Books to Inspire Wild Swimmers

Before starting any new book project, I like to find out what’s already out there on my chosen topic. When I wrote A Sideways Look at Clouds, there was only one book that was at all similar to the book I had in mind to write. That book was the charming and encyclopedic Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, by Gavin-Pretor Pinney. With a title like that, was there anything left for me to write about? It turns out the sky’s the limit when it comes to writing about clouds, but I had to work hard (over 8 years!) to discover fresh, new territory and to approach the clouds from a different angle (hence the sidewayslook at clouds).

Last fall I decided to start a book about swimming across Washington, lake by lake, with hiking and biking and bussing in between. Years ago I had read “The Swimmer,” the 1964 short story by John Cheever and then later watched the movie version starring Burt Lancaster. The story stuck with me as it tends to do if your idea of bliss is to spend an entire summer taking a long walk across your county via your neighbor’s pools (minus the tragic life of the lead character).

My twist on “The Swimmer” was to swim in lakes, not in pools, and write a personal narrative/ natural-history/social history of the lakes I swam in. My swimming skills needed improvement I spent more time swimming laps at the YMCA pool and reading reading reading until late spring when the water warms up enough to swim without a wetsuit.

I first read Lynne Cox’s classic Swimming to Antarctica. Wrong direction! And then I read Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies, a beautifully written and dreamy reflection on competitive and recreational swimming, water, life, love, complete with her own artwork and photos of her vintage bathing suit collection. Right direction. And then there was Lynn Sherr’s Swim: Why We Love the Waterand Lisa Congdon’s The Joy of Swimming: A Celebration of Our Love for Getting in the Water. Also right direction. Each of these books was written by a swimmer, a woman, and combined a personal narrative with a broader story about various aspects of the swimming culture. It was a crowded field. Was there anything left for me to write about?

And then I discovered the Outdoor Swimming Society and realized that there were plenty more memoirs and guides to “wild swimming”—the ancient but now wildly popular practice of swimming in oceans, lakes, rivers, and other “wild” water. It was on the Outdoor Swimming Society’s website that I learned about Kate Rew’s Wild Swim, Jenny Landreth’s Swell: A Waterbiography, Ruth Fitzmaurice’s I Found My Tribe, Joe Minihane’s Floating: A Life Regained, and Alexandra Heminsley’s Leap In: A Woman, Some Waves and the Will to Swim.

Like the newly stirred passion for cloud watching, the epicenter of wild swimming seems to be in Britain. Why? Partly because this island is surrounded by the sea, dotted with lakes, and incised by swimmable rivers. And partly because it has a long history of recreational lake swimming. And partly because it has supported outdoor and indoor public pools since the early 19thcentury. But the recent renaissance in wild swimming I believe can be credited to one man, Roger Deakin, and his nearly-cult classic Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain, which was published in 1999 and, it turns out, was inspired by John Cheever’s “The Swimmer.” 

Published in 1999, this book has lead to wave of “wild swimming” as a popular pastime and subject for a collection of natural history books you’ll want to pack with your bathing suit and towel wherever you go.

“I started to dream ever more exclusively of water. Swimming and dreaming were becoming indistinguishable. I grew convinced that following water, flowing with it, would be a way of getting under the skin of things, of learning something new. I night learn about myself, too. In water, all possibilities seemed infinitely extended. Free of the tyranny of gravity and the weight of the atmosphere. I found myself in the wide-eyed condition described by the Australian poet Les Murray when he said: ‘I am only interested in everything.’”

Most every wild-swimming book published since Waterlogeither acknowledges, quotes, and/or refers to the legacy of Waterlog. Deakin, who died in 2006, wrote a book that got under our skin—only in the best sense—and helped us move our watery selves back into the water, into our landscapes, into the flow and tide and rhythm of the natural world we have largely turned our backs on. 

So here, on the 20thanniversary of the publication of Waterlog, I humbly offer heaps of gratitude to Roger Deakin and to all those who swim and write and dream in his wide wake. On my swims at the Y and in my local lake this spring I carry some part of each of their stories with me into the accepting, giving, wonderful water.

