Tag: swim

july 22/SWIM

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
89 degrees
choppy

A great swim, but choppy! Lots of breathing on one side to avoid waves. Sighting buoys (and other swimmers) was harder, everything lost in the waves. The first loop was the toughest. Got into a groove after it and managed to do 2 more loops before pausing to tread water at a white buoy and then beginning the final loop. It was crowded in the water — kids wading at the beach, adults taking advantage of the free night at open swim. Because of the crowds and the choppy water, it was difficult to give attention to the water or the bubbles or anything else. Did I manage to notice 10 things?

10 Things

  1. sparkle friends — particles floating, churning in the water
  2. so many vines reaching up from the bottom, wrapping around my wrist or ankles — it didn’t bother me, but I could imagine that freaking out some other swimmer
  3. a plane flying low, parallel to the water
  4. hot pink safety buoys tethered to torsos
  5. the pale foot of a breaststroker under the water
  6. the silhouette of an upright lifeguard on a kayak, marking the edge of the course
  7. someone swimming at the edge of my vision — far off to the left
  8. 3 swimmers with yellow safety buoys clustered together, treading water and talking
  9. mostly blue sky, a few clouds
  10. paused at the buoy, witnessing a strange sight: the way a swimmer was breathing and sighting in the choppy water, jerking their head high up and out of the water — at first I thought they were doing a double-take when they noticed me, but nope, that’s just the way they swim

before the swim

Each summer of swimming builds on the last. I get stronger, able to swim for longer without stopping. It’s not a deliberate choice or part of a training plan — I have no training plan for swimming; I just swim until I am too tired or I have to go to the bathroom or I’ve run out of time. I have loose goals: 100 miles for the summer or a 5k or 6 loops or the full 2 hours in one session. This year: swimming cumulatively for a day, or 24 hours, in August. It’s a goal inspired by the title of a Mary Oliver poem: Swimming, One Day in August. It’s possible, but it will take some planning and pushing myself to achieve.

In July, I’m finding myself thinking about how much time I’m spending above the surface versus below it. This year, I’m below much more than above. In past summers, I’ve done less loops and more stops at shore in-between. This year, I might occasionally pause mid-lake for 5-10 seconds, or take a 30 second break at the beach between the 3rd and 4th loop, but mostly I’m swimming freestyle without stopping. 60-90 minutes of 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. That’s a lot of time submerged and becoming acquainted with the underwater world!

Below, my thoughts are the bubbles that surround me. Above, they become words that hover above the water or travel across the lake — maybe they get lost beyond the horizon, or maybe they linger, later taking the form of words on a page. Last night, swimming the stretch from hidden beach back to point beach, I imagined each breath as one word bursting into the air: 1 2 3 4 5 BLUE 1 2 3 4 5 GRAY. I didn’t get very far with my words before I was distracted by something — another person? a scratchy vine? trying to sight an invisible buoy? I’d like to play around with this some more while I’m swimming tonight. Does each breath have to be only one word?

My ideas about thoughts below and above the water are partly inspired by the lines from Alice Oswald that I’ve memorized and have been reciting in my head:

dived again and surfaced
and smelt all the longings of grass-flower smells
and bird-flower sounds and vaporous poems
that hang in the chills above rivers
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

the vaporous poems as my thoughts bursting into the air and hanging above the surface?

and thoughts escaping to the surface to move beyond the self

I wish I was there or there he thinks and his mind
immediately

as if passing its beam through cables
flashes through all that water and lands
less than a second later on the horizon
and someone with a telescope can see his tiny thought-forms
floating on the sea surface wondering what next

*

like spirits of sight whose work is on the water
where the massless mind undulates the intervening air
shading it blue and thinking

I wish I was there

or there

All the time in the water, the front half of me submerged except for my quick breathe every 5 strokes, has me wondering about which world is real, which a dream. On 3 July, I posted a quotation from Anne Carson that ended with, Could we be exactly wrong about such things as—he rotates again—which way is up? High above him he can feel the clouds watching his back, waiting for him to fall toward them. Which way is up, which down?

