3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
77 degrees
Summer! A beautiful night for a swim. Hardly any wind, warm sun. There were lots of swimmers with yellow and pink buoys. Someone was playing dance music over at Hidden Beach. As I rounded the far buoy during loops 5 and 6, I did several breaststrokes so I could listen. A few very long milfoil vines stretched up from the bottom, which is much deeper than lake nokomis.
I recited some of my favorite lines about swimming from Alice Oswald’s Dart. He dives, he shits himself in the deep soft-bottom silence — I forgot to recite the next line, which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous — and jumped ahead to, he lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. I couldn’t quite remember how the next line started, but now I do: Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts. Love those lines!
10 Things
- a swimmer wades in the shallow water near the buoy waitint — to warm up? to get the courage to swim across? to take in the beauty of an early evening?
- bubble friends! more of them, below me
- a tapping on my toe as I rounded the far buoy — was it another swimmer? a fish? something else? who knows
- music, laughter, lots of chatter at hidden beach
- all I could sight on the way out was the red kayak of the lifeguard
- all I could sight on the way back was the break in the trees
- a few spots of glimmering surface
- the orange buoy at hidden beach was rarely there and when it was, it was only an orange dot, or the idea of an orange dot
- the orange buoy at point beach was muted and covered in shadow — I never saw it from far away, only when I was pretty close to it
- strange undercurrents in the water — something disturbing the water — sometimes it was another swimmer, sometimes it wasn’t
A great swim. I did one more loop than I did last time and never really stopped — other than the brief seconds when I readjusted my nose plug. In the later loops, my feet felt a little strange. Were they about to cramp? I paused and treaded water as I assessed them.
Found this in my entry from 2025 on 22 june — the return of my “On This Day” practice!:
Saturday 6:30 a.m. Swimming.
Red water plants waver up from the bottom in an attitude of plumes. How slow is the slow trance of wisdom, which the swimmer swims into.
“An Essay on Swimming” / Anne Carson
Thinking about the Eurasian Watermilfoil (milfoil) at Lake Nokomis, It does not waver in an attitude of plumes. It is a thick thatch, choking out the light, wrapping itself around arms, legs, shoulders.
Thinking more about the Eurasian milfoil, I recalled looking it up and posting some information about it a few years ago. I searched, and found it: 5 july 2024
aquatic plant management
“A few days ago, I looked up information about the vegetation/vines that I swim above in lake nokomis. I looked them up a few years ago, and recall learning that they were milfoil, but this summer I started doubting that I was remembering the name right. I was! There are two types of watermilfoil:
Eurasian watermilfoil : invasive, choking out native plants
Northern watermilfoil: native, food for the fish
On the Minneapolis Parks’ site, they describe aquatic plant management, which was fascinating. The most effective way to control Eurasian watermilfoil is to harvest it, either with a mechanical harvester or by scuba divers (!). The mechanical harvester, which from what my bad eyes can see is a boat with a big spinning blade
removes plants that are in the top four to six feet of water. The harvested plant material is removed from the water and stored until the end of summer when it is brought to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to be used as organic fill for their operations.
Aquatic Plant Management
The scuba divers, who only do this on Wirth Lake and Lake Nokomis, hand-pull the watermilfoil in areas that are inaccessible for the mechanical harvester. I wonder what areas are inaccessible and if I’ve ever witnessed the scuba pulling and not realized it. Very cool!”
Looking through the page today (2026), I noticed that they have a harvesting map for 2026. I also read on the aquatics plant management site that harvesting happens (roughly) from memorial day – aug 31st. I decided to send Minneapolis Parks a message and ask if and when they were planning to harvest the milfoil this summer. Hopefully they will answer, and hopefully it’s soon!
In the meantime: I will avoid that area! And maybe, I’ll try thinking about entanglements and knots and being tethered in ways that restrict, bind, limit. Or, I’ll think about weeds and invasive species and lake vegetation and how and why it overtakes lakes.
a note from Sara-this-second and Sara-since-Saturday and Summer Sara for Sara-sooner-or-later Listen lady, we are taking a break from reading and holes and Alice in Wonderland. We want to be immersed in water — waterlogged and water-logging! Come back in the fall!1
- I want to finish my May monthly challenge summary this afternoon and then shift into re-reading my favorite swimming/water poems and working on my waterlog project and returning to Alice Oswald and Anne Carson. ↩︎