Take Me To the River
I wear seasonal clothes, eat seasonal foods and like to write about seasonal topics. During the past few weeks, I’ve written about summer experiences. This week, I’ll continue to celebrate this season of daylight and warmth.
Though some days are warmer than we like.
I’ve done much outdoor work in the summer, including as a food and flower grower, garbageman, roofer, landscaper and camp counselor/swim teacher. I’ve also often played sports outdoors. Being out in so much sun has beaten up my skin. Mistakes were made.
So were memories.
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I still love immersing in either fresh or salt water. Depending on their ages, human bodies are between 60-75% water. It’s unsurprising that people are drawn to it.
I learned to swim in a river a block from my childhood home. As was that river, much freshwater is surrounded by trees. Some such settings have rocks from which you can dive or jump. Some are streams you can sit in. Some you go to with friends. Some you go to with your girlfriend. Immersing in these places is a slice of paradise.
I’ve stepped into liquid in such places as Bear Creek Lake in Southern Indiana, with its rope swing. Copake Falls on the New York/Massachusetts border are beautiful and user-friendly. Ithaca, NY has several nice spots for swimming, diving and jumping off cliffs of various heights. I’ve swum in a farm pond and an abandoned strip coal mine in Central Pennsylvania as well as in the broad Hudson River near Beacon, NY. I’ve slid down and leaped and dived from rocks in Western North Carolina and outside Chattanooga and into Northern California’s Rainbow Pool, just outside of Yosemite. I’ve submerged in the Delaware River and in New York State’s Catskills and Adirondacks, as well as in Washington State’s ice-cold Cascade lakes. I’ve bathed beneath waterfalls in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, in Puerto Rico, on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula and the Pacific Coasts of Choco, Colombia and Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Among other places. If you tell me about a good swimming hole, maybe we can meet there.
When I see other people in these off-the-books swim settings, they’re smiling, shouting and laughing. The setting induces that reaction. For example, Richmond, Virginia’s James River has several places where one can slide, seated, dozens of yards, riding the current atop and between rocks.
One August 2012 day, a burly, forty-something guy rolled up alongside the James on his Harley.He stepped down the small riverbank and began snorkeling in shallow water. I asked him what he was lo
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