I’m thinking of May Swenson’s “Water Picture” and her vivid description of a water world as the world above water in reverse:

Treetops deploy a haze of cherry bloom for roots, where birds coast belly-up in the glass bowl of a hill

The first line of her poem — In the pond in the park
all things are doubled — reminds me of something Alice Oswald said in her “Interview with Water” lecture: when you look at water, it allows you to exist twice but more darkly (see full quote from 20 june 2024)

And that line reminds me of part of Oswald’s Nobody:

I lost track of
the underneath of things everything became my mirror
once I stood up to look over the side
I sat down again terrified it was myself I saw
thronged and pitch-green
spilling over the top of the earth
the same soft dust-sheets over my hands as the clouds
the same thick curtain across the horizon

Above and below the surface is not just reversal, the same backwards, symmetry, but something else. In her lecture, the lines before the bit about twice darkly, Oswald says:

but the surface of water is complicated by transparency, and its transparency is complicated by refraction. Water is never the same as itself. Rivers can only exist as similarities, lakes reflect more than their own volume

The surface offers the illusion of reversal, one way up, the other down. Below the surface, beyond its mirror, another world waits to be witnessed. And not with eyes — the visibility in lake nokomis is currently 6.6 feet. In the middle of the lake, all I see below me are particles, stray vines, an occasional flash, and murky green-blue-yellow. Not so much dark, as Nothing.

I’m fascinated by surfaces, or what Oswald calls the waterlid. What does the surface look like from below looking up? I should make note of it today. Also, from above, looking down?

Looked up some notes, and found this great quotation from Darby Nelson in his book, For the Love of Lakes:

Human understandings rely heavily on the endless flood of messages from our eyes. But with a lake, the laws of optics work against us. Its reflective surface and the water’s rapid absorption of light with increasing depth conspire to keep much of a lake hidden from view. At a lake, open your eyes and you don’t see half of it. Nearly all the visual input from a lake comes as surface reflections, mere superficialities. Thoreau reveled in reflections. He felt because they were constantly changing they could present previously known truths from new points of view. But those truths don’t penetrate into the world of the lake below, a truth with which he seems unconcerned. What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision? How can we fully perceive what we cannot see?

For the Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson

during the swim

I wanted to think about these things and recite some lines as I swam, but I was distracted by the effort of choppy, crowded water, always looking out for waves crashing over me and making it hard to breathe, or random slow or stopped swimmers. Near the end of the swim, I decided to dip lower in the water so that I could see the surface from below — a wavy, slightly distorted version of the sky and clouds. Cool!

july 21/RUNSWIM

run: 1.75 miles
from minnehaha falls to home
73 degrees / dew point: 64

A quick run with Scott from the falls back home before the rain started. We made it! Checked the weather on my watch after we finished — 95% chance of rain in 8 minutes. Ran at 1 pm, which might be my least favorite time to run. It felt hard. Still, I’m glad we did it. (It never rained.)

We stopped to walk where the trail dips below the road so I could point out the new trail they’ve created that winds down to the river. I can’t wait until they’re finished. It looks cool. Speaking of cool, I was trying to convey to Scott how I felt about the air and what the impending storm was doing to the sky and the air and green of the gorge. First I said “cool,” but it’s not cool (temperature), so I started to clarify, I mean the atmosphere, but realized that atmosphere could be related to temp so I said, I mean the vibe is cool. Cool is such a strange word — both full of meaning and history and empty too. For 35 years, I’ve been trying to expand my vocabulary beyond it, but it never works. How many times a day do I use this word?

