I started new year 2021 as I had never done previously, with a swim at dawn.
I stole the veiled sunrise from the westernmost hidden beach of the Copper Coast. The horizon clouded up just before the Sun reached its fingers over to pull itself up though the rest of the sky was clear. I put my camera back in the car, changed on the frigid sand, my feet going from painful to numb as I entered the water, stumbled over some underwater rocks and stroked directly along the golden road of the Sun’s reflection out into cold and flat heaven.
Changing back on the beach not too long later, I did not anticipate I would be dry-docked for so long after. The spring of 2020 had been tough, this third national lockdown was tougher. For fifteen years I had averaged over a million metres per year. In 2020 that number plummeted to the lowest total ever of less than half a million, less even than a difficult year in 2016. Swimming is not just my joy, it is also my muse, my saviour, my redemption and it has long been medication to help deal with depression and anxiety. Swimming is for me the expression of Khalil Gibran’s “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked”. But the national five kilometre travel restriction limit was less than my distance to the coast.
The year spooled across January into the early Celtic spring that begins with February. I lost the horizon that I always feel behind my eyes, my own HUD, Head-Up-Display that I apply to the world. I took my swim box out of my car for some other reason, and it stayed out. No sand accumulated in the boot, no beach detritus shed from the dogs in the back seat. I lost any motivation to do what little else is possible in the prolonged spell of Irish cold and wet weather that we risibly call spring, when one can’t go anywhere, do anything.
Same here, same everywhere.
I have long realised that any creativity I have is an overspill of the sea. The ocean must first fill me up, saturate my brain and only then can I dribble the excess out of my fingers. It is a terrible thing to define yourself (even in part, even to yourself, even if such labels and definitions are supposedly unhelpful) by something you do, when you can no longer do that thing. A swimmer who cannot swim is a swammer. Being inducted into the 2021 Irish Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame for loneswimmer.com, for co-founding the Marathon Swimmer’s Federation, for co-authoring the first global rules of marathon swimming feels like hypocrisy when I am not swimming, and as a consequence not writing. But I cannot write for you if I cannot write for myself.
I rejected occasional messages to go swimming. For myself, abiding by the restrictions was the right thing to do. The various Irish media messages of “we are all in this together” is obvious nonsense but I cannot expect of others what I myself would not do. February passed.
My wife intervened, pressed increasingly forcefully in March that I swim, and so I finally acceded and dipped by myself back into the mother-sea on the same day the lunatic COVID deniers and anti-maskers and anti-Vaxxers and anti-reptilian protesters were on the streets of the capital, most without shame or consequence and of course all without logic or sense. My third attempt to swim was stopped by a Garda (Irish police) checkpoint on the road. “Where are you going, where are you coming from?” I didn’t lie, but when he said “it’s hardly an essential journey”, I think the look on my face must have put the lie to that. Not the Garda’s fault of course.
I felt worse as I returned home without swimming than if I hadn’t gone at all. An infuriating “look after your mental health during this time by focusing on the small things”, “mindful moments” messages played on the radio and I muttered to myself in bitterness “that is my small thing. But it’s my big thing also”.
You do what you can, until you no longer can, and by you, I mean me.
When I did return to swim I was suffused with that sense of rightness, of belonging, that I always feel. That the sea is my place, birth and rebirth, over and over, your fear is my happiness, my sorrow is my joy. This is my everything, and I have not been able to do it.
But unlike the return to swimming after the previous lockdown, I did not feel entirely whole. For one, my first few of trips have broken travel restrictions, something I did to want to do and had avoided for a long time. For another, I could feel the deepening of the physical effects that a year with no pool training and that a winter with almost no swimming had wrought.
I felt like a ship that had been too long in dry dock, or more appropriately, beached, as little maintenance of my vessel had occurred while I was dry. The sails of my shoulders had slackened, the sheets of my arms had loosened, and the rudders of my hands have lost motive force. The wooden keel of my core has dried out, no running or Pilates can substitute. Bizarrely (to me) I developed dry skin on my feet as I was no longer regularly immersed for long periods. And without sufficiently marinating in sea water, all the showers in the world could not make me feel clean.
I creak. My middle has expanded. For years I have wondered what a prolonged swimming absence would mean for me physically and now I have an inkling. All my previous swimming is gone. The fifteen million plus metres is gone. For years I have wondered what would be required to return from such an absence. That I am starting to learn.
