The Big Swims

If I’m being honest—IIBH—2024 started out rough for this writer.

Cancer diagnosis, followed by surgery and radiation, then a swirling ride into recovery. Like running Lava Falls without a boat. Things got very real in a hurry, as turbulent but also as oddly smooth as a big swim can sometimes be.

Once you’re through the rapids, you’ve not just survived them. You’re never done. As river guides say, you’re above them again.

And who reading these words isn’t a survivor? You’ve taken life’s big swims, where the world becomes all water, and you have just one job: to breathe between the big waves. Make sure you’re swallowing air instead of water. Persevere.

Daily medical appointments. Incredible numbers of blood-draws. Countless flimsy, tie-in-front gowns. Not so different from the don’t-grin-but-do-bear-it reality of falling into a big river. Feet downstream. Don’t panic.

Breathe. Hold breath. Breathe.

Big sucking currents suck you down, so swim deeper, get beneath the turbulence. Deeper.

Then there’s the incredible feeling when you face the last whitewater—down into the eddying wave troughs, up onto the last big summit of water. And then—you’ve made it. You see the sky above a ridge of current. More life ahead! More rapids await downstream.

You’re given the name survivor. You’ve earned it. And you hunger for the world—for your family, your friends. Conversation and solitude, both in turn. Long walks through forests and canyons. Good books—piles of good books.

Some ask, “Would you say you’ve embraced a seize-the-day approach to life?” You say yes, you’re calling from the coast, where you’re watching the ocean rise and fall. (And the aquatic grace of a red-throated loon [pictured], ace swimmer and long-haul migrant from the Arctic to the California coast.)

“What’s your prognosis?” others ask.

IIBH, you say, I’m good on paper. But pain free one day and as sore as a ten-year feud the next. A reminder that there’s always more to heal.

But you are a survivor. Something no one’s called you before, but something every living being is. And, like life after a big swim—like tumbling in Hermit Rapids or Lava Falls or the wild Pacific Ocean—being gifted more days is one of the most exhilarating and life-changing experiences you’ll ever know.

And you can say: I’m above Lava again! Ready to face the next big drop.

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Read about more big swims in my collected essays in Reading Water: Lessons from the River.