What the Heck is Stinging Me?

I left the house at 9:30 this morning after decadently sleeping in a little past 6. It’s a beautiful morning.

As I am walking my dog in our local park before leaving, I see a fog bank out on the horizon and looming out past Dana Point. However, checking the web cams, it looks like it is clear at Strands and Salt Creek. The fog looks like it is worst south of the Doheny river mouth.

When I get to the parking lot, I can see the fog out in the distance far offshore.

When I get to the beach, the tide is high. It is receding now from a deep 7 foot high. One of the local television channels posted a news report earlier this week stating that king tide waves were coming. A King tide is really high tide (like over 6.5 feet) and high surf during these tides can be very destructive to some of the local beach communities. It said the surf was due in Wednesday (2 days ago). However the local surf was like 1-2 feet. There is some large surf forecasted for next week when the high tides will be in the mid 4 feet levels. I have this feeling that someone at channel 5 got overly excited and had the weeks off and thought next week’s surf was this week.

The surf is up just a bit today but it is currently drowned out by the high tide. Waves are mostly breaking right on the shore.

The water is smooth and feels about the same cold as it has for the last while.

As I am stashing my backpack on the rocks and peeling off my shirt, the usual pre plunge thoughts race through my head. “This is it! I can’t believe I am actually doing this. I am just seconds away from the cold.” As these thoughts circulate, there is a separate thread that just knows all will be better once I break the submersion barrier.

So let’s get this done.

Soon I am off and swimming. I am focusing on welcoming the cold and breathing into it with my whole self. This will not destroy me. My body will find equilibrium in a few moments. And eventually it does just that.

The water is good. About half way down the beach a flock of Pelicans flies right over me. Of coarse they are long gone by the time my camera powers up.

A bit further down I feel a stinging sensation right at about my Adam’s apple. Even now as I write this I can feel some residual discomfort. It’s not at all intense or a big deal. It causes more curiosity than pain. What the heck is stinging me? This has happened several times and there is never anything obvious that I can see around me. It must be something super small.

As is common during high tide swims, the southern third of the beach is very bumpy from wakes flowing back out to sea that receded from the shore. However, the ocean surface is smooth.

Even though I don't feel the residual warmth from the warmer sun like I did yesterday (it’s still mid 50’s in the air), I seem to be handling the cold pretty well today. I don’t feel like the water is necessarily warmer. I think my confidence is growing which brings down my inner freak out level. I like this because I don’t like freaking out.

I see several kayakers today and a fisherman on a small raft.

When I finish the swim and come into shore, a woman strikes up a conversation with me and we talk about the swims. She and her friends say they see me almost every day. We have a really nice chat. It is a bit embarrassing because it can be difficult to annunciate right after I get out of the cold water. My jaw is stiff from the cold.

Later in the shower, I reflect on how it seems that my time in the water is a sort reflection of my life outside of the water. Sometimes as I reason about why I feel the way that I feel about certain things, I grow confused and sort of disoriented because I just can’t articulate even to myself a coherent explanation. I can’t seem to understand not only the whys but the whats as well. I know I don’t like the feeling and I know I want to feel differently. It’s a vague sense of not rightness. Then I think of swimming in this ocean. I think of the feelings I have as I approach the cold water. The inner voice of fear that contradicts my experience. I think of the moments in the water after the cold creeps in and sometimes feels overwhelming. These moments overtake my mind but are also completely grounded in what I am feeling in my body. The cold can bring on a sort of confusion of why am I here and why am I doing this.

Here in the shower as I dig inside for my higher self voice for direction, I receive a very familiar response: “Just keep going.” It’s an invitation to faith. There is an “other side.” I don’t feel like I personally know how to get there or even what that other side looks like, but I want to get there. In the water, it is the same. I just have to keep swimming. I just have to keep moving forward. Every time I eventually rise from the water and walk back onto the shore on the other side. I feel great. I can’t fully explain the feeling or how it came to be. But it did come to be. I found my way. There were parts of the swim that were difficult and it seemed like the only way forward was…forward.

I feel like the same course exists out of water. I just have to keep moving forward. There will be difficult times and it will not always be clear how to make my way through. I just need to put one foot in front of the other, don’t let myself be overcome by fear and doubt and trust that I will find the other side.