Editor's Note
WATER’S WONDERS by DEBORAH WYATT FELLOWS
photo by Lydia Mejia
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ho can read ashlea walter’s essay this month on open water swimming without wishing you were one of those women 500 yards out into the big lake, bobbing on buoys and reveling in the sunrise and the stories shared? Anyone who swims, who knows the freedom and release found in the water, will find themselves in Ashlea’s sentiment about what it’s like to jump into the water: “I’m 8 years old again: immediate smile, freedom, a release from gravity and the worries that only seem to live on land.” But while I’ve been a swimmer since I was a toddler— much like Ashlea, sink or swim—I marvel at the open water swimmers who head out as early as May to swim in the big lake. I am enormously grateful to get to peek inside Ashlea’s experience, from the meaning found to the care taken. I’ve learned over the years that people have very personal relationships with water. For many, it is the joy of skimming across its surface, propelled by the wind in an ancient connection of the elements. For some, it is enough to feel the presence of water, watching its movement from the shore, relishing the endless play of light and water. For others, it is an almost inborn need to be immersed, engulfed, weightless and silent. I often wonder if a love of the water falls into the camp of nature or nurture. I will never know. Water was, for my mother, one of the most defining parts of her life, and she made sure it was one of ours. A Depression child in Detroit for whom the ensuing poverty was not kind, she was invited as a tween to visit a friend’s summer cottage. For my mom, it must have been a love sprung from nature, as from the moment she first swam in that lake, she was besotted in a way that marked her very being. I sometimes picture that thin, gangly young girl who would grow to be a beauty, finding such freedom and joy in a single body of water. She went many summers after that, and it was legend in that family that even a meal could not entice my mom out of the water. From then on, water was in her soul. Decades later, when my dad got the chance to do surgeries in remote parts of Australia and the Middle East, my mom vowed to swim in every body of water they encountered, and she did—from the Great Barrier Reef to the Arabian Sea and even, much to the consternation of her hosts, the Ganges River.
Her love of water was infectious in the way things are when kids see their parents happy. Did we love it at an early age, or did we love it so much because she did? A moot point because she was determined her four kids would swim and drove us to the Women’s City Club in Detroit every week for swimming lessons where our voices echoed off the tiled surfaces of the enclosed walls that shimmered like a glorious, ancient tomb. A summer swim club found us in Speedos, on starting blocks, but caring mostly for the frolic and the rare treat of a microwaved “hamburger.” Friendships, sunshine, freedom, water. We lived so much in the water that my brother and I confided in each other that we actually thought we could breathe under water. When I was 5, I stood on the block and the coach told me to get to the other end before anyone else. So, I did. And I kept doing so. My brother and I stuck with competitive swimming, not because either of us truly cherished the competition, but because it was how you got to be in the water with other people who loved it, too. But we left races and ribbons behind when we came North. We discovered, as so many have, that in the lake there are no lanes, no cement sides, no chlorine; there is only water—fresh, expansive, mildly mysterious. My siblings found joy in our motorboat and the ever-more-dramatic waterskiing performances. As my sisters grew older, they and their friends would walk, not swim, to the raft with towels, baby oil and transistor radios on their heads, looking to me like the women from other cultures I'd see in our National Geographic magazines, walking to market with wares on their heads. I was still frolicking in those years, swimming stealthily underwater to come up between the large barrels keeping the raft afloat to see if I could hear the older girls’ chatter. But soon bored, I’d be off, swimming like a dolphin to nowhere. I loved that lake water varies in temperature; warmer at the surface, then increasingly colder as you dive down toward the rocky or sandy, muddy bottom. I loved that if I was perfectly still, sometimes minnows would nibble my toes. I loved rolling on my back to simply drift among diamonds on the surface, the clouds above. I was lost and found in the water, in my own way. That’s the thing about water, particularly fresh water Up North: Each of us has our own, very personal relationship with this wondrous, fragile gift we’ve been given. I suspect NORTHERN MICHIGAN'S MAGAZINE
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