The call of the wild
Annette Lees explains why she loves to swim and why we should all jump in
Wild swimmer Annette Lees has loved swimming since she was a child, so she’s written a book about New Zealanders, the water and the deep connections between the two. The conservationist and strategy consultant undertook a quest to swim every day of the year through all weathers. In doing so, she tapped into our love of swimming — more than one million New Zealanders swim regularly — our desire to care for the places we swim and easy access to streams, lakes, rivers, wetlands and, of course, the sea.
“Outdoor swimming. Not its distant cousin: pee-warm, chlorine-soaked indoor poolswimming. The British have come up with a term, wild swimming, to distinguish indoor from outdoor,” she writes in Swim: A Year of Swimming Outdoors in New Zealand.
ON SWIMMING
The best time of summer for New Zealanders comes to mind around now — not with the first Christmas carols in the shops or the red stamens unfurling in the first po¯ hutukawa flowers but when we dig out the togs from the back of the drawer. Time for a swim.
All over the country, the start of summer is celebrated with a salty dip or a high bomb into fresh water or a dreamy float on a tide somewhere or a slicing dive into a trembling clear lake. New Zealanders love swimming outdoors. More than one million of us list outdoor swimming as our favourite form of recreation. We were drenched in it as kids. We built watery childhood memories, swimming through our landscapes in the local creek and the summer sea. As adults, we return to those swimming places with our own kids or we take them to new local spots so they can build their own swimming memories.
A summer without much swimming is somehow flat. A swim outdoors is enlivening, spontaneous and unorganised. In 21st century language, it is mindful: you can’t be thinking about anything except the very present if you’re leaping off a waterfall or sculling around in a deep green river hole or lowering yourself into the chilling water of your local creek. Outdoor swimming is free. At the most, you need some togs and a towel; at the least, nothing at all. And it’s not a spectator sport — you have to participate to really get it.
A year or so back I decided to really jump in. I swam every day outdoors for a year through the four seasons. Wherever I was in New Zealand, whatever I was doing that day, whatever the weather, I made space for a swim — a wild outdoor swim.
From the very first, each swim became a microholiday, changing the day for the better. Part of the appeal lay in returning to the same place. These swims became deeply familiar but there were always differences — the light, the temperature and the feel of the water. There was further intrigue when I was away from home, tentatively swimming unknown waterscapes all over New Zealand. I approached strangers to ask where they swam, and through this a nationwide network of local mini-swims opened up to me.
I was late all year and often turned up to work meetings with dripping hair, trying to look normal. And, to the delightful credit of New Zealanders, it is sort of normal that you stop for a quick swim on your way so, of course, you’ll have damp shoulders and a cool look about you and a faint smell of river.
Through winter I experienced the thrilling chill of cold-water swimming, the sharp glittery delicious glow that stays on hours after the swim. The year rolled back to spring, the water warmed up again and others joined me in the water.
During the year, I collected swimming stories from New Zealanders and discovered that it’s true; we have a serious national passion for water. We have famous swims and swimmers: Hinemoa and her swim to her love, Tu¯ ta¯ nekai, across Lake Rotorua; Lieutenant Freyberg’s night swim at Gallipoli.
Every local community has a favourite swimming spot with its generations of bare footprints.
There are lost swims and urban swims, hot pools and cold springs, brave swims and night swims, memories of damming the creek and body surfing the waves. Everywhere I met locals and landowners planting out stream banks and cleaning up rivers, parents working to keep outdoor school pools open and teachers up to their necks in water instructing the latest bunch of kids how to swim.
Join us — jump in!