I know that there is a rich history of the term within African American culture and jazz and that it’s been appropriated by white culture, but I don’t know the history that well. In poetry, my immediate thought about cool is Gwendlyn Brooks amazing, “We Real Cool.” I also think about Beatnik poetry and the Pia Zadora/Ric Ocasek scene in Hairspray:

“your hair is really uncool”

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
79 degrees
rain

Overcast, gray. Calm water, warm-enough air. A great night for a swim. As I swam, I monitored the sky, noticing it getting darker and thicker. Wondered if it would start raining. During loop 4, it did. It’s always difficult to tell if it’s raining when I’m swimming. Today I felt a drop on my check and then paused to lift my head out of the water — a steady rain. I think I heard it underwater, but I couldn’t see it, and barely felt it. No thunder, so open swim kept going. Hooray!

10 Things

  1. a graying sky
  2. a big canoe moving fast across the swim course
  3. even as I tried to stay on the edge of the course, the current pushed me toward the center
  4. pale green, opaque water
  5. bubbles encasing my hands
  6. attacks from floating vines
  7. a party with a campfire and barking dogs at hidden beach
  8. buoyant, feeling held by the water
  9. after: itchy skin
  10. standing up in the sand after the last loop — a final look at the buoys and the water

Remembered the first line from the A Oswald poem fragment that I forgot several times last week: this disintegrating certainty

Thought about the bubbles and imagined that they were holding me up, like some sort of raft or inner tube.

My legs felt like rudders, my torso rocked rhythmically, my shoulders rose and fell.

july 20/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
67 degrees

Wow! What a morning for a swim. Sunny and not too windy. I couldn’t see the green buoys heading towards the little beach, but I didn’t care. I’m used to my eyes not seeing the buoys and trusting that some part of me has seen them and is leading me the right way, and I use other things to keep on course — sparkles on the water, which mean other swimmers are around, the lifeguard kayaks on the edge of the course, buildings.

10 Things

  1. a swirled glob of vines
  2. orange safety buoys tethered to torsos
  3. cloudless blue sky
  4. pale green water
  5. a young kid calling out to another kid — look at the little fish!
  6. a swim clinic for people doing the Y-tri — the instructor encouraging people to take breaks if they needed to — of course it’s hard! it’s okay to take a break
  7. little specks: swan boats in the distance
  8. little specks: green buoys looking like far off white dots
  9. sparkle friends
  10. a paddle boarder crossing the path, then a kayak

Recited my Alice Oswald lines: He dives. He shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence . . . Underwater, the silence was more than a lack of sound, not empty but still — the same view with no variations: the pale green water studded with particles. No shafts or light, no fish.

Recited some lines of my own, too: I go to the lake/to beholld to be/ held by the water

a return to EXAQUA

“Water is the medium, the texture, the weight, the space, the motion/emotion or your writing/thinking. Would you agree? Is that too tidy? Your work is attuned to water and being close to it (or, better, being inside it) is important to you” (EXAQUA/ Jan-Henry Gray).

What might it look like to have water be the medium, the texture, the weight space motion emotion of my writing/thinking?

medium = way in which the writing is delivered — print, digital, audio, visual
water as medium = delivered with water = the bubbles sparkles wound on the water my piercing hands leave

Giving water the weight and size of myself
in order to imagine it, water with my bones
water with my mouth and my understanding

weight and size of myself = swimming in the lake, again and again, a full immersion — without wetsuit or raft — more time below the surface than above, my full devotion and attention

july 17/RUNSWIM

4 miles
river road, north/south
57 degrees
humidity: 80%

In the 50s! What a beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool. My gait felt strange, awkward, for the first 1/2 mile. Was it the shoes? I wore Brooks instead of Sauconys. The humidity was high — lots of sweat, not dripping but pooling near my nose. Chanted in triples for the first mile.

