I’ve always been a hydrophile–having a strong affinity for water, or what I like to call a “water baby”.
There is a story in my family about how I learned to swim as a two-year old in our backyard pool. One summer day, my dad was at work and I was out back with my mom, who was very pregnant with my brother (he was born two weeks early by C-section, weighing in at eleven pounds, so when I say very pregnant, imagine her five-foot-one frame swollen with that massive baby inside). I fell in the pool, and as she tells it, I had just had one hand reaching out of the water, and she’s not sure how, but she got me out. When my mom called my dad at work in an exhausted panic and said the words, “Heather drowned”, he sped home and pried me from her arms. My dad said to me then, “if you want to swim, you’re going to learn how to swim today”, and back into the pool we went.
My older cousins would later tell me tales of the terror that was watching my dad toss me in the pool and instructing no one to help me because I could, I must, swim. And I guess I did, because I spent the first ten years of life in that house and the majority of my memories take place in the pool.
According to my Aquarian horoscope, I am a Water Bearer, which I always mistook for referring to my hydrophilic affinity for water. When I looked it up, I learned that the Water Bearer is often mistakenly thought to be a Water sign. However, it's the human bearer of water that represents Aquarius, and the water itself is the "life" Aquarius brings to others. The symbol of the water bearer represents the Aquarian tendency to be focused on humanity and pour out its lofty visions of a better and brighter future for a greater community.
I’d say this is a fit, considering I created an incredibly ambitious whole animal butchery from the ground up in an effort to sustain a local food supply chain supporting small farmers. There was a time when it thrived, and then there was a time when it existed under a constant threat of failure. I gave everything I had to save my small business from the impacts of a global pandemic so it could continue to provide for my local food community. Eventually a deep, dry, feeling of burnout descended. In the lowest moments, I described myself as a dry well that I kept digging deeper to find more water.
Each summer, when I escaped to my parent’s pool, or dove into the waves of the Jersey shore, I began to feel better. I imagined that if I could just swim more regularly, it might restore me. But I never actually followed through with it.
I have the most vivid memory of this restorative feeling at the Great Lake Sacandaga1, where our good friends B+L have a house in the woods overlooking the lake. It is a special place, built by B’s grandfather on a blueberry patch of land which originally served as a camp, that has been in his family for three generations. This part of upstate New York is generally at least ten degrees cooler than Philadelphia in the summer. But despite the temperature reading, by midday as the sun shines directly overhead, it feels so hot that the lake calls to us.
One summer day, we made our way down to the lakefront to cool off. All of us waded in thigh, then waist deep, pausing to acclimate to the chilling cold water every few steps before going farther. When I made the plunge, full head under, I was pulled in, drawn to the water with an urge to swim without stopping. In the late afternoon, with the sun glinting off the lake, the uninterrupted expanse ahead of me looked so inviting. There was no confinement like the pool, no waves to challenge and interrupt me like the ocean, only water, gently rocking from the occasional wake of boats as they passed by. I just swam.
I swam breaststroke out into the middle of the water, flipped over and worked my backstroke towards the shore, angling to correct for the slight current tugging me south. I sprinted freestyle back and forth and simply floated as I stared up at the sky and let the water lightly splash my face while it sparkled all around me. Conscious of the time I had been swimming, and the fact that I was not in any notable shape with regards to my physical fitness at the time, I swam back to shore, not wanting to risk exhausting myself in the deep water.
When I returned, Brad and our friends expressed their awe, and their fears, about how far out I had gone. I couldn’t explain to them why they shouldn’t have worried. Yes, I had my eyes out for oncoming boats or jet skis, and more importantly, I just knew I wouldn’t sink.
We spent Memorial Day weekend as a group at the lake house when I was counting down the days until my hysterectomy, after which I had been instructed “no baths and no swimming for six weeks”. I had carefully planned the six week timeline to end at the commencement of family beach week at the Jersey shore, during which I would dive into the Atlantic ocean. But I feared drying out before then. And so every day that weekend I swam, trying to hydrate myself for the dryness to come. Going from the hot tub (Yes, there is also a hot tub. Thanks, B.) to the lake, and back to the hot tub again, I wore three or four different bathing suits in the same day, forever in search of a dry one.
It would later occur to me on an overwhelmingly stressful day back in Philadelphia, as I was trying to soak away my anxieties in my clawfoot bathtub, that this is hydrotherapy.
Several weeks after I finally walked away from my business2 and the closure was final, Brad and I headed to the lake house for a week-long retreat. It was June, the Great Sacandaga was warm, and the water was calling. As it had become a ritual, I swam in the lake every day on that trip. When I was finally ready to reconnect with my life back in Philly and checked my email inbox on the long drive home, I discovered that an indoor pool I had inquired about joining the previous year–so long ago I had forgotten, was writing to let me know they had a spot open. It felt like a gift from the universe.
Soon I was dreaming of open water swims, mentally calculating lake diameters, while logging my laps in a twenty-five yard pool in Center City Philadelphia. Fitness Alive it’s called, and that’s what I was doing. Swimming to bring myself back to life. I felt peaceful in the silent space underwater. I could settle into the rhythm of counting strokes, my strength and speed gaining with each swim. As my body glided through water, my mind traveled where it needed to, and yet never too far, as it must always return to the stroke count. By the end of summer, I was averaging a mile swim three to four times a week and starting to feel restored. I was finally rehydrated.
Before the season turned to Fall, I returned to the lake house alone, and spent my days outdoors alternately staring out at the lake through the trees and down at my laptop writing, working up the courage to launch this newsletter. It was peaceful, both in my head and the surroundings, with little more than the sounds of the wind blowing through tree tops and occasional birds chirping. When I went to the lake for a swim and plunged myself face first into the water, for the first time with goggles, I saw nothing but darkness below, and I got spooked.