It feels like a presentiment of aging, if it weren’t that everything feels that way if you think about it. For all these years I could head off to sea, hide myself in coves, caves and under cliffs away from the world. But if the water were warmer, I could not do that now. I will need to to refit my vessel before I undertake once more my sea-trials. A year will come when I cannot head for the horizon or round the Head by myself, or ever again.
But something does remain. The captain, my hard-won experience, is still at the helm. Though that captain also can get rusty. On the second day I swam, I forgot how the algae grows during the winter and I stepped outside the steps to allow space for an elderly gent about to exit the water, and immediately slipping on the outside concrete steps, my head ringing from what must have been a borderline concussion, one entire side from shoulder to ankle bruised and abraded and bleeding. I swam immediately and spent the next couple of days with a headache. Abrasions though are my version of barnacles, I would not be setting out to sea without accumulating new scars each year. Nonetheless, lessened as I am, aware as I am of that lessening, the cold water still welcomes me. I can still rotate and pull through and streamline and be at one with the ocean, shed fears and anxieties, become myself.
As I starting writing this, swim prospects seemed at best only occasional and irregular. But the five kilometer limit is now over, the temperature attained its nadir and has started to recover by a couple of degrees. Ten degrees, as every year, seems like it will be paradise when it arrives.
Bit I have enjoyed cold, getting cold and simply being cold in a way that feels, like cold always feels, like it’s new. Cold after all, is only our mortality immanentised, and that precious moment during rewarming that you pass from being slightly more cold to being slightly more warm is like a rebirth on land following the earlier oceanic rebirth.
With April, the siren call has increased, I am released from confinement and I have started, for surely it is just like starting, to put to sea and take my vessel back out, to add new barnacles to my hull, and let the wind and currents take me.
LoneSwimmer 
Thank you for this really great article and moving article. I love the line “I have enjoyed cold, getting cold and simply being cold in a way that feels, like cold always feels, like it’s new.” So beautiful and so true.
I’m 57 and just started cold-water swimming last November, and after the first few weeks of swimming in 10*C every day I was totally hooked, and a profound inner transformation in me began. Then, after my hard-earned acclimatisation, I had to go away for a month with work to a very hot place – to the Caribbean! I felt very upset about leaving my new-found love behind, a real grieving, it was strange.
After my trip, on my way home I stopped in Long Island NY to visit my daughter and was very excited about an Air BnB I had rented on the NY winter waters. The first day I arrived I jumped into Hampton Bay and swam for a minute and ran out screaming. Then after half an hour I went back in and swam for 10 minutes in bliss. I had read online it was 10*C so thought the shock was because I had been out for three weeks. But later discovered, when measuring the temperature of the water myself with a laser, that it was 2*C! But still I managed 3 very glorious, bracing, exhilarating swims there before coming back to my lake in the Netherlands, which was down to 7*C.
I was immediately back in every day, relishing the secret blessings that only we Polar Bears can understand. It’s now 5.6*C and still dropping 🙂 and I’ve begun training a young girl who has also has discovered (and become addicted to) the merciless and righteous bitter cold water heaven.
Keep swimming, and keep writing! Thank you!
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Thanks Diana. I don’t seem to have much time for writing in the last year, though of course I am still swimming. Global warming continues to make its presence felt as the water here is one to two degrees warmer than I’ve known in January, still above 8C. It’s been some years since I’ve experienced water as cold as 2C. Continued enjoyment to you!
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Thank you for your reply! I hope you keep writing as much as you can. It’s a really wonderful gift you have that we all appreciate and enjoy so much!
I’m just wondering, as Spring is approaching soon and my lovely cold lake will begin to get warmer, if increasing my swimming time as the temperature rises will bring same benefits and exhilaration as the short 10 min swim in 5*C that I’m doing daily at the moment?
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I do think Diana, that the great gift of open water swimming, is the exhilaration and sense of well being never dissipates, and is lifelong, (though once the water is very warm, above 20C, it is just not the same).
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I miss your posts. Hope you are able to swim somewhere. If is any consolation to you all, the water temperature in LI sound Ct was 78 F-yes you read that correctly. It’s terrible, but at least I am in the sea. Looking forward to swimming in November LOL
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Thanks Henry, I’ve actually had a good summer swimming, but very busy and delinquent on my writing, which I must rectify.