10 Things

  1. rowers! heard 2 different coxswains
  2. after 5 or 6 months, they’re finally replacing the fallen fence panel above the northern end of longfellow flats
  3. the dirt they put in the crack north of the trestle has settled and the crack is back and as big as before — at one point will this be unfixable?
  4. good morning! / good morning! — exchanged greetings with a runner with a dog
  5. good morning! — Mr. Holiday wished me a good morning
  6. click click thought it was a roller skier, but it was a biker changing gears
  7. a circle of light below the sliding bench — have they cleared some branches for more of a view here?
  8. smell of cigarette smoke
  9. the dark dirt of a steep trail leading down to the river
  10. the loud slap of a runner’s shoes as he passed me, running fast, or at least much faster than me

I was watching the tour as I compiled the 10 Things list, but had to put my computer away when they reached the last climb — a tough HC. Pogacar went for it near the bottom and Vingegaard couldn’t follow. Wow!

to remember and return to

water and time / log entry for 11 july 2024

lines to memorize for today’s swim?

this disintegrating certainty this water
whatever it is whatever anything is
under these veils and veils of vision
which the light cuts but it remains

unbroken
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

while I’m swimming today: recite this bit and the others from Dart and Nobody:

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

Open swim is back and I did 4 loops! A wonderful night, in and out of the water. The water was smooth and fast and not too warm or too cold or too crowded. Entering the lake, I watched as a motorized paddle board zoomed by, then another. What? As I swam toward and then past the orange buoy I heard a metallic buzz in the water. Was it because of these paddle boards? I am very grateful that motorized boats aren’t allowed on nokomis. If they were, would I be hearing this buzzing sound all of the time?

I was off course in the first loop; the sun made it very difficult to see the green buoys. But it wasn’t a big deal. On the second loop, I figured it out.

I marveled at the contrast between above and below the surface. Above was a smooth blue, below a glittering green. Checked out my bubbles. Felt the water darken when the sun went behind a cloud. Was attacked by a few stray vines.

Thought about how much I love the water and how confident I am in it, and then about how dangerous and scary and deadly it can be.

Recited Alice Oswald lines — not the new ones I just memorized, but the ones I’d already been reciting in my head.

july 13/SWIMBIKE

5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

5 loops on a beautiful Sunday morning! Even though we’re still under bad air quality advisory and there was smoke and haze lingering above the lake, I didn’t have any trouble breathing. The smoke-haze made it difficult to see the buoys, however. Who cares — not me! I still swam straight towards the buoys.

My 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left or 1 2 3 right 1 2 3 4 right 1 2 3 left 1 2 3 4 left was relaxed and steady. My arms and legs in constant motion, rotating and kicking.

I call my circuits around the buoys loops, but that’s not quite right. They are more triangles, not curved but a straight line with 3 buoys from the northern end of the big beach to the little beach, then a straight line with 2 buoys from the little beach to the southern end of the big beach, then a straight line parallel to beach from the last green buoy to the only orange one and the start of one circuit, the beginning of another. Swimming in the lake is less about curves and more about lines and angles. Angled elbows, a straight back — parallel, the intersecting legs-as-lines. The first segment was fairly smooth and fast, the second was choppy and sluggish, and the third was smoother and faster.

10 Things

  1. something/someone tapped my toe mid-lake — I couldn’t see anyone, was it a fish? a twig?
  2. particles suspended, glittering — my sparkle friends!
  3. my hands wrapped in bubbles
  4. a loose vine passed over my legs, got stuck in my fingers
  5. a military plane flying fast
  6. light green, a hint of yellow, water
  7. glitter on the surface of the water where other swimmers where
  8. hazy blue sky
  9. a gentle rocking from the water
  10. near the end of the final loop — a sore back

I recited my 4 A Oswald lines about microscopic insects in the eye and surfacing and diving again and giving water the weight and size of myself and lifting the lid and shutting it. Such great lines! Admired the bubbles on my hands, thought of Anne Sexton and shedding them and then believed the bubbles were little thoughts and feelings and ideas that some part of me was shedding and offering to the water and anyone in it.

