I Bathe With / Under / Among Stars

I will not forget last night’s swim until I forget everything. I went, with L&P, down to the harbour 1/2 a mile from where I’ve been staying these past three days, nestled on Sweden’s west coast. L had urged me to experience swimming in the dark.

There’s a jetty there, and a swimming ladder - Sweden thinks all the time of getting in and out of her waters. There’s a bench on the jetty to leave clothes, sit down to take shoes off, put them back on. 

In the just-about dark twilight of late summer, the stars coming out after their long Scandinavian rest, we stripped off - no costume or shyness required. L&P insisted I go in first promising me a surprise, and not the jellyfish which L scanned for using a torch. 

I took my silhouette down the ladder into the sea. I swam, and as I stroked the water saw sparks fly from my fingertips. “Oh my god!” I exclaimed. “Oh, oh … wow!” I could think of nothing more poetic. As I moved in the water, it seemed stars were born. 

I looked up at the sky - stars. I looked into the water - stars. Starlight everywhere. Starlight within reach and starlight beyond imagination. 

L&P came in to join the celebration, the firework party, the bioluminescent joy of seawater - plankton when ruffled - in dark-skied warmer waters of this late season.

The current drifted us away from the jetty - we took the light show with us, between our fingers and toes. We laughed, sang, played with the magic of the night - British, Australian, and Belgian, in Swedish waters, nothing between our skins and the heavens’ gift of freedom, of joy. 

I Make It Through To The Big Lake

I may be testing your patience, dear readers, but my daily swim in Little Norrsjön has become the pivotal moment of my days in Sweden, so here's more swimming writing.

For the sake of geography, I should say that Little Norrsjön is attached to Norrsjön (sjö - lake) where the river feeds in. If you imagine the attachment as a T-shape, the river is the long stem. It branches into a right and a left arm, the right arm feeding Little Norrsjön and the left arm feeding Norrsjön. In other words, it's possible to reach Norrsjön from Little Norrsjön by swimming into and through the arms of the river. 

I've been approaching the river's arms for a while, swimming up to the meeting point, seeing the eddying currents, and backing out again. The forces have just looked too strong for me. Getting to Norrsjön looked simple enough, but getting out against the flow of the river? This has seemed much less certain. 

The other day, P. took me on a walk through the forest along the river. We saw so many trees felled by beavers I was surprised the beavers had any time to rest from gnawing activity. It's an extraordinary sight - teeth marks going through to the central fibres of a tree trunk: the ones that eventually give up the attempt to remain vertical and allow the tree to fall. 

The outcome of our walk through undergrowth, on the most densely padded forest floor my feet could remember (moss, decades of needle and leaf fall, berry bushes) was to see the T of the river from land. Seeing it from this viewpoint gave us the idea that, if the current proved too strong for me, I could get out of Norrsjön and walk to Little Norrsjön, with some danger of scratching and insect bites, but nothing more serious.

So the day before yesterday, I swam through.

Emerging into Norrsjön felt like possibility: like entering a wider, more expansive world. I've known it was there all along, seen it from the shore, but to approach it from the river's arms intensified the experience of opening out. I paddled around a little, noted the houses on the far shore, and a potential future adventure. But I wanted to save my energy for the swim back, which was a useful thought as I had to struggle against the current in some places. The branches and grasses on the banks lent me a hand, and I pulled myself back to the centre and the turning current, and then went with the flow into the growing familiarity of the smaller lake. 

There's something about this short journey, lake to lake, that lends itself to meaning, and I've been mulling it over for the last couple of days, but I'll leave you to make your own way through, dear readers.

P. pointed out this isn't beaver-work but the photo below is ... 

Ant work

The softest moss-floor

I Explore by Swimming

I’m reading ‘Teaching a Stone to Talk’ by Annie Dillard. She has an extraordinary perspective which includes some direct observations about living, including: “We are here on the planet only once, and we might as well get a feel for the place.” For her, it’s not about the spectacular, but about seeing “what is there” (p.74).

I’ve found I can see what is there in lake little Norrsjön by swimming. I don’t know about you, but I was taught to swim in straight lines. While I’ve since splashed out into lakes and seas, it’s never struck me before that swimming can be a form of exploration: slow motion, but motion nonetheless. I had this realisation during my second swim, when I went a little further than the first, finding a sandbank and river-mouth. 

On the third swim I found the route via the river, which feeds both lakes, to the larger lake, but the strong current deterred me from making the full journey. Perhaps if the water levels, high after recent record rainfall, drop, then I’ll go further. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll strike out in a different direction altogether. 

I Land in Sweden

I took care, when I waded into the lake this morning along the side of the rowing boat, to note where I’d got in. It’s skirted with pines and I could imagine the boat becoming hidden the further I swam out, and mistaking one clump of trees for another, or one of the scattered houses, painted the burnt red colour which is traditional in Sweden, for its neighbour.

I was swimming the lake, little Nörrsjon, for the first time. My way in through reeds and water lilies was easy. Soon I was breast stroking, my gaze level with the water boatmen skirting across the tensing surface.

I felt safe and held - the water clear and regulated to a perfect temperature by the recent heat, my swimming confidence sufficient, the weather calm. 

When I reached the other shore’s lily pads, and at the moment of my turnaround, the water surface began to pit and ripple. It was rain, and each droplet was defined by its landing. It was rain in close up, and I began to see each drop as an entity. One landed on my nose as if providing evidence of a wetness additional to the lake’s.

I thought of the paperback I’d left out with my clothes and sped up my strokes, soon arriving back among lilies. As I approached the green pads, I noticed a strand of bubbles: a watery contrail delineating my earlier route through their rooty webs.

It surprised me that the traces of my way into the water had survived what was a thirty-or-so minute swim. Although I didn’t need the way marks, I retraced the line back to the water’s edge and my stuff. 

I’ve not always been able to trust my literal or metaphorical sense of direction, and so this happening - the persistence of the pathway I'd created underlining my trajectory - affirmed to me that I've arrived in a place that's intended.