Big and Deep

Various swims, including early morning 3/7/2025

Between travel and weather, I didn’t get to the pool the last week and a half of February, but I struck out on March 1st—struck out in two senses of the term. At 5AM I arrived at a empty parking lot under a starry sky, in the delicious cool, perfect swimming conditions. The complete lack of cars seemed odd, but not until I got to the locked gate and the sign announcing that the pool was closed did I remember that Barton Springs closes for the first two weeks of March every year, for cleaning and repainting.

I’ve repaired to the East Side Y, which has a year-round outdoor pool and will do in a pinch. Sometimes my older kid and I swim after school at Deep Eddy, and yesterday I swam twice, in the morning at the Y and in the afternoon at Deep Eddy.

This morning I finally took myself to Big Stacy, a spring fed pool I’ve always meant to visit. It was lovely, though it’s also warm, 90 degrees or thereabouts, and so it doesn’t feel so improving.

Mostly I find swimming in a regular-sized swimming pool with beaded lane markers and painted lines boring. Somehow I have a harder time letting my mind wander. Still, it’s meaningful. It’s easier to forget about the state of the world when I’m submerged. At the Y some mornings the only other swimmer is a very fit white-bearded gentleman in navy trunks, probably in his 70s. He swims every stroke there is, freestyle, breast, side, back. He is beautiful. When it’s only me and him, preferably separated by a lane or two, it’s very calming to see him pass. I can’t imagine that I provide the same service to him.

Many years ago—I don’t think I’ve written about this in this space, but maybe—I went to a seal sanctuary in Cornwall. There was a pool filled with poorly seals, many wearing little polygonal hats, for some reason, as I remember. They were adorable. I felt I was invading their privacy.

When I swim in a smaller pool attended by lifeguards—as is true at the Y and Big Stacy—I feel like a poorly seal. These days I sometimes feel like a poorly seal on land as well.