Swimming Among the Stars

Tags

adventure, exploring, human consciousness, Milky Way, poetry, sailing, Sea of Cortez, swimming, universe, writing

Milky Way

Last night I swam among the stars. The air and water temperatures were both 78 degrees, so it felt like I was moving from one warm atmosphere into another more dense when I stepped in my pool. There was no moon and the Milky Way was strewn across the sky like scattered bones of light. When I lay on my back to watch them, it felt like I was floating among the stars.

And then I realized–I was! We all are.

We sail across the universe on the back of a tiny planet at the edge of a galaxy that swirls around us. Too often we forget that–how embedded we really are in the universe.

I became acutely aware of this one night when we were crossing the Sea of Cortez from Baja to mainland Mexico. There was no wind, no moon. The sea was perfectly still like the surface of a dark mirror, marred only by our trailing wake.

Above us the bare mast stirred a billion stars, which were reflected in the sea’s surface below. I felt like we were on a starship sailing through the cosmos.

Stars reflected in the water

Later that night I wrote this:

Night Crossing, Sea of Cortez

The sea appears so simple

With a dark, indulgent face

The stars there twice reflected

Like a world spun out of space

Our sloop shoots through the cosmos

Through a mute and moonless night

Our wake a fiery comet

Streaming effervescent light

With all the universe inert

We slip from star to star

Then reach across the Milky Way

Toward galaxies afar

Eons swirl, light-years unfurl

And none can still our flight

Leaping toward the infinite

To apprehend the light.

I’m not alone in seeing the overlap between the ocean and the night sky. Various artists are fond of depicting whales and dolphins and other sea creatures swimming among the stars. The ocean and the universe stand at the edge of the wild, the last two true frontiers we have to explore, except for the human consciousness, of course.  The ocean and the universe have become symbols for consciousness as well as adventure.

We seem to grasp that there is something that connects all three—some deep, dreamy, ever-flowing, ungraspable, powerful yet nurturing element in which we all are steeped. That calls us to move beyond ourselves, beyond the safe and familiar, the already known. That inspires us to reach for something that lies just beyond our grasp.

I’m still reaching. Are you? What calls you to move beyond yourself into the unknown?

Other nature posts with poetry

Night Howls

Walking Among Flowers

Hot Hills in Summer Heat

Touching the Wild

“A Scattering of Rocks” – Zen in the Garden of Eden

The Wildness of Water

Tags

diving, Nature, sailing, snorkeling, swimming, water, wild

Now that the weather has warmed and heated our pool, Dale and I go swimming every afternoon. It’s not just the exercise we look forward to, or the relief from the heat, or a pleasant way to wind down the day together. There’s something sensual and delicious about slipping into the cool water, gliding hands over head through folds of flowing silk, becoming weightless and transparent suspended beneath the sky.

I haven’t swum so much since we were living aboard La Gitana and sailing along the coasts of Baja and across the south Pacific. Then it was mostly snorkeling along the reefs, chasing schools of colorful fish, or diving for rock scallops.

Chris and Kelli snorkeling

We’d go early in the morning to forage for food and stay for hours, swimming in pairs. Dale and our son Chris would hunt for fish and lobster with spears. Our daughter Kelli and I would swim away in the opposite direction with abalone knives strapped to our ankles and net bags dangling from our waists, diving for scallops and conch.

But much of the time was spent sight-seeing, watching the flow of sea-life below us, diving closer to investigate, hovering like humming birds to take it all in. We lost track of time. Only when our goody bags became too full, or our bodies had lost so much heat we were shivering would we reluctantly agree to head back to the dinghy.

We lived off the sea as much as possible, by choice and necessity. Sometimes we’d be away from civilization for weeks at a time. We had no refrigeration and depended upon our diving for fresh food. We’d preserve in marinades or dry what we couldn’t eat immediately. But mostly we tried to catch only what we could eat that day.

Now it’s a different kind of swimming. I watch the wildlife while floating on my back–a pair of golden eagles circling and calling overhead, yellow breasted finches hiding among the oak leaves swooping down to drink from the waterfall, a red-headed woodpecker chasing them away.

But the pure pleasure that swimming brings is the same. I’m hardly alone in loving the way water looks, feel, sounds. Others have captured the allure of swimming better than I can:

When we swim we shed our higher consciousness, the complex, reasoning human organism, and remember, deep inside ourselves, the first oceanic living cell; we almost become our origins. Whether in lake, ocean, or pool, there comes that moment when the world of our ordinary preoccupations washes away and we sink into a meditative state where the instinctual, intuitive, subconscious mind can tell us what we need to know. . . . In the world of water, we become aware of our skin, of the body’s limits and definitions, while we are simultaneously wrapped in an element so familiar, so delightful, sensual that we feel we have come home.

—From Splash! Great Writing About Swimming by Laurel Blossom

Honduras, Bay Islands

Being immersed in water takes us back to a primordial place–whether it’s through memories of the womb, or the watery origins of life on earth, or the fact that our very bodies are primarily water. Water is not only essential to our well-being, but central to our very being.Whether diving for food, or doing laps in a pool, we feel the pure joy–the wildness–of water.

Do you love to swim?  In what ways does water speak to you?