My editor emailed me one morning, wondering why my articles had slowed down. “What’s the deal? Got a new adventure for us?” and I had to say, well, I’ve been working. But I do have a mini-adventure to share: my own version of the trans-bay swim, a short but most awesome outing.
The trans-bay swim occurs annually, soon after Labor Day, and has been going on for many years. A bunch of people assemble on Shell Beach in Inverness and swim across the bay and back again. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but there’s one problem—they do it at 9 a.m. on a Sunday. Nine o’clock on any day of the week is too early for me to think about swimming: it’s cold, the fog hasn’t burned off yet and, more to the point, though I’m usually awake at that hour, I’m not very active. Like a lizard, I don’t start moving around until the sun has warmed me up. And Sunday, well, the problem is it comes immediately after Saturday night. So it’s definitely the worst morning of the week to expect me to show up and jump in cold water.
Therefore I’d never done the trans-bay swim, until it occurred to me that I could do it on my own terms: midday on a weekday when the sun was shining. And I could start on the Marshall side of the bay, which makes more sense to a Marshian, and I could swim the narrowest part of the bay, starting from Millerton Point, which is already halfway across. I could also swim just one way and get someone to pick me up on the other side.
I picked a day when the weather and tides looked good, found someone to come and swim with me, and someone else to be the driver and safety net in her rowboat, and that seemed like a perfect crew. Then they both cancelled the day before. Dang! Now what? By then I was so stoked to go that I threw caution to the winds; I’ve been swimming all summer, I can do this alone. My cancelled swimmer’s mom offered to drive me back to my car if I made it across—okay, when I made it across.
The morning was foggy, but by the time I got to Millerton, just before slack high tide, the sun was starting to get a handle on burning off the fog. I called my chauffeur and told her I’d be in the water by noon and at the yacht club half an hour later. Then I donned my new swim dress and walked barefoot down to the end of the beach. Air and water temperatures were pleasant—another beautiful day.
In I went, and thus followed a most pleasant half-hour of swimming leisurely across the bay. The water was lovely, I felt strong after weeks of daily swimming, the sun shone sweetly and it was just me and the water and an occasional patch of seaweed. I started thinking about changing my request from bird to seal for my next incarnation. A seal! What a life. I’ve always loved living by the water. If I was a seal, even better: I could live right in it. As I approached the other shore, I started slowing down—not because I was tired, but because I didn’t want it to end.
Melinda, my savior chauffeur, timed it perfectly and pulled up to the yacht club just as I was emerging from the water on the other side of the bay. I did it! And it was fun and easy and lovely, and I’d happily do it again. It’s a perfect way to start the day—at noon, down by the bay.
Ingrid Noyes, a musician and the director of the Walker Creek Music Camp, is formerly from Marshall and currently makes her home wherever she happens to be.