Waterlog enchants readers with its “frog’s-eye view” of the wild waters of the British landscape. (Illustration by David Holmes from chapter one of Waterlog.

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Munn Lake Wild Swim #4

After just four early-season swims in Munn Lake, just south of Olympia, I am feeling more comfortable getting into and swimming in cold water. “Cold” is getting warmer in this lake. My first swim, on March 21, was in 52 degree F water. The water (at least in the shallows) was 60 degrees F today, though it seemed colder without the sun and with the air temperature only in the upper 50s.

My friend and I usually use the concrete slab boat ramp to enter the water, but this darling little rowboat was coming ashore and its owner was going to be using the ramp to trailer the boat. To make sure we were out of his way, we moved with a bit more alacrity that usual. Which was a good thing. It meant we didn’t dawdle on the shore. We splashed water on our faces (a trick to help reduce the shock of the cold water on the rest of your body) and were fully immersed in under five minutes.

It’s amazing what happens in those first few minutes of immersion. The anxiety about getting in (which had been building up all afternoon) dissolves in the water. You stop holding your breath. You breathe somewhat normally. And your body relaxes into the water. And then the water feels good. Or perhaps what feels good comes from the fact you got in. You did it—not exactly gracefully but at least without screaming and thrashing and stating too loudly the obvious: “It’s sooooooo cold!”

My friend and I worked our way to the middle of the lake with a combination breast stroke (head above water) and crawl. At first I could do about 10 strokes before my face hurt. But then, as my skin numbed, I could do 30. But my legs were also numb and my muscles fatigued quickly and I my breathing was becoming a bit more labored than I like. Being sensitive to your own comfort and capability in cold water is essential and I felt no need to push myself into the hypothermic zone.

Splashing water on your face helps with the entry into cold water and sipping hot tea helps with the exit. I like to keep a thermos of hot rooibos tea and few cups in the car. Warming up the core from the inside (instead of from the outside with a hot shower) is best immediately after a cold-water swim.

Once I warmed up back at home and looked at my photo of the little fishing boat, I realized how much it looked like a water boatman—the aquatic insects that have long oar-like legs that help them move across and under the water with natural grace.

Water boatman. (Photo by E. van Herk - nl:Afbeelding:Notonectaglauca.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=506562

Banks Lake

 Standing on the rim of the spectacular Dry Falls canyon 400 feet high and 3 miles wide and looking down into still pools of water, it is hard to imagine what was once the world’s largest waterfall flowing over this rim. “Flowing” hardly describes what the water was doing. It was churning, chewing, rushing, gushing, flooding, scouring, plucking, wrenching, and muscling its way through the layers of volcanic basalt of the Columbia Plateau on its way toward the Pacific Ocean. Where did all this water come from? During the end of the Pleistocene ice age, between 18,000 and 15,000 year ago, when the Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered much of North America, a glacier a half a mile thick advanced southward from Canada into the Idaho panhandle where it blocked the flow of the Clark Fork River. This caused the river to back up into the mountain valleys and form a vast lake known as Glacial Lake Missoula, in what is today western Montana. At its peak, this lake was 2,100-feet deep and held over 530 cubic miles of water (as much as Lakes Eerie and Ontario combined). When the ice dam broke up, all that water was released across the landscape and emptied Glacial Lake Missoula in a matter of a few days. The water flooded across the Columbia Plateau at speeds of up to 65 mph, carrying with it huge blocks of ice, massive boulders, columns of basalt, trees, animals, anything in it is path. The water eventually followed the course of the Columbia River, south and then west to the Pacific Ocean.

These epic ice-damming-and-flooding events happened not once, but as many as seventytimes during this period. Known as the Missoula Floods or the Spokane Floods, these flooding events created a landscape as magnificent as the more eloquently named Grand Canyon, thought that natural treasure is the work of the relatively slow and patient work of the Colorado River, not the multiple cataclysms of a single lake. 

The floods created a regional landscape known, unfortunately, as “channeled scablands.” Yes, the floods did carve channels in the basalt. Yes, the eroded-but-remaining ragged basalt “islands” between the channels could appear to resemble raised scabs on skin, but really? 

