I’m not sure when it started. Probably when I was a girl. Back then, parents didn’t watch children as closely as they do today, and I had more freedom than most. Maybe too much freedom, but that’s a different topic.
In the spring of 2024, I took my most recent nighttime dip in the ocean. I’d not done it for several years. Older now, I’m more prone to chills. But on June 5th, my late husband’s birthday, I waded in holding a Viking ship replica filled with his ashes, and set it off flaming into the sunset. It wasn’t pitch dark yet, and I wasn’t naked, but the gravity of the occasion gave it a similar feel to other late-night swims.
I love living in Vancouver, close to the ocean, only a short walk from the beach. I won’t bore you with every icy dip I’ve taken after dark in my 30+ years of living here, but I will tell you that they’ve usually involved copious amounts of wine. One of the most shocking and the most memorable was twenty-five years ago, on New Year’s Eve December 31, 1999.
Tensions were high that year. Everyone believed that the world’s computer systems would grind to a halt at 12 am. No one had had the foresight to encode their internal mechanisms with four spaces to identify the new century.
On a smaller scale, in my neighbourhood, midnight would mark the onset of a new law that forbade smoking in public places. The local bar at the Sylvia Hotel was set to comply, and our rag-tag group of heavy smoking, hard-drinking, artsy regulars intended to enjoy every moment of fuggy freedom before the ban.
I almost didn’t make it — ringing in the New Year. I’d drank too early and too much. Just past 11 pm it struck me that in order to stay conscious, something drastic needed doing. So I grabbed my coat and purse and slipped outside. No one noticed.
There’s a small plot of sand north of English Bay Beach. It’s secluded behind a clump of bushes that line the walking path. This private enclave, protected from larger waves by a triangular jetty of rocks, is my preferred late-night swimming hole.
Sounds of laughter and loud party voices rose from the main beach as I bumbled along the seawall unnoticed. At the tiny cove, I slithered out of my clothes, let them fall into a messy heap on the sand, and ran naked into the water. Warning — do not try this at home.
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
Albert Einstein
I think that the great man may have been referring to me.
I wish I could say this turned out to be the normal, for me, euphoria of a late-night swim. The one where you swim like hell for a few minutes to warm up and then lie, floating, gazing up at the stars, absorbing the immense and formidable pull of the cosmos. The swim where you feel at one with the universe, where you breathe in the pure ocean air as Mother Earth’s cradle of pillowy wetness rocks you and transports you to a place echoing with the core of human existence and purpose and life.
I cannot say that because it was December 31 in Vancouver, Canada, where the average water temperature is 7.6°C / 45.7°F. That’s almost 30°C lower than normal body temperature, and severe hypothermia can set in within 20 minutes. Thus, the warning above.
I can say that I lost my bra and one sock that night. That I ran into the water up to my chest, flailed madly for a minute or so, my breath sucked out of my lungs into a void, my nipples hard and shrivelled to peas beneath the skin. Shrinkage is not a problem for men alone. But back on shore, as my numb limbs struggled into pants and sweater and jacket, I was sober, alive, and incredibly elated — ready and eager for whatever the coming year would bring. And this, my dear friends, is my New Year’s wish for all of you.