Swimmers at Dawn

I am up before dawn today, just to see what the day is going to bring.  I fortify myself with a steaming coffee latte, which never tastes better than on a cold winter morning at the beach.  I head for that place of transition, where the ocean reaches shore.  It is a good place to dump your troubles and then see what answers the tide washes to your feet.  Walking to the end of the pier, land slips away and ocean deepens in the dawn.  I hug my sweatshirt and wrap my hands around my warm cup, gazing at the calm undulations brightened by a new sun.  I spot a lone swimmer, swaying in the swells, slowly progressing across the bay, steady kicks breaking the surface and strong strokes slipping under. 

Why did he leave the comfort of his bed this chilly morning to submerge himself in this frigid, foreign element?  Why does he take the hard way from one pier to the next?  Maybe it is because he is alive, and the sun this morning shines brighter and earlier than usual?   For that matter, why did I wake up hours before dawn today?  Is this crazy?  Or crazy-good?

The swimmer pauses and floats.  He looks around, finds his relationship to terra firma, measures his progress with puzzled, blinking eyes.  What is familiar seems so far away and small.  He spots a fellow swimmer many yards behind, and another beyond.  He pushes on with stronger strokes.

These swimmers are unafraid of the deep water.  In fact, they have fought their way past the breakers to get where they are.  Amazingly, it is calmer in the deep than when one clings to the shore, pulled and tossed and tumbled across the sand.

I spot a dolphin arcing out of the water, my reward for the early rise.  Is the dolphin playing, or seeking food?  Maybe for him it is all the same.  He is in his element, doing what he was born to do.  That is his bliss.  We humans must seek and search to find this.  We have to plunge in, shiver and shake, blink and wonder, go deep and kick hard.