The name “channeled scablands” was coined in the 1920s by the now-famous geologist J. Harlen Bretz, who proved to the very-resistant scientific community that ancient cataclysmic floods –and not eons of slow erosion--created this unique landscape. Though “scabland” was already in use by the locals, I wonder if anyone (Harlen’s wife, Fanny, perhaps) suggested that perhaps “Glacial Glorylands” or “Channeled Heartland” might have been a better choice.

Glacial Lake Missoula was not the only glacial lake within the channeled scablands stretching across Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. In Washington, Glacial Lake Columbia formed 50 miles north of present-day Coulee City, when a Pleistocene-era glacier blocked a section of the west-flowing Columbia River that drained through this area. The Columbia was diverted southward where it augmented the work of Glacial Lake Missoula carving a series of canyons known today as “Grand Coulee.” 

Map from National Geographic’s “Channeled Scablands.” Read excellent story here.

Coulee is a geologic term, describing canyons or ravines formed by water erosion or floods. Coulee is derived from the French couler, meaning “to flow.” The only explanation I have read for why this very American piece of real estate has a fancy French name comes from my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, which suggests the word may have entered the lexicon through French fur trappers in the Oregon region, trappers who were presumably used this word while tramping through steep terrain en route to blessedly flat beaver ponds and meadows. 

The Grand Coulee features two main canyons. The northern canyon holds Banks Lake and is filled with water diverted from the Columbia by the Grand Coulee Dam. The southern canyon holds no lake but several small lakes. These groundwater-filled lakes are not for swimming or fishing but for stretching our imaginations. These ponds were once the deep plunge pools of the diverted and flooding Columbia River as it reshaped itself into a 3.5-mile-wide waterfall that dropped 400 feet from its lip. Though these falls would have once dwarfed Niagara Falls, the retreat of the Columbia River to its old channel left us with the more stunning and less touristy geologic wonder now known as Dry Falls.  

Had the northern half of the Grand Coulee not been dammed in 1942, Banks Lake would likely look very similar to Dry Falls: a steep-walled coulee of exposed basalt and worn bedrock holding small lakes. Imagine the southern end of the Dry Falls coulee being dammed and then being filled with water diverted from the Columbia. When you swim in Banks Lake, this is what you are swimming in.

The construction of the Grand Coulee Dam began in 1933 during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to get Americans back to work after The Depression (it employed 12,000 during several years of construction). This U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project was initially conceived to create a storage and delivery system of water for farmland irrigation, but now the dam also generates hydroelectric power (it’s the largest producer in the U.S.) and has created popular recreational lakes. Behind the dam is Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake Recreation Area and below are Banks Lake, Lake Lenore, Soap Lake, and several smaller ice-age lakes that offer fishing, swimming, boating. 

These lakes are partly natural. The wide channels were carved by ice-age flooding but the lakes are not fed by groundwater, rain or snow melt, or an inflow stream. They are fed by an artificial canal that flows upstream of the Grand Coulee Dam. Though the Columbia River itself no longer not flow through Banks Lake, it’s water—via the feeder canal—does. 

This this aerial photo above shows the Grand Coulee Dam, the feeder canal in the center, and the 27-mile-long Banks Lake in the entire upper half of the photo. Banks Lake is actually a reservoir. Twelve of the world’s largest pumps draw water from Roosevelt Lake and pump it into Banks Lake. From there the water is delivered via siphons, pumps and thousands of miles of waterways (canals) to irrigate 600,000 acres of farmland south of the lake. If you squint at your Washington road atlas, you’ll spot the Main Canal as well as the “Bacon Siphon” south of Banks Lake. (Yes, The Bacon Siphon would make a good name of a roadside diner. Down-the-rabbit-hole history on naming of Bacon here.

Water from the Columbia River is diverted from the Grand Coulee Dam and pumped up into Banks Lake via this engineered canal. (Photo by M.M. Ruth)

When I moved to Washington in 2006, the Missoula Floods popped up in conversation every once in a while (the Bacon Siphon never did), but I retained only that these floods were humongous and originated in Montana. Even when, a few years later, I made my first trip to eastern Washington with friends for a late-summer “swim tour” of Banks Lake, the geologic history of coulee country and the channeled scablands just washed over me. I believe I was so preoccupied with the Big Swim, with keeping pace with my serious long-distance swimmer friends, and with not getting hypothermic and drowning that I did not fully embrace the terror of water, ice, boulders, and basalt, that was the legacy of the now lovely and becalmed Banks Lake.

