flops loose, a glimpse of summer at the bottom of the bag.

2. Carry enough change to pay for swim and two quarters; One for locker and one for if you mess up, and lock up too soon.

3. On the road to water, listen to music. Something that unfolds your heart.
*This week I chose Neil Young’s Harvest Moon.

4. Change into swim gear… this can get precarious.
*I have a thing about my bare feet touching the floor of change rooms and have developed a silly shoe balancing act that happens, during the switch between street shoes to flip flops and vise versa. It’s usually no big deal till snow boot season.

5. Braid hair, tuck into cap… transform into the swimmer.

6. Shower.

7. Stretch.

8. And then tiny steps—almost a dance that only you can see—towards the pool and in you go.

9. Goggles on.

10. First length, always begins with a long long push off… so you can savor that initial glance of the pool underwater. The beautiful quiet hidden world of tiles and shadowy blues, and the sudden wish for gills and fins. Enjoy the rush of nostalgia that follows you, carrying with it all the underwater worlds you have known before. Of sunshine and floaties, of swimming lessons and splash fights, of water gymnastics and mermaid impressions… watch all of those things streaming beside you… and then a small dolphin kick and off into front crawl.

11. Swim until you cannot swim anymore. Rotate strokes. Use a flutter board and pull buoy.

12. Try to keep count.

13. End with one last length of crawl… a final flutter.

14. Hit the showers.

15. Release yourself from your swim cap and goggles.

16. Deal with the disaster that is your hair later.

17. Dry off and change into street clothes.

18. Roll the swimmer up into your towel.

19. Head home, this time with a song that can play along with the waves imprinted and ingrained into your skin.

20. And of course repeat. Always repeat.
 
Oh and don’t forget to hang up your swim suit!


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My current top three pools for length swim:
1. Ryerson Recreational and Athletic Centre Pool 
2. Joseph J. Piccininni Community Centre  Pool
3. The Lindsay Aquatorium, now known as the Lindsay Recreation Complex.

I'm not sure there's anything sadder than the sight of an empty pool, especially when the nearby indoor pools are closed for maintenance. My body misses being buoyant and my arms miss the exhaustion and my lungs are tired of breathing through air and not through water and my legs miss the muted thunk, thunk, splash.

Soon, I tell myself, my hair will be knotted with chlorine again, and soon, though not nearly soon enough, I will be swimming outside again.

I grew up close to Lake Ontario, but my childhood swimming always took place in public pools, northern lakes and the occasional backyard pool. So when I moved to Roncesvalles, a few blocks and a bridge north of the lake, with no pools with early morning length swims nearby, I decided it was time to jump in.

There was a pilot project that summer, where the curve of lake at Sunnyside was cordoned off and cleaned with UV light. I didn't look into the science, I just believed the sign and biked down at 7am every morning in June, left my trackpants and my towel in the sand and swam.

It was so cold. Colder than any swim I've had in a long time, but I was determined to swim before heading into work.

The water was thick and sludgy, and weeds trailed along my arms. (I still shudder thinking about the weeds). But I swam, trying not to swallow any water, pretending I wasn't as cold as I was, back and forth along the rope, channelling my inner Marilyn Bell. She was 16 -- I was 30 and I was just swimming back and forth, not across the entire lake!

I would bike home shivering, picking up coffee smelling like lake water. It would take at least 45 minutes in the hottest shower to keep my teeth from chattering for the rest of the morning.

But I swam in the lake as the sun cleared the highway, alone, in a small section of this huge lake, that looked sometimes like the ocean.



(Then I went to Nebraska and swam in a quarry that was not quite as cold, and when I came back to Toronto, the geese had taken over the cordoned off area at Sunnyside and the E. Coli levels were through the roof. That was the end of my Sunnyside swims, though it remains the perfect place for rocktails...)

I will always remember the day as a wee Wills Kid that I was walking along some beach with my dad, and we came upon a man who was patiently building the most BEAUTIFUL sandcastle I had ever seen.