Thought about my gorge poem that begins, I go to/the gorge / / to find the/soft space. Started composing one for the lake: I go to/the lake // to be held. Thought about the verb, to behold, then beheld, which reminded me of a line in a poem that I love and had pondered on 19 june: Unsee the beheld! / Altitude/ Airea D. Matthews

Unsee the beheld where to unsee is to observe/witness with a sense other than sight, or to unravel, come undone or redone, transformed. Who/what is the beheld? Me, held by the water. So, to unsee me, to let go of me/I and have an encounter/exchange with that which is not-I: the water. I haven’t written about this bit yet, but yesterday I was thinking about Anne Carson and her anthropology of water and I wrote in my Plague Notebook, encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I. In the lake, I am held by the water — rocked, enveloped, lifted — but in the process of being held I dissolve, or the small part of Sara the ecosystem that is I is saturated. Yes, this makes sense to me, but will it to anyone else, including future Sara?

I read mention of May Swenson’s poem “Swimmers” yesterday and I happened to have it in Nature: Poems Old and New. I’m still trying to figure out the different ways I can read the stanzas — across; down the left, then down the right, then bottom?down the left, to the bottom, and up the right? down the left only? down the right only?

Swimmers/ May Swenson

Tossed
by the muscular sea,
we are lost,
and glad to be lost
in troughs of rough

love. A bath in
laughter, our dive
into foam,
our upslide and float
on the surf of desire.

But sucked to the root
of the water-mountain —
immense —
about to tip upon us
the terror of total

delight —
we are towed,
helpless in its
swell, by hooks
of our hair;

then dangled, let go,
make to race —
as the wrestling chest
of the sea, itself
tangled, tumbles

in its own embrace.
Our limbs like eels
are water-boned,
our faces lost
to difference and

contour, as the lapping
crests.
They cease
their charge,
and rock us

in repeating hammocks
of the releasing
tide —
until supine we glide,
on cool green

smiles
of an exhaling
gladiator,
to the shore
of sleep.

However I read it, it’s good!

bike: 4 miles
the falls and back
84 degrees

Biked to the falls with Scott for a beer and a hike and some time to be in the midst of others. Sassy, strong little girls, BIG dogs, small yippy dogs, a hiker with poles, surreys, kids playing soccer, a guy that looked like Mr. Hand, 2 long-haired dachshunds in the ice cream line, a LONG ice cream line, a LONGER food line. A roaring falls, a raging creek, blocked-off steps and wooden path. A dog that plopped down and refused to move, a guy walking by, laughing and calling out to his friend, that dog is done!

july 11/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
73 degrees

Great water! Warm, buoyant, calm, and near the shore, clear. A steady — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left — swim. Felt strong and relaxed and rhythmic. Didn’t see the buoys that often but knew exactly where they were.

10 Things

  1. the tops of the mifoil: green, wispy, some feathery, some stringy
  2. light green water
  3. green buoys looking robin’s egg blue
  4. the sharp angle of the taut rope with a weight on its end, anchoring the buoy
  5. ducks swimming near shore
  6. glowing bubbles covering my hands
  7. the lifeguard talking through the speaker, testing 1 2 3 attention open swimmers, the course is now open. enjoy your swim!
  8. pale legs underwater — parallel to the ground, kicking breaststroke then fluttering
  9. the feel of something in the water, then a trail of bubbles, then a pale leg — a quick swerve around another swimmer
  10. rounding the green buoy closest to the little beach, getting a brief glimpse of the next buoy — green, looking only like a bright dot, and only visible sometimes

Recited my AO lines again. a rush of gold to the head — giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it — she surfaced and peered around and dived again and surface and saw someone

the beginning of a lake

I started rereading Argument with the Lake this afternoon — a poetry collection I bought in 2018 — and discovered this description of the origins of a lake. I’ll add it to my growing collection of descriptions — of a river in England (see: 30 aug 2024) and a lake in Germany (see: 2 july 2024).

from Begin/ Tanis Rideout

This lake, like others, was dug out. Glacial ice grinding south, scouring
weak Silurian stone, an arctic tsunami leaving only the backbone of the escarpment. Canadian Shield and broken tumble of kames in its
retreat.