What I remember of my Banks Lake swim a decade ago seems like a dream. It was September and post peak tourist season. It was 90-degrees hot, sunny, dry, and the landscape was nothing like western Washington. We parked near a campground at Steamboat Rock State Park and then walked down a deserted trail to a white sandy beach. The three of us got in the water and set our sights across the narrow passage in Devil’s Punchbowl to the east side of the lake. When we noticed a lull in motorboat traffic, we swam like mad across the passage and then entered a cove. The cove was a narrow labyrinth of half-submerged boulders. The labyrinth was too narrow for a kayak and, in places, just wide enough for a single swimmer. 

During our swim, we pulled ourselves out of the water and onto the sun-warmed rocks to take the chill off. Once our goosebumps were gone and our skin was dry, we slipped back into the water and the rest of the world slipped away. This was unlike any place I had ever been or dreamed of. We swam for hours here and further south at Lake Lenore. We were floating the ice-age channel filled with water from the Columbia River. We were swimming in the landscape. This is one of the things I love most about swimming in lakes. I’m in water but I feel nestled in the solid Earth.

I spend a lot of time walking in forests and, short of getting inside a hollow tree or digging myself a hole in the forest floor and lying down in it, I have not yet managed to reach that immersive state that I do in a lake. Though I am working on imagining I am inthe sweet moist atmosphere of the forest, I am still walking among trees and shrubs. 

In hindsight, I am glad that I swam unencumbered by the geologic history of this place, by familiarity with the workings of the Grand Coulee Dam, the network of irrigation siphons and canals, the flooded towns and lost homesteads, and impact on the Colville tribe that fished the Columbia River above the dam, the meaning of the word “reclamation.”

I cannot remember the clarity of the water, whether or not there were submerged plants to swim through, or if I could see the bottom of the lake. Alas, I’ve lost any photographs I might have taken on this trip. My memory has been distilled into “it felt really good.” The water. The rocks. The depth. The sun. But mostly the water.

I’ll post on Banks Lake again after I find my way back to the labyrinth this summer. My poorly timed spring visit proved to be too early. My once deliciously liquid lake was still frozen.

Nice to have Banks Lake locked in ice for my tour of my Ice-Age Geology tour of the Grand Coulee. (Photo by M.M. Ruth)

FOR FURTHER READING…

Just some of the readily available books on how our friend, the water molecule, ganged up on the Columbia Plateau. (Photo by M.M. Ruth)

Can’t Get Enough?

Check out the Washington State Department of Natural Resources’s beautiful Washington’s Ice-Age Floods story map.

And here are some maps and resources from the Ice Age Flood Institute on the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail.

Munn Lake Wild Swim #2

After a bit of wavering and wobbling and last-minute rescheduling, the first group swim of the season went off…swimmingly! The previous day, I had checked the temperature of the water at Munn Lake (just 4 miles south of Olympia) and also the slightly shallower Deep Lake (further south in Millersylvania State Park). Both lakes were between 56 and 58 degrees F and so we opted for the closer, small, and more sheltered Munn Lake.

Like many of the lakes in Washington state, Munn Lake was formed in the wake of the retreat of the Puget Lobe of the Vashon Glacier that covered South Puget Sound during the last ice age, which occurred 19,000 to 13,000 years before the present time. Munn Lake is within the Deschutes River Basin and is fed by groundwater seeps and precipitation; there are no inflows and outflows from Munn Lake.

This lake was named after Edwin Munn, a dairy farmer who settled in the area in the early 1900s. Thanks to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which maintains access to the lake via a paved entrance road, parking lot, and concrete slab boat ramp, members of the public can enjoy non-motorized boating, fishing, and swimming in the lake.

