The open water swimming year is about celebration as much as anything more nebulous. Open water swimming celebrates for us lucky participants the glory, perennial wonder and eternal attraction of the ocean (and rivers and lakes to a lesser degree) and not least its and our moods. For some it’s a sail, for others it’s…
“How long are you typically here (in Ireland) for?“, I asked as I chatted with the US customs agent at US Border Control in Dublin Airport in late April. I stared up at the official photo of the current US President on the wall. While the agent gave me the usual interrogation about my reason for traveling,…
We claim victory. Or survival. We swim out into Bone Cold water, and we claim it. Metaphorically speaking, we mark the nadir of winter at the end of February out in the water, bleeding our skin colour into the icy greyblackgreen, exchanging heat for some ludicrous sense of playing a game with the ocean, that…
“O reader, do not ask of me how I grew faint and frozen then – I cannot write it: all words would fall far short of what it was. I did not die, and I was not alive; think for yourself, if you have any wit, what I became, deprived of life and death.” – The…
“The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the Deep”. It’s occasionally struck me that in the second verse or chapter (or whatever these biblical couplets are called) Nothingness, the Void and the Deep are all co-equal. The Deep cannot exist without the Not-Deep, without its face, (nonsensical theological…
The oceans are warming. It’s a rare winter that the Atlantic here on the Copper Coast drops below six degrees anymore. It hasn’t happened since but in the bitter winter of 2009/2010, the water temperature in Tramore Bay dropped below five degrees before the end of November. I went swimming that November while snow lay on…
This post begins a new series here on Loneswimmer.com. There are certain patterns that I’ve seen repeated over the years. There are certain experiences that recur, certain thoughts that reappear, coming anew each year. Though previously experienced, all feel fresh each time, only deepened by the growing realisation that what were once first-time or rare…
LoneSwimmer 