Let Sleeping Dragons Lie...

Swim: 30 mins

Tantrums were pitched yesterday. Not just by the four and the two year old but indeed, by me, the 36-year-old. Maybe it was the weather – the thermometer gurgled at 84F although that was positive respite compared to Monday’s 91F. Nope, think it was just a day when grumbling dragons spat fire in our bellies.

We couldn’t peddle our birthday bike (and demanded, not for the first time, that it be taken back to the shop), we didn’t want broccoli, we didn’t want potatoes (in fact we felt so strongly, we threw those), we stubbed our toes on kitchen stools, we didn’t want to wash our hands or share, we were chastised by an abrasive stranger in the post office for playing in the blinds, we couldn’t pull up our bikini bottoms by ourselves, we hit so we didn’t get our fix of evening television, we swore too much, we didn’t have enough gummy worms. We never have enough gummy worms. We couldn’t get the bloody Ants to go in the Pants.

I was scheduled to swim. But the day had growled, snarled and taken a bite. I couldn’t be bothered with the hour-long round trip to the lap pool but knew that more than anything, I needed to do something. The training schedule called for it, but I needed it more.

Round the corner from where we live there’s a body of water called Big Fresh Pond. It is not a pond, it is a lake. It is big, fresh and beautiful.

I’ve been tempted to train for the swim here before but always felt I needed someone with me in case I got into trouble. And also because, against my better judgment, I do worry about what might be lurking at the bottom of it. Tonight I didn’t care. I just wanted out and into something. I exchanged the relay baton with my husband, kissed my girls goodnight and swung onto the bike for the short ride to the lake.

A man was smoking on the small beach at the lakeside. His dog was paddling in the water. Cool evening air breezed. I felt a momentary longing for tobacco. I threw off shoes and socks, pulled on the swim cap, snapped goggles into place.

 I’d been on this beach many times with my kids, paddled with them in the shallows of this water. But I’d never been here alone, well, save for one man and his Golden Retriever. It felt a little eerie, the trees arching over cast different, deeper shadows in this, the last light of day. I spied the bunch of reeds on the other side of the lake – where I planned to swim out to. Go.

The water was peaty coloured, thick. My arms looked luminous against the brown, darkness as I chopped though it. I remembered the snapping turtles which make this lake their home. ‘They’re not predators,’ I heard my husband reassure. But what was in here? I couldn’t see a thing.

I weaved this way and that, felt lungs and heart stretch. I treaded water just to take it all in – where I was, what I was doing.  The man and his dog were now mere dots on the other side of the lake. There were no signs of life at the clutch of picturesque houses framing the lake. Empty chairs sat on deserted jetties. I was all alone out here in this dark, amber water. It felt cooler beneath me now – that dark, unnerving cold you get after swimming too far out in the ocean and then remember sharks live there. That cold which makes you swim back much quicker than you swam out.

But I wasn’t swimming back. I changed course and lurched further left. This was exhilarating. Chilling and a little terrifying but mostly amazing. Twenty minutes had passed. I took a moment to lie on my back, felt buoyed by that uncertain water, strangely safe. An osprey glided lazily. The sky was honey and pink. Clouds drifted like memories.

There may well have been things lurking under that water, big things.  But they weren’t fire-breathing nor were they grumbling. For now, like the dragon in my belly, they were sleeping.

And so, that rare thing, peace.



Big Fresh Pond taken last summer. Told you it wasn't a pond really....