The glacial rebound cast this lake of shimmering waters, Ontario. Give
or take
a geologic blink. And now, a girl on Holocene shores measures the
distance —
her to here. Fifty-four kilometres as the crow flies, the herring gull,
the cormorant with dried wings. Sixty-four against the current.
Three point two kilometres an hour, slower than a winter housefly
bumbling against your window

july 10/RUNBIKESWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
71 degrees
dew point: 67

Sticky, but feels cooler because of the cloud cover. Felt relaxed and able to keep running without stopping. Wore my bright yellow shoes, which seem to not be hurting my feet/calves as much. The river was a light gray-blue, the trees dark green. Heard voices near the ravine — was it the workers finishing the new trail? Also heard the clicking and clacking of ski poles up above near the road.

Several trucks and workers in and around the house that used to have the poetry window (it hasn’t had a poem for more than a year). I wonder where the poetry people went?

The tree is still across the winchell trail. Every time I encounter it I’m cautious, looking out for people coming the other way, hidden behind its branches. Today, there were 2 people, but they were paying attention and waited for me to pass. Thanks!

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees / 78 degrees

Biked with Scott to the lake. Nice! No scary moments. I felt confident and didn’t once question where I was going or where the trail was or if that thing ahead of me was a crack or not. Loud birds. A car not knowing how to drive in a round-a-bout. High creek water under the echo bridge. An ultimate frisbee game in the field between the duck and echo bridges. Slanting light. Kids wading in the creek.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
79 degrees

Another orange buoy gone, replaced with a green one. Only one left. For 11 years, seeing the orange buoy has been my thing. I’ve dreamed about them, written poems about them, and now they’re being replaced with green buoys. That’s okay, but I will miss them and all of my orange thoughts.

The water was a little rougher. Not too rough, more like gentle rocking. Some stray vines, lots of breathing only to my right side. Difficult to see the buoys. Recited my Alice Oswald poems as I swam and thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again and the sky jumping in and out. During the second half of the third loop, I stopped in the middle of the lake just to see what it was like. So quiet and wonderful. I couldn’t hear anything from the sky or the beach or other swimmers. Very cool.

Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.

A great swim. I feel strong and free and grateful to be moving and pushing my body. Big shoulders, no calf cramps, no numb/tingling fingers.

july 8/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
67 degrees
humidity: 86%

Got out for my run a little earlier today. Still warm and humid. The bunion on my left foot has a blister on it, which hurt at the beginning of the run. Looking up the anatomy of the foot, I discovered that the bone below the big toe is actually two pea-shaped bones called sesamoids. I’ve been thinking that I might want to devote a month, or a few weeks, to the foot. Maybe September?

Noticed the river for the first time as I turned down to enter the Winchell Trail from the south. Through the trees it looked green and warm and stagnant. A little later, on the Winchell Trail, a pale blue with a spot of sparkle. Greeted by Mr. Morning! as I exited the 38th street steps.

10 Things

  1. empty benches
  2. a parked scooter with its red lights still blinking
  3. heard water dripping down the ravine and thought of a grotto with a waterfall
  4. the tree that fell on the trail last week is still there, blocking 2/3rds of the trail
  5. a faint voice below — a rower?
  6. 2 people across the road near Becketwood, crouched near the trees — looking at something? picking up trash? weeding?
  7. a steady stream of cars
  8. a cool green under the tree cover on the Winchell Trail
  9. a week later, the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored
  10. someone walking around the overlook, headed to the part of the stone wall where a dirt trail descends — was he planning to take it?

more How to Read Water

glitter path: a long line of shimmering reflections stretching into the distance. The shape of the glitter path is a measure of how high the sun is and the roughness of the waves.

if you see the glitter path bulge at some spot, that indicates rougher waves

wider glitter path = rougher water
narrower path = calmer water

“the faces of the waves act as mirrors”

seeing faces in waves / pareidolia: the habit of our brains to find patterns and ascribe meaning where there may be none

orange!

