Just Swim

I leave at about 10:45. Skies are mostly sunny here in my Capo Beach neighborhood just east of the freeway. There is just a bit more cloud cover over the beach but it is thin and wispy and the general setting still feels bright enough. There is just a little ruffle on the water that I notice as I pass Doheny and also when I get to the Strand parking lot. It feels a little cooler out than my last couple of swims and I’m happy for my overshirt.

It is approaching a 5.2 high tide when I get to the beach. I ponder taking the above rock trail but opt for the shore figuring I can probably make it without drenching my pack. Surf is pretty meager but these 2-3 feet waves break right on the rocky beach (there basically is no sand) spitting cobblestone sized projectiles. I need to pause several times before I get to my spot. It looks like the beach may have come up a couple feet but this feels like a very inexact measurement to say the least.

I scramble up a couple feet of rock to find a dry spot for my pack and I spot this really cool looking shell. I stash it away with the intent to bring it home after the swim. A small group of surfers are walking along the trail just above me. I stash my shirts and grab my goggles and then wait for the next few waves to break and do their thing. A brief window of opportunity presents itself and I hurry into the water. In just a jew steps I am well up to my shoulders and I’m off.

The coldness of the water does not necessarily startle me like it once would have and I find it relatively easy to make the initial plunge. However it does kind of take the breath out of me. I place all of my focus on my breath and will myself forward knowing this is just a transitory state I need to work through until my body settles and finds equilibrium.

I head south and the thought occurs to me that with the high tide there really is no good exit point here until I reach the far end of the beach. This is not a new situation at all but with this cold water everything feels more stressful. As the swim draws on, it seems like it could be easy to let my mind slip into a groove of panic thinking, “oh my god oh my god I am going to die in this cold.” I grab hold of my breath, of the rhythm of my lungs and my head turning on the water’s surface. I anchor myself in the actual sensation of the water and not the imagined affect. This water becomes a mirror of my own anxious thought patterns. If I can just still the anxiety then the water becomes much more benign.

I am trying to connect with something larger than myself in this water. I find this to be a yearning that comes naturally here. Is it that I am trying to connect or am I trying to grasp the connection that I undeniably have. Outside of the water I struggle with God or should I say I struggle with how I imagine God to be. So many in this world have their own set of images and ideas when it comes to that sort of thing. Some hold these images and ideas loosely and others cling tight and demand that everyone else see and think the same thing that they do. It is this second group that disturbs me greatly. I look at their god and their overall theology and I just see a cartoon that I can’t believe - or want to.

Here in the ocean it is so very different. I just see what sits right in front of me and I am filled with awe. Here there is no cosmology to paint because its colors splash right in my face again and again and again. There is no coolaid to drink or none to reach for because I just open my mouth and I am drinking from the cup of the ocean. I have to wonder just how much of this salt water I consume in a single swim.

My breath and this water is all I really have and need for this one solitary hour. They sustain me and all the while the later holds the power to crush me. They don’t demand that I hold unmovable opinions about events purported to occur thousands of years ago. It’s enough to just swim in the water. Just swim. I offer my fear to my breath again and again and again. I put one arm in front of the other and then the next and the next and the next.

Soon I inevitably reach the shore and arrive at my pack. In spite of the whirlwinds blowing in my mind, nothing seems to have moved right here. And look! There is that shell still sitting here. I love it.