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It was a beautiful, early fall day last Thursday. Sunny and 65 degrees. A perfect day for a walk along the Mississippi River on the Winchell trail.

Last week, I walked around Como Lake in St. Paul. This walk wasn’t about exercising or getting anywhere in particular. I walked because I happened to be at the lake, waiting for STA to finish a meeting.

Footage from my walk around Como Lake. Total distance around lake = 2.6 miles

These days, I rarely take walks like this. Walks where I slowly wander by myself, observing my surroundings and ruminating on life. I don’t take walks because I’m usually running. I love running, but it’s different than taking a walk.

When I run, I run quickly and intensely.  But when I take a walk, I walk slowly and leisurely. I amble along, breathing in the air, listening to the birds or, more often these days, the bugs, and being curious about the world and my place within in it. When I run, I don’t think too much. I just listen to my current playlist and try to let go…of stress, nagging doubts and critical thoughts. Shutting down my brain, and my penchant for thinking critically and creatively all of the time, is a good thing and I’m glad that running helps me do it. But I like taking walks. I like the space and time it gives me for thinking deeply and slowly. I get great ideas while I’m taking walks. Inspiration for new projects, revelations about my life, tentative solutions to problems I’m encountering.  I need to take more walks this fall.

 

A few years ago, I embarked on a digital moments project. The goals of that project were to document my life, using small, often mundane, fragments of my day and to get in the habit of using and experimenting with digital video. It was such a fun and useful project. Even now, every couple of months, we (STA, FWA, RJP and me) sit down and watch different “moments.” I want to start creating these again this fall. Maybe something different this time? Instead of just creating stand alone moments, sometimes I’ll try to write about the footage. Here’s my first one: Swimming at the dock.

Just outside of the orange buoys at the little beach at Lake Nokomis, there is a small platform that you can swim to, sit on or dive off of. I call it “the dock.”  I can’t remember how long it has been there, but for the past three years, it has been one of my key landmarks (or watermarks?) at the lake.

This summer, the dock played a big part in two of my favorite swimming practices:

The dock at the 50th street beach. Video shot from lifeguard's chair.

one: While swimming across the lake during open swims (on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays), the dock served as the halfway point of my 1200 yard loop, from the big beach to the little beach and back again. The first year I swam across the lake in 2013, I would frequently stop as I swam from one beach to the next, to get my bearings and to take a rest. The second year, I successfully swam across the lake without stopping, but I always took a brief break at the little beach before heading back to the big beach. This year, I swam in loops, starting and ending at the big beach. It was fun to circle around the dock without stopping. Sometimes kids would be sitting on the dock watching the swimmers. I’d glance at them as I turned my head to breathe or lifted just my eyes, like an alligator gliding through the water, to see where I was going.

two: Occasionally, when she wasn’t in camp, my daughter RJP would come with me to the lake and we would swim out to the dock together. After making sure she made it up the ladder, I’d swim around the three white buoys that marked the lap swimming area. After I rounded the third buoy, RJP would jump off the dock and meet me. We’d chat for a few seconds, then she’d climb back up and I’d start another loop. After a few loops, we’d swim back closer to shore and do handstands in the water. Then we’d sit in the sun and read.

It’s August 24th. The first day of school for FWA (7th grade) and RJP (4th grade). The last time I wrote about their first day, FWA was entering 4th grade and I was beginning my first fall since I was 5 not being in school, either as a student or a teacher. Wow. A lot has changed. Just check out how much older FWA and RJP look in these pictures:

Here’s a short video story that I made about their first day in 2012:

Last week, after deliberating for months, I decided to sign up for the Superior Man Triathlon in Duluth. In the first leg of the race, you swim in Lake Superior. Yes! I love Lake Superior. I was born on it and spent the first four years of my life swimming in it, or yearning to swim in it. We moved away when I was four.

Before she died, my mom had several legendary stories that she liked to tell about me as a kid. One of those stories involved Lake Superior and how much I loved swimming in it. It didn’t matter how cold it was, I was ready to jump in. Every time we went back to the UP for summer visits, she would recount my crazy love for that freezing water. Since she died in 2009, I like to tell her story to my kids when we visit the Lake in the UP or on the North Shore of Minnesota,  bragging to them about how I, as a little kid, would happily swim in the icy water at Gay Beach or Lac La Belle.

That legendary story was only about Sara, age 4. Since moving away from Lake Superior, I frequently, almost annually, return to it, but I don’t swim in it. I hike its shores, climbing on the rocks at Hunter’s Point in UP Michigan and Two Harbors on the North Shore of Minnesota. I dip my toes in its beautiful water at Silver City near the Porcupine Mountains. And I walk and run on the paved paths on its waterfronts in Duluth and Houghton. But, in the over 36 years since moving away, I haven’t been as brave (or crazy) as I was as a kid, when I’d eagerly jump in whenever the air (not water) temperature rose above 70 degrees.

But now I’m 41 and I’ve signed up for a crazy triathlon in which you jump out of a boat in the bay at Canal Park and then swim a half of mile in Lake Superior. According to the race guide, the water temperature could be in the 50s. Wetsuits aren’t optional, they’re required. I’m nervous, but I’m also excited. I can’t wait to add onto the legendary story of Sara, the fearless little girl who loved swimming in Lake Superior.