“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
I was a late bloomer to competitive swimming. When I was thirteen, I approached the coach of the local swim team and announced my desire to join. He kindly informed me that I was too old. I persisted, and he gave in.
I started off in the same lane as the 3rd and 4th graders. Most of them were faster than me and had much better technique. I didn’t care. I had dreams! I showed up early and stayed late. I swam laps before and after practice. I lifted weights. I jogged every evening. I worked my way up the lane hierarchy and before long I was dominating the lane for high schoolers.
A few years later, I became a lifeguard and swimming instructor and went on to coach a team of my own. I even taught others how to become lifeguards. And at Smith, I went on to compete on a national level.
I have spent countless hours swimming back and forth in pools. If there is one thing I have full confidence in, it is my swimming skills: I am an extremely strong swimmer.
But as with anything in life, context is everything.
The first time I jumped into the Connecticut River, I found myself —within a matter of seconds— 50 feet downstream from where I entered. The second time, I jumped in, turned and immediately swam directly against the current. It was like being on a treadmill. I managed to stay in one place but it took effort, and the longer I managed to remain in one place the more tired I became, physically and mentally.
During a recent tubing expedition in the Deerfield River (whose current is tame compared to the Connecticut), I was reminded of how deceptive a river can be. I reclined in my inner tube as the shoreline slowly wafted by. My boys floated ahead of me, laughing. I watched as ducks and other birds flew overhead. It was a perfect day for a lazy river ride.
Whenever rocks appeared I scooted around them in my tube, pushing against them with my feet. But then I grew curious. Like a child who climbs up the playground slide instead of sliding down, I felt the sudden urge to resist the current, to see if I could stop myself mid-stream.
I planted my feet firmly on a large stone sticking up out of water and held myself steady. A massive rush of river pushed against my back, and my entire body became a breaker, the water cresting in sudden white waves around me.
That’s how a river works. You can almost forget its there until you try to resist it.
The Deerfield is nothing compared to the river I grew up near. What the Piscataqua lacks in length, it makes up for in might. Home to one of the fastest flowing tidal waterways in the Continental United States, it is one of the most dangerous rivers in the country.
It was into one of its many tributaries that I jumped from bridges, and floated around in on an inner tube with my best friend from high school, stopping at various docks to flirt with the tanned and wrinkled lobstermen. We never dared enter the central waterway. Even I knew to stay away from the main artery, the one that beats so rapidly into the cold heart of the Atlantic.
My respect for this river is likely a vestige of the many solemn warnings I received as a child, living in an old farmhouse whose back woods bordered the river. Even in an era in which kids ran wild for hours sans parental supervision, my mother would make me promise, every time I left the house, to never, ever, enter the river. “Not even your feet,” she said, her hands on my shoulders, leaning down to gaze solemnly into my eyes. If I did, she warned, I would be swept away and end up in the Atlantic before I could even cry for help.
When I became a lifeguard, I learned about river drownings. I was taught the unique challenges of a deep river rescue, which can be difficult and dangerous. However, I learned that if one can maintain a calm head (and a high enough body temperature), survival is possible.
So, if you are caught in a current and nobody is coming to save you, you have five options:
Swim against the current.
When one sees how quickly the current carries one away from the original starting point, often the first impulse is to panic and immediately attempt to return to ones starting point. This is the quickest way to become exhausted and drown.
Swim with the current.
The easiest and fastest way to end up in the sea (and drown).
Swim perpendicular to the current towards the shore.
The second easiest and fastest way to end up in the sea (and drown).
Do nothing.
The third easiest and fastest way to end up in the sea (and drown).
Compromise.
Swim with the current, but in a diagonal line towards the shore. You will end up VERY far away from where you started, but you will (probably) live to tell the tale.
So where am I now? Or more to the point, where are we?
Clearly we are in a deep river. Some of us have an inkling but none of us can fully comprehend the depth.
The current is swift and the hour is late.
Do not panic. Do not try to swim back to where you came from. But also, do not give up hope and simply allow the river to carry you to your end. We must keep swimming and we must keep our eyes on the shore. We will reach it eventually.
And when we do, we will pitch camp. We will build a fire. And we will tell the story to our children, and they will tell it to theirs; the story of how we managed to survive such a strong and terrible current. And hopefully this time, our children will learn to respect this river, one whose current runs so deep, so ancient and so wild.
With the river in my area, it is the undertow that is so dangerous. The top of the river looks calm and swimmers have gone in to be pulled under the water by an unseen and powerful cross-current. Local mothers also urgently warn their children of the river's dangers, but sometimes kids will swim it anyway, and we have had fatalities. The complexity of the river is a good metaphor for our times. Good article.