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In Greece everything was out of bounds. I lost 2 years of pool swimming just because there was no outdoor showers. The come back will be difficult
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Nice article, moving and inspirational. Looking forward to your next article
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Totally agree, feel your pain. I refrained in January but couldn’t resist in February and feel much better for it. Stopped once by the Guards shortly before the 5Km limit was raised so can’t complain about them doing their job. Best of luck getting your fitness back.
A
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I live too far from the sea and have missed yours. It’s good to have you back.
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I swam today in a nearby lake for the first time in months, and I thought of this piece as I searched for my goggles. First cold swim in a year. I’m rusty and out of shape but I still remember how.
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Welcome home.
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A beautiful piece that resonates with me on many levels, my joy is immersion rather than any distance of note swam. I had my long awaited 3 months plus worth of an exhale on April 12th and oh the joy to have my skin scorched with the cold and my head and heart and being rebooted. It is a homecoming. Thank you for sharing and I’m glad the box is back in the car and I wish you all the joy of the sea.
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Donal what a moving piece, such incite. There is a draw to the water that is not easy to articulate but you have really caught it, thank you. This winter has been really tough for those driving to the swimming spot and it’s been an internal struggle balancing the ‘need’ for a swim with the social responsibility.
I love the anticipation of the swim, the routine of getting ready and the mindfullness of breathing and moving through the water.
With the freedom of the county and longer days enjoy the swimming and the writing, I look forward to it.
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We missed your writing, though not as much as you have missed the sea, clearly. Always a joy to read your posts (even though this one has made me rather sad). Also, like a dip in the sea, they are invigorating and I come away feeling… better. I have also learned a new word, so now I have to find a cunning place to use it over the next month.
You are also a better man than I. Can’t speak for others, but I rather think I would have breached curfew. And I would have had few ethical hurdles to clear justifying that breach. Once I am clearly not a danger to anyone else, then a few extra kilometres isn’t making any difference. I’d choose not to make the argument that ‘others are doing it, so why can’t I’ as that is not really a good place to start. My own breaches here in Kildare have been minimal – mostly running past the 5k mark along the towpath of the canal. My running is your swimming; that’s my simple defence, your honour.
But whichever way you dice it, I’m pleased you are back where you belong. Your dry-docked ship analogy is poignant and apt; if anyone has seen a timber-built vessel out of water, they shrink, and leak like hell when they first hit the sea again.
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Here in NZ the tight lockdowns only really lasted 10-12 weeks, and really were more of a holiday for some like me. I am lucky enough to live right beside my outdoor freshwater swimming hole, which although not a permitted activity here (and just why on earth, by the way? It just isn’t worth asking) I did note that in the dark no-one can see what is going on or really cares. So I didn’t miss out at all, and actually came to appreciate the activity before breakfast.
Perhaps it depends on your sense of ‘social responsibility’ or whatever, but I just figure it it isn’t hurting anyone else and you aren’t making a song and dance about it, just do it.
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Thanks a million for a wonderful message and inspiration. I have been swimming daily all through winter and it truely is magical.
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Lucky you Declan, thank you.
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I’m glad you’re back. I missed you and your writing.
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Thanks Jude.
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Thank you . That was like a mirror.
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We’re not the only ones either Al.
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Thanks for this moving post.
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I was also moved by your commitment to obey the lockdown rules, even with the impact on your own need to swim. This pandemic is really forcing Me-vs.- Everybody-Else choices on us, and I have to keep reminding myself that most of the time the answer should be Everybody Else.
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Thank you, it feels better now that I can do some swimming again.
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Cheers Kathleeen.
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Your post moved me to tears. Thank you.
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Thanks Ni. Isak Dinesen said “The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea”!
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I read this as I sat on the steps of the beach where I swim – waiting for a friend to arrive. Thank you for sharing this beautifully honest insight into yourself and the sea and the human condition. I think it might be my favourite of all your pieces – perhaps like the sea the writing you stored came in a most powerful and majestic wave.
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Thank you Ann, very kind.
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Moving, elegant piece of writing. Thanks for sending it to me.
Sent from Pluto
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Thank you very much Richard.
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