Swimming

I am going to a cottage tonight, and I expect one of the first things I will do is swim. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am a polar bear, and it runs in the family. My younger daughter can swim in frigid water with the best of them.

When I look at how swimming has run in my family, I can't help but think of the aquatic ape theory of human evolution. Humans are differentiated from gorillas, orangs, bonobos, and chimps in several ways that give us a unique (hominoidae) ability to swim.

These characteristics seem to be especially pronounced in my family. When I was a kid, I rarely spent any time above water - I came up for air, and back down I would go. My brother was the same, and so was my father. My parents live beside the beach year round, now (we had a pool when they were in their working years.) My daughter could swim underwater at six. At one point I could hold my breath for two minutes, and get down thirty feet without a tank (and only fear kept me from going deeper - it is very dark when you are down that far.)

This has not been a great swimming year, though. The cooler summer and spring we are having has not warmed up the water the way it normally would. Even the lakes and rivers are cool, and the great lakes are intolerably cold (we went in, but it was a bone chilling 55 degrees fahrenheit.) And I like warmer water, even though I can get used to the current temperatures.

So here's hoping for a heatwave of decent length!