If you are gazing down into cloudy water looking at your own shadow, there are a couple of extra effects worth keeping an eye out for. The first is that your shadow may have an orange-hued fringe around it. This happens because the tiny particles in the water don’t reflect all wavelengths (and therefore all colors) back equally to you. Orange makes it back more easily than the others. The second effect, which, if you see the orange “halo” effect, is definitely worth looking for, is that you may spot shafts of sunlight emerging from your shadow and radiating out away from it underwater. This effect is sometimes nicknamed the “aureole effect.” These radiating rays are caused by an optical effect of looking in the opposite direction to the sun

How to Read Water

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees

Warm, buoyant, calm water. I felt fast and strong and confident. Lots of swimmers, a few floating vines. No ducks or fish or dragonflies. At least 2 military planes — black — screaming across the sky. The far green buoy looked robin’s egg blue to me again today. My nose plug squeaked. The water looked mostly light greenish blue with a think layer near the surface that almost looked white. I saw some orange off to the side and shafts of light rising up from the bottom. Translucent bubble encased my hands.

I recited bits from AO’s Dart and Nobody as I looped.

Noticed a swimmer looking so far away from the orange buoy and wondered how much of it was my off perspective and how much of it was them being off course. Probably more me; I struggle with depth perception.

almost forgot: during the second half of a loop, the water suddenly got a lot darker for many seconds — a minute? However long it actually was, it felt like a long time. I couldn’t see what caused it, but I’m imagining the darkness was caused by a cloud. On other days, I felt a shorter darkness pass when a plane passes over the sun.

july 7/RUNSWIM

4.25 miles
monument and back
71 degrees
dew point: 64

Hot! I’ve never liked running in the heat but now that I’m taking lexipro my heat intolerance has increased. For some moments of the run I felt great, other moments I didn’t. So I walked some, ran some, and walked again at different stretches.

10 Things

  1. I kept seeing orange flashes — a sign, a cone, a tree marked for removal
  2. kids yelling and laughing outside at a daycare attached to a church
  3. the river from above, on the bridge, heading east: brown, and looking shallow — were those sandbars I was seeing near the surface?
  4. trickling water out of the limestone below the bridge
  5. the sound of shadow falls, falling
  6. a kid’s voice rising from the ravine
  7. construction on the other side of the lake street bridge — orange cones, trucks, yellow-vested workers, the buzz of equipment
  8. the river from above, on the bridge, heading west: blue and covered in the reflections of clouds*
  9. click clack — a roller skier
  10. seen, not heard: a dog, by the clanging of their collar

*stopped at the bridge overlook to take a picture of the clouds reflected on the surface of the water. Is it just me, or does this look like an impressionist painting?

a view from above the river: gray, corrugated water with reflections of clouds and trees
river with clouds, 7 july 2025

the color of water

How to Read Water is fascinating. Here are some things I’d like to remember from the chapter on color:

The colors we see in water depend on the brightness and angle of the light and the water’s depth, as well as what’s on, in, and under that water.

How to Read Water

something to consider: are you looking at water, or something in or under the water, or a reflection on water’s surface. Is it the color of water, or the color of the ground beneath the water (a puddle), or the color of cloud on its surface? What angle are you looking from?

. . . in many circumstances when we think we are looking at the water, we are actually looking at something different and in the distance. Looking out to the sea in the distance is a great example: What we see in that situation is dominated by the reflection of the sky even further in the distance. This is why the distant sea appears blue in fine weather and gray on overcast days.

How to Read Water

This water looks blue because it’s reflection the sky is one I’ve heard a lot, but I think I’ve always heard it as the reason, not one reason under certain circumstances.

