Growing Old, Going Cold
Notes on Swimming, Aging, and Finishing Last
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
What is it about freezing cold water that draws people in? Throughout history, humans have gravitated to cold water swimming and celebrated its healing properties, calling it the secret to good health and serenity. Today, cold water swimmers gather in groups from Galway to Georgian Bay to jump into frigid waters for fun, competition, and even as a form of activism and protest.
Kathleen McDonnell started swimming in Lake Ontario, infamous for its chilly depths, because it was close to home. As time went on she began to rely on a daily dip, even breaking through winter ice to raise her spirits and refresh her body. In this wide-ranging memoir, McDonnell shares her love of cold water swimming and the lessons she has learned from a slow and steady commitment to the waves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playwright McDonnell (Swim Home) revisits her passion for "cold-water swimming" in this gorgeous work that muses on the environment, love, and self-acceptance. In anticipation of her 70th birthday, McDonnell decided to swim 70 kilometers over 52 days in the frigid waters of Lake Ontario. While a considerable challenge, she writes, it wouldn't be the first of her "cold-water exploits." Citing extensive evidence of the health benefits of cold-water immersion (from reducing inflammation to relieving fatigue), McDonnell traces how her dive into brisk waters began as a way to mitigate the "unremitting heat" of menopause and swelled into a decades-long habit. She uses her connection with water as the jumping-off point for, among many things, poignant reflections on climate change (notably, how Canada's water pollution affects Indigenous communities); an embrace of her newfound status as "indisputably old"; hypothermia (and how to avoid it); and the strange beauty of Ward's Island in Lake Ontario, "the most valuable real estate that nobody can buy." Readers will find themselves taken by McDonnell's vivid recollections, as when she recounts swimming during a polar vortex at age 68. A self-identified "psychrolute"—one who bathes regularly in cold water outside—McDonnell's zeal never feels braggadocious; as she concedes, "I swim in cold water, I'm not the sleekest fish in the sea." It's an easy one to lap up.
