In the Dark on the Longest Day of the Year

Barton Springs Early Morning Swim Report, 6/21/2024

Absent raccoons, possums, geese, and that animal that might have been a fox, might have been a coyote, I’m not freaked out by going to swim in the dark. Perhaps I should be. But there are always some other hardy fools at the pool, including those who are just leaving when I arrive around 5:30AM. I’m used to it, I guess I mean.

Yesterday I didn’t swim. It had rained heavily all night, which sometimes means the pool is closed in the morning; I didn’t have the heart to fail. This morning I was surprised by how empty the parking lot was, and then I discovered the gate had been entirely hidden behind construction dividers, like privacy screens in a hospital.

There was no written explanation, just a sign like this:

I followed the arrows deeper into the park. I thought, “Perhaps I should be unnerved. Perhaps I should turn back.” I saw not another soul. I really wanted to swim. Finally I saw a bunch of fences and cones and couldn’t figure out how to get in so with a heavy heart, exactly the kind of heart you shouldn’t swim with, I headed for the parking lot.

Ahead I saw a guy with a bag. Dark, so I didn’t know anything about him. “Good morning,” I said. (I am friendly at the pool. Most people are. “Top of the morning!” a guy bellowed heartily at me last week.) Then I asked him if he was going for a swim.

“Hoped to,” he said. I asked if I could walk back with him to see if we could figure it out. So we walked, and he said he lived in DC but work brought him to Austin three or four times a month and he always tried to get to Barton Springs. “You are lucky,” he said, meaning people who live in Austin. He was similarly flummoxed by how to get in—there was no sign or explanation; it might have been clear in daylight—but then he figured it out and we went through the gate. Then I knew where we were and he didn’t. “Now I’ll need to follow you,” he said, and what a wonderful and agreeable relationship I had with that guy for about three minutes. We agreed we had evaded sadness. I led him past the temporary bathrooms and shower rooms, and we wished each other a good swim and parted on the path.

The water was turbid, which meant even when the sun had risen I could see only my hands in front of me, no fish, no roiling limbs of my fellow swimmers. Above the water, visible; below not a thing. In the deep end a woman had her hands in the air, as though being arrested, and a serious look on her face, ditto, and I couldn’t discern what her feet and legs were doing below the surface to accomplish this, even though I swam by very close. It was, and will remain, a beautiful mystery.