8 FT

Barton Springs Early Morning Swim Report, 11/21/2024

At 6AM, as I drove down Barton Springs Road, my car made its most polite noise of warning, a gentle bong to explain that it was now 39 degrees. A little snowflake lit up on the dash, in case I didn’t know that 39 degrees is cold.

Dark, starry, clear, and cold, my favorite swimming conditions. In tough times, it’s good to feel hardy, if you can. Strange positive emotions are good. A little oxygen, a little light. As I walked to the pool some creature with a shrieking chirp stated its case. Chreak! Chreak! Chreak! Bird, bug, reptile, rodent, mammal: I’m not sure. I agreed with whoever it was.

Once again I was mistaken on the deck for somebody named LeeAnn. I apologized for not being her. I really was sorry. Only later did I realize I might have introduced myself. Then, peripatetic recluse that I am, I was glad I hadn’t.

I’ve been very entertained by my realization that I’ve made myself most awfully visible with my poolside get-ups. Besides the vast boiled wool dress, I have a selection of woolen layers I sometimes wear, and now I feel like I’m one of those figures of New England legend—or maybe just specifically The Leatherman, a vagabond who walked around Connecticut and New York State wearing layers and layers of leather. Yes: I feel like that, even though my layers are made (I am a middle-aged 21st Century white lady) of Eileen Fisher, Universal Standard, and Marimekko. Still, I probably look pretty weird, when apres-swim I go to the co-op. I suppose vagabond is just another way to say peripatetic recluse.

The Egyptian geese are loud these days. Perhaps they’re protesting the state of the world, and who could blame them? This place is no place to bring up goslings.

Still I got to meet and hold an exceptional three-week-old baby recently, and I have seen dear old friends, and finished a book, all excellent oxygen, and tonight I will hear Hernan Diaz read and then I’ll jump in the car to see the third in a series of Peter Lorre films at the Austin Film Society, ditto.

That creature in the woods might have been saying, Go away! Or, welcome! So hard to tell these days.

There is mist on the water these mornings,