Bathing in the Colorado, Swimming in the Pacific

I am writing this from California, down here on business again. It’s been a pretty water-heavy few days for me, in between scheduled obligations. My partner took me to swim in the Pacific Ocean for the very first time the other day. I’ve waded a bit (up to my knees) in street clothes on the Oregon coast, but it was too cold for a proper swim. So when we got to the northern bit of Los Angeles, we diverted to the beach for this new experience. Even though I knew just how large the Pacific is, in that moment my awareness was of the maybe quarter-mile-square section of ocean and beach between where the waves began to visibly swell toward land, and where my partner waited for me on the sand, watching me swim and making sure I was alright. My concerns were, at first, figuring out how to get past the waves crashing up on the sand so I could get to where I was able to swim more properly, and then once there how to bob along on the rolls of water and determine when I was tired enough that I needed to get back to dry land again.

The brown pelicans and California gulls flew overhead as I buoyed about in the waves, and I momentarily thought of the animals I had seen the day before at the Monterey Bay aquarium further north. I wondered if there were leopard sharks nearby, and what sorts of smaller fish the pelicans were diving for. A small bed of kelp floated nearby, and I wondered if any small creatures clung to it, like the leafy sea dragons and other sea horses at the aquarium. But then the next wave rose up beneath me, and I came back to the needs and concerns of the moment—how was my body feeling, was the tide coming in making the waves harder to navigate, was the kelp getting close enough that I could get accidentally entangled in it, and so on.

The very next day, I found myself immersed in a Simi Valley swimming pool, concrete embedded in a surburban back yard. Same me, same swimsuit, but an entirely different experience. Salt was replaced by chlorine, and the only wildlife I encountered were small biting flies buzzing the surface of the water. I swam small, paddling laps around the kidney-shaped pool, more just for the opportunity for immersion without crowds than for serious swimming. If I looked out over the fence I would see countless other houses built from three or four floor plans in a seemingly endless plain of curving streets and subdivisions.

I drew myself out of the water and went to the shower to clean the chlorine out of my hair and off my skin. As I did, I thought to myself “I am bathing in the Colorado River”. I haven’t ever visited that particular waterway, but I’m well aware of the controversy over how much of its contents ends up feeding the sprawl (and golf courses) of southern California. And again my mind wandered away from my immediate surroundings, and up the river to the mountains that fed it, and then into the rain and snow clouds that brought precipitation to the Rockies…

And then I turned the shower off, not wanting to waste this precious resource in my daydreaming.

I’ve remembered, in these past few days, that it’s important to maintain a good balance between the immediate concern and the bigger picture. Both of these foci are crucial to a complete understanding o the situation. Had I lost myself in thoughts of the Pacific Ocean in its entirety, I might not have noticed the tide coming in, the increased distance to shore, and how tired my body was becoming, and then I might have been in real trouble. On the other hand, my in-the-moment meditation on the source of the shower water snapped me back to the reality that every moment I spent simply letting the water slip over me was more water lost from the ever-dwindling Colorado, with its naturally limited source in the mountains.

And now I sit on dry land, the water in my hair still evaporating into the air, and remember the balance. I do not swim in the whole Pacific, but I swim in the Pacific nonetheless. And I do not bathe in the Colorado in its entirety, but a portion of it sluices over my skin anyway. I keep these pieces for myself, and carry their greater meaning in my mind and in my heart as I move on.