I had promised Brad and my family that I would be safe in the lake alone. I had acquired a high-vis swim cap for that purpose. And yet there I was, a ways off shore, feeling my heart beating faster, fighting off a rising panic. The calm that moving through water usually gives me just wasn’t there. I couldn’t help but feel unnerved by what I couldn’t see below3, wondering just how deep and far was the bottom. My improved visibility, with my eyes open in this body of water for the first time in years, had only led to darkness. All I could do was keep breathing and swimming and eventually, as I tossed off my goggles (accidentally letting them fall into those unknown depths) and flipped into my confident backstroke, I felt the anxiety dissipate. In the end, all I had to do was float. Sinking has never been an option.
During my years of business ownership, so many people asked me if I practiced meditation. This is a common recommendation for the stressed, the overworked, and the mentally and emotionally imbalanced. That was me, and I would say, “I’ve tried but I can’t”. I used to believe this, because I had an image of how meditation is supposed to look–silent, still, sitting legs criss-cross-apple-sauce as thoughts drift by and sail away. I know this takes practice, which I never truly dedicated myself to, but now I also know that meditation is a state of being, not a way of doing. I have never found calm in stillness. For me there is meditation in movement–a flow state that my body finds and my mind can follow.
When I swim, I propel myself forward in motion. As I move and breathe in rhythm, I am a calm and steady version of myself. I always finish my laps with a floating savasana, giving myself to the water. Exhausted, in corpse pose, I just float4. And when I arrive there, it is quiet and there is only me.
You Might Want to…
WATCH
I’m off to a solid start when it comes to series consumption this year. I had a ton of fun bingeing the new Apple Plus dark comedy, Bad Sisters (I’m a big fan of Sharon Horgan). And I’m really enjoying season two of Reacher on Amazon Prime, eagerly awaiting this coming week’s new episode. Surprised? Don’t be. I grew up in the eighties watching a whole lot of HBO with my dad and I love me some action and bad guy chasing. Years ago on a road trip, Brad and I listened to the audio book, Killing Floor by Lee Child, which season one of the Reacher series was based on and it was absolutely gripping. Season two, based on Lee’s Bad Luck and Trouble, may be a bit corny and formulaic in its adaptation at times, but I can’t help but love the character camaraderie. It also leaves me constantly wondering about the massive size of Alan Ritchson who plays Reacher. How much milk does that guy drink?
LISTEN
I’ve never been an outwardly political person, and particularly in the years when I served as the public face of my business, I mostly kept my opinions to myself. But now that I represent only me, I don’t feel I need to be private about the fact that I’m f*ing terrified of the possibility that the Republican party could be victorious in the upcoming election and gain more power to advance their initiatives against abortion, gay, and trans rights (just to name a few of the impending horrors). As the Democratic party has rallied behind Joe Biden for their candidate I’ve often thought, “is this old white man really our best option?” Until I listened to this podcast.
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend is one of mine and Brad’s top three long drive podcasts. In Conan’s recent conversation with Biden, I was reassured as I learned that he is not only a man who has lived his life with compassion and kindness, but he’s also been in governance, working as a public servant for our democracy since becoming a senator, for fifty years (eight of those as the chosen second to the best president of my lifetime). Biden has seen a lot, and he still wakes up every day ready to serve, with hope. That give me some hope too.
READ
One of my new favorite Substack reads is
by Brian Klass. His essay, “We Are Different From All Other Humans In History”, in which he explores how “Our technological prowess created a novel biological experience that was impossible for roughly 9,497 out of the 9,500 or so generations of Homo sapiens”, had my mind absolutely reeling about where we, as a globalized society that is rapidly disconnecting from nature, are headed. And when I read “The Hidden World of Undersee Cables”, my brain just about exploded. Did you know the internet lives underwater?! Well, I didn’t.Thanks for reading and just being here. Next up, it’s back to thoughts on food and being a locavore. Care to join me?
Sacandaga is a man-made lake, more specifically, a reservoir, completed in 1930 after a dam was erected and a 41 square mile area was flooded to create the lake. This was in an effort to control flooding of the Hudson and the Sacandaga river in the area that negatively impacted the surrounding communities, and yet as the lake neared completion, 1100 people were forced out of their homes and twenty four cemeteries holding 3,872 graves were moved. Anything left behind as the dam neared completion was burned. According to the Adirondack Almanack, today Sir William Johnson's Fish House, and the community that developed around it, lies at the bottom of the Great Sacandaga Lake. However, I can’t confirm that because even with my goggles on I can’t see more than a foot deep in the murky brown water while swimming.
If you don’t know about my journey of closing my business and learning to stop putting myself last, I wrote about it here.
While googling for ecological efforts and water testing of lakes in upstate New York I learned that Skaneateles Lake is the clearest lake in New York. Crystal clear. One in which, according to the article I came across, “hydrophiles will delight”! Yes, I want to go there.
The other thing I learned about this lake is that it is “Oligotrophic”, a term used to describe clear lakes, that refers to environments that offer little to sustain life. Oligotrophic lakes are generally clear, deep and free of weeds or large algae blooms. Though beautiful, they are low in nutrients and do not support large fish populations. Interestingly it is the lack of life, or the inability for hygrophilous organisms to thrive, that results in such clarity.
According to Brad, I am “oddly buoyant”.
Another great article Heather! Alan Ritchson is a way better Reacher than little Tom Cruise, much closer to the book version!