A Non-Swimming River Rat?

Yep, that was me. I talk a lot about water and the pull of water in my life. I called myself a "river rat" in a post last week. But I didn't go near the water if it got very deep until I was out of high school. In many ways I was afraid of the water.

Some of that came from my mother. She was a city gal- born and raised in Brooklyn. Wilderness was scary. Rivers and fast running streams were dangerous. So here she was with two sons living in the relative wildness of the northern Pennsylvania woods. It was a small town. There was no swimming pool available at that time. Stay away from the water was the word that she told us. You could get swept away.

The only way to learn to swim was for the local Park and Recreation group to pile you in a bus and take you about 18 miles up Pine Creek to the Little Pine State Park. There was a beautiful lake on Little Pine Creek behind a major flood control dam. There was a beach and a place to swim. Park and Rec took kids there and taught them to swim.

But Little Pine was wild. It was far away from civilization.

And, God forbid, what if you got tired and got pulled into the pipe that carried the water out the other side? Every few years someone would drown at the Little Pine beach, usually out of some stupid or reckless act. It only reinforced my mother's fears.


As a result neither my brother or myself learned to swim. I don't know for sure if he even knows how to now? Our mother died when I was 13 but our aunt wasn't a whole lot less protective even though she grew up there.

So the summer after I graduated from high school I worked at the new local swimming pool- as a cashier- and took private swimming lessons from one of the lifeguards. Jackie was patient with me and by the end of the summer she even had me jumping off the diving board. Many years later, when in my 40s, I took more lessons and now can at least keep on top of the water.

Yet, in spite of the fear, water still drew me. I find it amazing that the fear instilled by my mother didn't ruin the wonder and mystery of water for me. Perhaps it enhanced it. I was always aware that as a bi-ped with lungs, no fins or gills, that I was not made for water. I was made for land. It reminded me of the reality of water's power and ability. It was not something one should take lightly. I still don't. It is much too important to take lightly. It has never lost its ability to awe.