Between two waves of the sea
The meteorology of longing
A Friday morning to catch up with myself. Now that Chris is home I am released from the early morning dog walk and sleep until seven, which feels luxurious. I sit in the living room with Chris while he drinks coffee, leaning my head on his shoulder. Lance lies on the rug, tossing a stuffed elephant with his mouth and rolling on his back for belly rubs. Penny watches us, keeping to herself, until Chris scoops her up and holds her on his chest.
We are edging into the weeks on Cape Cod when the temperatures drop, the sun slants ephemerally, and the marshes turn golden. This is the season when we first moved here and began to experience this place as our home, not just a beloved place where we visited family in summer and for the holidays. The quality of the light brings back that autumn of coming down on weekends to strip wallpaper and paint, the winter of setting up our house and finding new routines.
After breakfast I retreat to the sofa with a mug of milky tea and read The Outrun by Amy Liptrot. Yes, I am reading it because I saw a preview of the new Saoirse Ronan movie. But I am surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. I am halfway through. Liptrot has been sober for nearly two years and has returned from London to the Orkney Islands, where she grew up. She spent the spring lambing and rebuilding dykes on her family’s land, the summer counting birds, and now she has moved to a small island for winter. Her account of days shaped by the direction of the wind, the motion of the tides, and the phase of the moon, stirs a great longing within me.
In early October I decide it’s time to wear a wetsuit again. My thinnest suit is bright green and cheap. But it is flexible and easy to pull on. Only a slight adjustment from the simplicity of summer swimming. I apply balm around my neck to prevent chafing and have a friend zip me up.
At the beach a northwest wind is sweeping across Buzzards Bay. The tide is halfway out and waves are breaking, row after row, many meters off shore. They look low, like they are running on the sandbar. Inconvenient, but possibly fun for body surfing. We turn away from the wind and start our swim in the harbor.
It is enclosed here. We swim counterclockwise around a peninsula that would be an island if the causeway wasn’t reinforced every year. It is a little choppy, but not unmanageable. There are fewer boats anchored now. We swim through cool ribbons of freshwater. Oysters are scattered across the sand below us.
As we round the peninsula and the harbor mouth comes into view, we face a strong headwind. All the boats are pointing into it, all the flags flying straight back. The water from the bay is warm and I can feel the temperature shift through my whole body with each incoming wave. Other swimmers fight their way out of the harbor. They pause beside a pier to wait for the rest of us. I see them rising and falling in deep swells.
This is a good spot to get out, in the case of rough conditions. Climb the ladder at the pier, walk across the peninsula past cavernous houses, inhabited this season only by cleaning crews and landscaping trucks. Say something to the guard at the gatehouse as I leave. Walk along the causeway spotting my friends as they finish the swim. But I am not cold or tired or worried. No one talks about getting out. We just have to swim a bit further out than usual to get around the rocks. We count off and set out for the last stretch of our swim.
It takes a while to get past the first onslaught of waves. I am lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped. The peaks are higher, the troughs deeper than they looked at the pier. Underwater, I can’t see anything, but the waves keep plunging me down towards vague brown which I fear to be unforgiving rocks.
It seems like we will never progress past the house on the corner. I fantasize about stopping altogether, feeling how easy it would be to panic. But I can’t think right now, I have to swim forward.
The surf has no cadence. All my limbs feel useless even though I am swimming hard, full of adrenaline.
Unexpectedly, a set ends and everything flattens out. I am not very far from the others. Another swimmer signals to me, a wave and a thumbs up. I return the thumbs up, put my face in, and fight on.
At last we are caught by the wind, which pushes us the direction we are trying to go. Each time I breathe towards shore we are further along. We are past the corner house, midway along the rocks. Now we are even with the gatehouse on the causeway. I can see the guard walking in his yellow vest. We clear the rocks. I wave wildly at the nearest swimmer, point towards shore, and let the surf carry me in.
The waves are so frequent that I cannot stand up, even where it is shallow. I surrender, letting them tumble me in. I sit down and yank off my fins, then stumble up onto the sand. Further down the beach, my friends are washing up one by one.
At my car I sluice myself in hot water, peel off my wetsuit, and dress in warm clothes. We all take a selfie in the wind, drink tea, and chat.
It isn’t until I am home that a deep exhaustion settles over me. It persists for the rest of the weekend. I begin to consider the difficulty of the swim, my desperate clawing and kicking, moments of wondering if I’d end up concussed on the rocks. A kind of horror emerges about the danger of those conditions, which I did not anticipate when I left the harbor.
I do not live on a small island like the one Amy Liptrot retreats to. I live in a suburban coastal town. I often chafe at new housing developments going up, the sound of traffic even when I am in the woods. I worry that my work, which I generally like, but which takes place at a desk, is disconnected from the natural world. I long for the rhythms that Liptrot inhabits: walking, swimming, writing, a deep entry into the seasons, attuned to the cycle of the sea and the heavenly bodies.
A week later we meet at the same place to swim. The morning is cold and sunny. The hunter's moon is still round and fat, sinking over the bay, drawing the tide all the way up to the parking lot retaining wall and steps. There is no wind, hardly any waves, just a mesmerizing grid of glittering light on the sand, like one might see on the bottom of a pool.
But it’s not entirely tame, even if it is calm. The first swimmer to put her head in sees a fish at least a foot long. The water is cold as it enters my wetsuit, startling on my face. In a week the sea temperature has dropped by five degrees. We are still in our lightest wetsuits, but have added additional layers. I am wearing swim booties and earplugs today.
Our course is the opposite direction as last week, pushed by an already high tide. We’re starting along the shore, passing through the rocks, entering the harbor to spiral clockwise back around the peninsula and finish in the marsh.
In clear water like this I explore the rocks appreciatively, taking note of how the seaweed has changed. The branching fronds of green fleece are swollen as if they could burst, sargassum has turned yellow and is studded with seeds, the seagrass is fading to pale green.
We expect cold in the harbor, after a chilly night, but the tide carries us forward in a bank of warm water, much higher in the marsh than we usually swim.
Even after an hour of swimming, I’m not ready to get out. Four of us wade back into the depths to strip off our wetsuits. We dive under, float on our backs, shout about how good it feels. This temperature, just below 60°F, is the one I wait for all year long.
I return home, have lunch, and read more of The Outrun. I revisit the passages from early in Liptrot’s time on the island, the ones that made me feel wistful:
“Every day on Papay, there’s a moment, looking back, facing into the northerly wind, at the coastline I’ve just walked for instance, when my heart soars. I see starlings flocking, hundreds of individual birds forming and reforming shapes in liquid geometry, outwitting predators and following each other to find a place to roost for the night. The wind blows me from behind so strongly that I am running and laughing. Calm yet alert, after a few weeks on Papay I notice that I am always pretty much aware of the height of the tide, the direction of the wind, the time of sunrise and sunset, and the phase of the moon.”
This time, instead of envy, I feel recognition. Even here in my domesticated beach town, sea swimming made me attuned to the same things. It is my entry into a little bit of wilderness, every time I leave the shore.
Beautifully said. And glad to hear you are still swimming. I started again last spring, but at a pool, but still think of you every time I swim. ❤️
Beautiful ❤️