He didn't have a bright yellow shovel, or a pail either.

He just had a hole, dug in the sand close enough to the water to collect the occasional wave, and not so close that a wave would undo his last 3 minutes of genius. Risky business, this style of architecture.

His castle looked like sugar.

Like a Cambodian jungle artifact.

Like the headdress for the most glamourous of Hindu goddesses.

Like a pile of weird sausages.

I loved it so much, his drip castle. He showed me how to do it.

And ever since then, whenever I find myself on a sandy beach walk, I'll stop-drop-and-drip. Sometimes I might quickly hijack someone else's left-overs (an exquisite corpse), and sometimes, if I'm by myself and there's no one around, I'll start from scratch, breathing in the sea air, and listening to the applause of the waves.

I have a fear of seaweed. It’s ridiculous and enduring.

The idea of stepping into water and sinking into a tangled mess of slimy and ropy weeds, is always on my mind when I approach a new swimming hole.

I was once thrown into a pond at a house party, on a back road somewhere in Grey County. I remember before I met my sopping wet fate, staring at a thick carpet of seaweed just below the pond’s surface, and shuddering… and the next thing I knew, I was falling back first, into that very cradle of watery green fingers. I was so terrified, I literally projected back out of the water like a possessed being, straight into my dads arms, frozen in the position I fell in, with a nose bleed… I kid you not!

But for one summer, I conquered my fear of weeds, all thanks to a wonderful friend, her front pond and some swim goggles. My dear friend Tarryn, had a pond in her front yard, that we spent pretty much every swimmable day in over the summer. It was almost the perfect pond… except for the seaweed, which was obviously a wee bit of a problem for me. Getting in and out without touching it— impossible! Finally, after what was probably an absurd scene of me flailing and thrashing about in the shallow end, Tarryn told me I had to get over my seaweed phobia, and suggested I put on some goggles, explore the bottom, and really see that there was nothing to fear. No creatures, no monsters, and no weird shark like bugs waiting to tear me to shreds.

And so I did it. I spent an afternoon, diving down and examining my sepia toned enemy and sure enough I discovered… it WAS beautiful! A secret world of submerged minty lace and flora, peacefully dancing between sunken sunbeams. I did see fish and bugs fluttering through the spongy universe— not my favorite part— but none had dinosaur teeth… so that was reassuring. And just like that for the rest of the summer, I didn’t care. I could walk in without goose bumps and crippling dread. It was amazing!

Sadly it did not last. My aversion has returned, probably because now I reside in the city where most of my daily swimming haunts are weed free pools and I’m no longer exposed to the grassy underwater world of yesteryear.

But thankfully, on the occasions when I do come face to face with a really tangled up ol' water hole, I need just a minute to remember Tarryn’s training, and that beyond my trembling imagination, there is also a beautiful world waiting for me, deep down at the bottom.

Unless of course there are sea creatures with dinosaur teeth… then I’m definitely not going in.

We had a cottage growing up, where we would spend the entire summer, swimming out to the raft, catching minnows and and watching I Love Lucy reruns on the rainy days, and swimming anyway. But it meant I didn't go to camp until I was 17.

I showed up at Camp Tanamakoon in Algonquin Park with my requisite green clothes (the uniform for counsellors) and was assigned cabins filled with kids just a year younger than I was (!)

The best part about camp, other than the stars, the Northern lights, the canoe trips and the few brilliant friends I made, was the lake. My cabin was right on the water and I was on swim staff -- spending my days standing on the dock, teaching swimming, swimming The Triangle during rest hour and planning elaborate Bronze Medallion rescues that involved blood (jam!), vomit (oatmeal) and broken bones (driftwood!)

I did morning dips before the flag raising with any campers who were game and every day at 4pm, we would have "swim biscuits" -- peanut butter sandwiched between Saltines to tide swimmers over till the dinner bell rang. Brilliant for anyone who knows that deep post-swim hunger!

Peanut butter and crackers is still one of my favourite post-swim snacks.