The Gravity of the Ocean
Yet another beautiful day in Dana Point. They just keep coming. We truly are on a run here. Let’s keep it up. Maybe eventually the water will get warmer. Well the Camp Pendleton buoys are now at 55. Oceanside remains at 55 and San Pedro just can’t seem to rise above 54 just yet. We’ll get there. I feel like I’m at the point where if someone told me, “I’m sorry but due to budgetary constraints, there will be no warm water this summer,” I would be disappointed but not devastated.
I feel like I have reached a new level of acclimatization to the cold this year. In that last 20 to 30 minutes of the swim as the cold creeps in further and further, it lacks the existential grimness it once had for me.
Today as I drive to the beach and I’m cruising alongside southern Doheny on Coast Highway, the water looks so smooth and the waves are so small, it’s like a lake. A beautiful, infinite lake. I’m looking around to see if I can find any clouds and there are none.
When I get to the Strand and am walking down the stairs, I can smell the flowers that grow along the path and it is delightful. I listen to the waves and the sound of the footsteps of the others heading down to the beach. We are all like flies heading into the light. We can’t control ourselves and yield to the gravity of the ocean.
The beach looks pretty much just as I left it yesterday. The tide is lowish and the surf is small on the water. Today the tide is not quite as low and the surf is smaller but it’s pretty darn close. I’d say the water temperature feels exactly the same. I put my feet in and they begin to ache in just a few seconds. I just can’t imagine putting my whole body into this water, but I know that is exactly what I am going to do. Sometimes we can do the very thing we could not imagine we could have done just seconds before.
I walk out into the shallows and the waves are breaking but they are just gentle little one footers. Soon I have walked past where they are breaking and I’m hardly up to my belly. Can I really bring myself to just start swimming? I wish a big wave would come and break right on me and do for me what feels so hard to do for myself right now. Then somehow I muster the will to launch forward and I’m totally immersed. It’s not nearly the horribleness I had thought it would be. It feels so very normal. This is just the feeling that comes when you dip into the water.
Like yesterday, I just don’t experience much of a cold shock. My arms and jaw are buzzing but my energy remains at full capacity. I head south along this beautiful beach.
The swim today is pretty uneventful. No birds or dolphins though I’m sure there are birds and dolphins here. I do see normal fish for the first time in many weeks. I can’t tell what kind they are. They are dark colored and remain close to the ocean floor near an outcropping of kelp. The southern end of the beach is not as shallow than the last few swims probably because I’m not swimming in such low tide today. I do swim just a little further south to get closer to the cliff which is completely safe given today’s low surf. There is a fairly significant southern hemi swell coming in a couple days which is one reason why I am swimming for the fourth day in a row today to get as much of these great swim conditions as I can.
The swim north has it’s colder and warmer (or not so cold) spots. There are a couple moments where I wonder if I should cut the swim short but feel like I’m doing well enough to put in the full hour (or hour and 10 minutes to be more precise). The cold sometimes feels like it is all there is around me. There is just coldness and only coldness. However like I said before, it has lost the angst it has had on previous swims. Maybe my “set point” has just wandered. I simply do not expect otherwise of the water. Don’t get me wrong. This can be challenging and difficult, but I didn’t come out here to get comfortable. Sometimes we have to get uncomfortable in order to have an experience that will impact us well beyond the time bounds of the experience itself. Also being uncomfortable does not have to be the same thing as miserable. One can be terribly uncomfortable and spiritually/psychologically ecstatic at the same time.
Throughout the final ten minutes of the swim, I am traveling in and out of kelp. The light shines on it and brings out all sorts of reds, browns and oranges. I swim through tangled mass after tangled mass and into expansive sandy white bottoms. In these last few minutes, I really don’t care how cold it gets. I’m almost done and will be dry and warm soon enough.