On this breezy Friday afternoon in April, four swimmers and a cheering squad of two made drove in a brief rain shower to gather at the top of the boat ramp. We set up chairs, hot water for tea, and pans of brownies and almond cake. There were just two fishermen on the far end of the lake—incentive for us to go gently into this good water.

“Are we really doing this?” I asked because i knew everyone was thinking it.

Yes. Though not without much “Nooooo!” body language, brief posing for a group photo, mild shrieking, and nervous laughter.

Getting psyched: This looks like a summer day on the boat ramp into Munn Lake, but on April 12, the water temperature was 56 degrees F and the air temperature not much higher. While 56 degrees F might be “warm”to some wild swimmers, it seemed “do-ably brisk” to us. Photo by A. Butler

Our foursome covered what I imagine is the typical range of swimmers: One moved quickly into the water like a mermaid with no fanfare or yelping. One was a wee bit tepid but with a few deep breaths entered the water gracefully, swam several strokes with her head under water and stayed in longer than anyone else. One (me) who really really wanted to get back into the warm car but, once numb from the waist down, stopped resisting, slid in tensely, and then kicked and flapped madly to stay warm. And one who got in up to her neck then retreated to the warmth of dry land to join the cheering squad, vowing to build up her cold-water tolerance. One thing we all had in common was that we were smiling and laughing all the way. And smiling even more broadly when the sun came out.

Getting In: Though we all stood on the boat ramp at the same time, we were out of sync getting in. The two furthest out did a relaxed breast and crawl; the one in the middle (me) flutter kicked; and the one on the foreground wore her flip-flops in, carried one out while returning to shore soon after her plunge. Photo by A. Butler

I’ve been trying to figure out where the resistance to cold water lies, where the lure of cold water originates, and what is happening physically, mentally, emotionally when we overcome 5 minutes of discomfort to reap the benefits of 15 minutes of immersion in cold water. Does the water actually feel good or is the anticipation of the endorphin exhilaration after the swim enough to block any “pain” we might feel in cold water? Does swimming in a group make the water more tolerable, enjoyable, beneficial?

Or was these feel-good vibes just the effect of being in water, in cold water, or simply out in nature? I think I’ll answer “yes” to all my questions here.

All of this topped by post-plunge cups of hot tea and goodies, conversation, and sunshine.

For more than a decade, I have swum in Munn Lake. Sometimes alone (in summer) and sometimes with other swimmers, floaters, and the fish and the osprey. On the first day of spring this year, I swam in this same lake with a friend. The water was 52 degrees, the air an unseasonable 80. We didn’t really swim. We stayed in the water for a good 15 minutes just smiling and laughing and appreciating the company and the very fact that in the Pacific Northwest, we could just walk into a lake in March and loll around as long as we wanted. That swim was at least twice as much fun as my solo swims and very empowering. I could swim in cold water (and enjoy it) and I lived in a community where other people did too. Similarly, swimming with three other people tripled the fun and having a land-based support group (bundled in down, fleece, and blankets) boosted the fun-o-meter even higher.

Getting out: Once you’re finally in it’s easy to stay in. Photo by A. Butler

Feeling Good: Three levels of head submersion: Full (left), none (middle); only the ends (right). Photo by M.T. Goforth

Feeling Better: Oh the joys of warm, dry clothes and a hot cuppa tea! Photo by M.M. Ruth

MUNN LAKE is a smallish, shallow lake 4 miles south of Olympia. It has easy access via the boat ramp managed by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (Discover Pass required). Because this is a relatively shallow lake (19 feet at its deepest) this lake warms up more quickly than other nearby lakes (Ward, Hewitt, for example). Munn is stocked for catch-and-release fishingh rainbow trout and has a naturally reproducing population of largemouth bass, yellow perch, bluegill, sunfish, and black crappie—though none nibbled at our toes during our swim. As with any lake where fishing and swimming occur, watch your step for hooks and other sharp things. For more info and directions to Munn Lake, visit the WDFW site here. Munn Lake is periodically closed to swimming due to chemical treatment of the invasive aquatic vegetation that blocks the flow of water between Munn and Susan Lake. Warning signs are posted at the boat ramp.

Liquid bliss. Photo by M.M. Ruth