Swimming Through Winter

I wasn't sure of how to begin writing this, I just knew I wanted to write about the water. So, I asked my family, as we sat eating tea, if they would mind if I walked to the pond straight afterwards. 'Your pond?' came the reply, 'no, we don't mind, go!'.

It isn't my pond, it belongs to Hampstead Heath, to London, or rather, to any woman wanting to swim (when the world is well) and it has become something important to me.

So I got up from the table that warm May evening and set out.

There is no swimming there at the moment, of course. Earlier in the day, casting about for words, I had begun a membership request for the Serpentine lido (it has reopened). Whilst the boys were cycling round the park I was googling with fast fingers to find the application form - thinking to ride the nine miles there myself one morning at dawn, just so I could tell you about how the water felt. But I realised that I didn't feel right about that.

 And I don't need to do that. Like the memory of the weight of my infant children as I carried them through the early years, I have not lost the body memory of the water. It isn't just our minds that remember. I remember the silty bliss of the warm water, but it is the shining black cold water that I have wanted to tell you about most. It does something special that reaches beyond physical benefit and catches me by surprise every time.

 It's a couple of miles from our home to the pond and I walk quickly, treading the familiar route. The shops are still closed, the high street quiet, and some are out for their evening walk. My heart feels glad of the new courtesy adopted on our narrow pavements; of the slowing down enough to see where someone else will tread, before you take your own steps in a kind dance of space giving  - this is a new noticing of others and I hope it will stay.

 My trips to the pond were sporadic for a couple of years, and rarely at the height of summer. I never planned it that way, but I always seemed to swim on the bridge of seasons - at the end of spring and the beginning of autumn - pleasingly quiet times. Though, if you don't go on a hot hot day you never know the delight of sunbathing in the meadow, a place full of others stretched out in the sun but entirely private - no eyes can look in from anywhere else on the heath. There are wildflowers and long grass and a fence of oak and alder trees. And only women. I went to a girls' boarding school - I had been wary of female dominated places. But here, I question that. It is refuge and freedom and a club you can belong to without being a member. Just being me, anonymous, I belong.

And there is something in that belonging and safety that has been as special as the winter swimming. It was new to me.

It was that that encouraged me to keep on swimming as summer turned to autumn last year. I was curious about how long I would manage it. Going week by week and keeping that curiosity it seemed doable as the temperatures dropped. There was nothing to lose. Every time I went was more than I had ever done. Even swimming beyond September felt like success.

 And I found I never did stop. Each swim gave me something different, not always extraordinary (there were times when I questioned my choice as I walked down the metal steps), but always something noticeable and valuable. And the routine of going there became calming. There is a clean feeling that cold water gives you. A cleanness inside your body. I can't describe it any other way.

I am not a risk taker by nature, I play safe, follow rules. I feel fear often, and I am careful in the cold. I know I must look after myself. Steadily, the immersive quality of the cold was worth pushing myself for; overthinking is stopped then, sensations are all that matter. My body demands I give it attention, find ease, breathe. And once I realise I am coping with the temperature, and I catch sight of the kingfisher overhead, or the statue still heron on the banks I find I am very very happy. And just when I think I can't do it anymore the sun will come out and skit over the water, or the rain will start and fizz the surface like television interference. And crucially, someone will share a shy smile or a wide grin and in answer to the post-swim question 'how are you?', again and again comes the answer 'fine, now'.

And even on those times that I couldn't tell you that I enjoyed the water exactly; afterwards, knowing that I was walking towards the cold outdoor shower that is open to the sky, knowing that I was walking back to my warm, dry clothes, I felt a swell of gladness.

 I feel shy there sometimes, I don't tend to chat - I’m new compared to the other women who have surely been going for decades. I never went to the office to sign the winter swimming register - to put my name among those of others who visit the pond in the cold months too. But I did swim, 43 times between 5th September 2019 and 19th March 2020, my diary tells me. And I don't need any other proof.

So, perhaps I have learnt that there are a great many things ahead of us that might bring us more joy than we ever knew would be there for us, or that might open up some part of ourselves that we haven't met yet. And that really is a reason to be cheerful. It's more than blind hope, it is keeping curiosity about what you are capable of, and an incentive to get up every day and to live in a way that you will be happy with at bedtime. It isn't always what you think it might be. (And I haven't always lived this way.)

I visit the pond, still, at least once a week, to notice it's changes through this season of time - both solar and this almost separate-from-time, time. And though closure continues, I feel lucky that it didn't cut short my first winter swimming. That I made it to just before the spring equinox. To me, that feels like kindness. I wonder what the next winter of swimming will bring.

Genevieve Dutton