What about when we see different colors — which I often do as I run across the bridge and look down at the water? The different colors are based on how much of the water we are actually seeing. Sometimes I see brown, sometimes blue.

You will notice this if you look for it, but not if you don’t because our brain has gotten used ot this effect and so oesn’t register it as at all peculiar.

something to try: Can you find the area/the moment where the shift takes place from looking only at reflections to being able to see water?

the exact color that can travel furtherest through the water without being absorbed: blue-green color, wavelength = 480 nanometers

Is it a big cloud or Jaws? People often think it has gotten deeper or there are fish around when the water darkens, but it might just be a big cloud.

eutrophication = excessive nutrients — algal blooms reduce light, use up a lot of oxygen, change the color of the water

oligotrophic = low in nutrients, clear

my sparkle friends! “A lot of the particles that see in water will be inorganic, a mixture of mud, sand, clay, silt, chalk, and other substances, each one affecting the colors we see.” Do I see them as anything other than the color sparkle?

Today I’m swimming at Cedar Lake, which is much deeper than Lake Nokomis. It is also more of a “natural” lake than nokomis. What impact do these factors have on its colors and my experiences of them?

swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar lake loops)
cedar lake open swim
82 degrees

The water by the orange buoy closest to Point Beach was almost hot — so warm! It was a little cooler in the middle of the lake and near Hidden Beach, but not that cool. It was also calm. Not much wind, no waves. A few vines floating over and under and around me. Some milfoil by the beach. I forgot to look at the color of the water from above, but I did look below. Blue-green, a few hints of yellow. Opaque.

10 Things

  1. driving past another part of the lake: the surface covered with green vegetation
  2. clear blue sky, then a few clouds, the more clouds, then dark
  3. the first orange buoy seemed much farther out in the water
  4. breathing to my right, seeing some other swimmers halfway across the lake
  5. yellow safety buoys
  6. something in the sky — a plane? a bird? I’m uncertain
  7. the warm water was buoyant; I felt higher on the water
  8. bubbles around my hands
  9. a line of white buoys at hidden beach
  10. a breaststroker, stroking with intensity — are they trying to race me?

Is that what bothers me about breaststrokers I encounter: that they always look so intense and like they are trying to race me or keep up with me? I think of breaststroke as a chill stroke, where you glide and kick as you travel on the surface of the water, able equally to see above and below. But, there’s nothing chill or relaxed about the breaststrokers i encounter!

Before swimming, I worked on memorizing some more lines from Alice Oswald, this time from Nobody, but I got stuck on the beginning and wasn’t able to recite them in my head as I swam:

There are said to be microscopic insects in the eye
who speak Greek and these invisible
ambassadors of vision never see themselves
but fly at flat surfaces and back again
with pigment caught in their shivering hair-like receptors
and this is how the weather gets taken to and fro
and the waves pass each other from one color to the next
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

july 6/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

What a beautiful morning for a swim. Sunny, not too windy. The water was warm and smooth. The sky was blue, the water a greenish-blueish-olive. Flashes of orange every so often. There were a few canoes crossing the path, but no menacing swans or stalking sailboats.

1 2 3 4 5 breathe right
1 2 3 4 5 breathe left

10 Things

  1. a green buoy that sometimes looked white, sometime blue, occasionally green, and often disappeared
  2. a few minnows
  3. glitter on the water from other swimmers’ hands and feet
  4. squeak squeak — my nose plug, leaking air
  5. a feeling of something disturbing the water, then bubbles, then pale legs: how I know I’m nearing another swimmer
  6. the far green buoy looking white and blending into the sailboats in the distance
  7. clear water in the beach/swimming area
  8. pink and yellow safety buoys tethered to torsos
  9. Scooby-doo bubbles
  10. shafts of light underwater, looking like they were coming up from the bottom

Like I did on Thursday, I recited lines from A Oswald on the last segment on my loop. Thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again. I do a lot more shutting, then lifting I think.