Swimming in sunshine, summer or winter, is astonishingly beautiful above and below the water.
The sun came out today. And it was indeed beautiful everywhere.
The hum of life filled the neighborhood, as my neighbor and I strolled to the landing clutching our neon orange swim buoys, a thermos of hot chocolate carefully tucked in my bag beside my maroon bathrobe and swim gear.
We passed happy dogs and their owners along the way, arriving to the beach to find a young a family exploring the beach, a rainbow of smiles among them. Everything seemed so peaceful.
Seagulls filled the blue sky, soaring confidently over the beach, releasing their catch onto the rocks below to force the tight shells open, then dropping down to devour the salty morsels within.
The bright sun was low in the winter sky, turning the water into diamonds, afloat on light waves from the south, and a steady breeze tickled my cheeks as I lowered my hands into the icy water.
The water isn’t getting any warmer, by the way.
I’m afraid it doesn’t feel any warmer than the first time I took a cold water swim. What has changed is my mindset. Even though the cold hurts, even though my hands scream a bit as they rebel from the temperature change when I first get in, I am somehow calmed by the knowledge that I survived this last time. My body will acclimate. All of the real work is in my head. I am stronger than this.
There is no greater test of patience than the cold water wait.
The real challenge isn’t the actual swimming. The biggest challenge for me is the first five minutes as I subject myself to a not very hospitable world and keep my eyes looking out towards the horizon, spinning if need be in all four directions, studying the colors, the front row water view, while my blood cools and moves inward preserving all the heat in my core.
But the reward of overcoming the physical challenge of cold water swimming is always close at hand. Once I start, the water takes hold and I am set free, sailing suspended in liquid life.
And this is in a full wet suit.
My swim buddy, Dave, a die hard skin swimmer year round has found his winter stride, and is swimming most days. Even now. In January. And me, head to toe in neoprene except my hands and face can only muster up courage once or twice a week at best this time of year.
It’s not a contest. But I do envy him the freedom he has going without a wetsuit year round. I will wait for the warmer months to leave my selkie suit behind. He has less to carry, and can change more quickly. On the flip side he must work through the less than pleasant jolt of “afterdrop”, with unavoidable shivering as his body works hard to rewarm and pump the blood back to wherever it needs to go.
The magic of water is of course that anything goes. There are no rules on how to be in the water, besides the obvious of not sinking. Winter swimming does put some constraints on the length and manner of swimming by the simple fact that it’s just too cold. With or without a wetsuit. No one wants hypothermia.
Today as we carved slowly through a mile of green choppy water, aglow with fuzzy beams of sunlight, Dave circled back several times to not leave me in the dust and to keep his body moving in order to prevent turning into a man-shaped iceberg.
I tired on our last half mile, swimming north against the tide with choppy waves rocking us up and down, throwing saltwater in our faces.
I knew that to finish this swim I needed to shift my mindset. I had mistakenly peeked behind me several times to find myself dismally close to the beach house I thought I’d long ago left behind. To finish would require me to focus on what was right in front of me, or directly below me, with every stroke. Looking behind me slowed me down, leaving me feeling as downcast as a shriveled up balloon.
As expected this time of year, other than the seagulls circling about above us and some wintering ducks riding the waves nearby, all was quiet. When we paused midway, Dave told me we had a visitor. The resident seal was following us, but I never saw her myself.
Instead, I saw one crab on the way back, just as I worked to put all of my focus on each stroke. A few strokes later I spotted a large white mass on the rocks below. Curiosity won despite my fatigue and desire to finish, and I dove down. It took two drives and unclipping my buoy to confirm what I had found.
A moon snail. A massive moon snail.
How it got it’s name is a mystery to me, but what I do know is that this creature was a ghostly white not unlike the moon and looked like it came from another planet. Possibly the moon. I suppose one could argue that both of these statements could be used to describe many creatures on planet Earth. It’s certainly an apt name for this one.
The moon snail deserves more description, especially for those whom are not familiar with or have yet to see one. First off, most of a moon snail is the body, not the shell, when they are alive and plump with water. This moon snail was the size of a bunch of bananas, a sold white slippery mass, completely flat on the bottom. It’s shell looked like a cap, tucked oddly but securely atop its firm gelatin-like mass of a body.
This salt water animal can hide its entire body within its shell simply by expelling water. A lot of water.
And the snail is not pretty by traditional standards. Before I knew what it was I was looking at below me I was honestly a little freaked out. Once I dove down and realized what it was my nervousness subsided. But as often happens in the water, I was drawn towards the unknown and the very human experience of insatiable curiosity and the need to discover new things.
With no travel possible these days, again I found my adventure close to home—in the Salish Sea.
All of these months of swimming along this shore, and other beaches around the island, and I’d never spotted a moon snail before. For months I’ve plucked moon snail shells and mostly broken remnants from the beaches and waterways, aware that the living ones were living safely tucked in the sandy bottom, laying their grey speckled nests here and there, the sight of which reminds one of a discarded tire. Hermit crabs will claim discarded shells for their own homes too sometimes. And evidence of the moon snails are everywhere upon the beaches—their hall mark calling card is the tiny holes they drill into the top of clam shells—always by the hinge for some reason—in order to suck out the gooey goodness inside.
I couldn’t believe my luck and delight with this sighting.
I called to Dave to let him know why I had stopped.
With one last look, I continued on. A few minutes later, another one appeared, much smaller than the first.
And then another.
And another.
The fourth and final moon snail showed her amazing self as I reached the landing.
One moon snail would have been enough. Seeing four today felt like winning the lottery. My months of collecting fragments of moon shells led to this moment today.
I don’t know what or if these sightings are a sign or symbol of good things to come, but I think I’ll hedge my bets and take them as a sign that at the very least, life goes on, and beauty may be found everywhere—it is deep and not always visible to our eyes.
Beauty is what we notice, what we choose to see.
Mary Swims 
✨💥🏄🏻♀️☀️🏄🏻♀️💥✨