A COLD SWIM

Notes on a thing I do.

Missoula is a gray place in the winter. We sometimes have snow on the ground, but we don’t necessarily have it very often. We are in a valley where five other large valleys converge, for all practical purposes we are the low point where the muck settles, in the air that is. And being surrounded by mountains, and perhaps cursed by god we also get these fronts that settle in where the air becomes completely stagnate and all the air muck with all the clouds mixes and settles in. We can have days on end of gray.

Sure the ground may be white, and there are hints of color when the clouds break or you catch a little green in the river, or red in the shrubs along the river banks, but overall, eventually your eyes do the same thing as a camera trying to find the balance between bright and dark and all the light eventually homogenizes into an overcast shadow. I only attempt to overstate it because the feelings this can bring when you least expect it can not be overstated.

Gray. And if you don’t have a way you can enjoy getting out in it, you are doomed. There is so much night midwinter, and so much gray during the day, you simply must have a way to get your blood flowing to stay sane. To this end we cross country and downhill ski, we walk, we run, we bike, we drink our coffee bundled in coats outside. But for me, something the last few years has brought me more clarity in winter than anything I’ve done before, other than snowboarding. And I think that is because of the dopamine hits both things provide.

Let’s back track to a few summers ago, the summer of 2021. I love to run. I am not a great runner by any stretch of the imagination. I rarely can run over two hours without some sort of vomiting, even if I felt great during the run. But I am a good runner in the sense that I am good at getting out regularly and can run between an hour and two with easy pleasure. A standard 1 hour to 1.5 hour run is my favorite, and when time permits I’ll do this amount a few days per week. I run on trails, a thing Missoula has like winter’s gray, and while many of the best trails close in the winter due to either too much snow or closure to our apparently very sensitive elk and the cities overprotective attitude towards them, in the summer there are a plethora of trails to enjoy.

Summer days are as long as the winter days are short. And hot. And sometimes smokey. 2021 was hot, but not particularly smokey. My running increased throughout the summer and when fall came around I was having a hard time cutting back, regardless of a suspiciously painful achilles tendon on my right leg. After every run I’d jump in the creek as it was the only way I could find to bring my temperature back to normal for the evening without a lingering sense of heat. It felt wildly refreshing, and very good on my achilles as well.

As fall days turned golden, the light began to become more valuable, and a bit of cold entered the air from the north. You can feel the plate shifting away from the sun. You can feel it getting colder. But even then, I’d finish my run and jump in, then running home dripping and sometimes cold.

But I recognized quickly that I loved the cold. I loved the shiver. I loved the feeling of not being too warm. I run hot. I have a strong circulatory system, I tell myself, and maybe an over enthusiastic heart, so being cold is not something I’m naturally prone towards. But the cold feels good. And getting in the creek provided it.

I’d seen a few videos of Wim Hoff on Instagram. And I’d been swimming in winter waters several times, but never with regularity. Never with much intention other than to shock the system and prove to myself that I was capable of it. When hiking in the mountains I can’t not jump in the lakes or creeks. I’m wired to do it. But seeing those few videos and coming to a recognition that I liked the feeling of cold, I asked myself, what if I just keep doing this? What if I don’t quit just because it’s winter?

So I did. I did not quit swimming going into winter. After every run or even just a walk as the weather got colder I’d stop by the creek, take my shoes off, and jump in. As I was required to layer more to run going deeper into the cold weather, I disrobed more, then jump in, and re-bundled, still wet, and run home.

But as the weather got colder and colder a problem began to emerge. Wearing wet shorts at twenty degrees, to put it delicately, does not feel good in the midsection of my body. The run home was becoming uncomfortable in a way I didn’t really like and even felt threatening of damage to certain vulnerable parts. So I decided sometime towards late November to detach the run from the swim. And with that came the possibility that maybe I’d stay in longer, and actually dry off before going home.

Additionally my achilles had gotten to the point where I needed to give it an official break, as much as I didn’t want to quit running, my body was making it clear it wanted a break. It had done too much for the season.

So I found a new thing. It had snowed several times by now, and the creek was acquiring ice along the edges. I’d bundle up every morning after taking Simon to school and bike down with a towel in my backpack to one of the swimmable spots in the creek. There I disrobe to my swim suit and go in. The swim had gone from a summer way to cool off after a run, to a concentrated sort of challenge to see how long I could stay in. It became it’s own thing.

I found my goal to be to not succumb to the initial physical sense of panic that sends signals to the brain to get out, and instead breath slowly through them, focusing on calm, focusing on just absorbing the cold instead of fighting it. With breathing I found I’d feel the cold but my internal furnace felt comfortable with providing the heat necessary to stay longer. Slow, steady, solid breaths, avoiding all the instincts of panic that come from sitting in icy flowing water.

My time in the water rapidly increased from 15 seconds to 30 seconds, to a minute, then to two and even three to five. But there was something more going on that I was beginning to recognize. By late morning it was all I wanted. I was craving it. And then, after I’d been, coming home to redress and begin my proper day, I had cleared out all the clutter and had a clean mental slate to work from.

I tend to be someone that wakes up with a mind ready to go, sometimes too much so, so much so that I get overwhelmed with all the things I have put on my own plate. Work obligations get priority, but then there are my own projects which I seem to tackle with reckless abandon, often deciding I’m going to do X, Y, and Z, but also A, B, C, D, and maybe G. I work myself through the things. And having not finished a thing can stress me out. This is a problem for people with endless ideas.

But after my first cup of coffee and ramping my mind up for the first few hours of the day, sitting in deep cold helped anything that had felt scattered across my mind wash away. And while I am in the water, there is nothing in my mind beyond the immediate perimeter around me. During these few minutes I am solely focused on this area and nothing else. And in the bitter cold the circle of thought becomes even more concentrated, to breathe and evaluation of what the cold is doing to me. Everything slows down. These few minutes are everything in themselves. No outside distractions. No outside world, in fact. An absolute reset of the mind accomplished by intense focus of exactly where I am at.

And in getting these few minutes I also have a front seat view I’ve never had of the evolution of winter. Evolution of summer. Evolution of seasons in a creek. They say a river is never the same day to day because the water is always new. But the same goes for all things. Trees. Plants. Bushes. Valleys. It is the exactly related to why I love to take a photograph from the same place throughout the year, year after year… The daily changes to the trees, the snow, the creek and it’s path, the water and the changes in density and flow, the birds that fly over, the animals that walk across the ice. I’ve always gotten outside a lot in the winter, but this is an immersion into a layer of winter I’d never known, into the creek bed, into the waters, into the veins of seasons.

I get home, and the clutter is gone. Or organized at least. The distracted thoughts washed downstream. I dress as I shiver, though I’ve found a few long slow breaths are a weird wonder to do away with shivering, and then sit down to continue the tasks I’ve listed for myself for the day. My work tasks, my personal tasks, writing, cleaning, etc.

That first winter my achilles pain lingered. I was getting out cross country skiing, and snowboarding here and there, daily walks, but could not run. Running over the years has become my go-to for head clearing. It is where and when my mind thinks best, resets. My best ideas come while running. My best clarity is created while running. I’m protective of it. A half hour run at the end of a long day makes everything clear and fine. An hour run at the end of a shit work work can help me prioritize my thinking to focus on all the good things that are happening, and help me quit quibbling to myself. I need it. It’s part of what keeps me sane. Biking is nice. Exercises are great. But running is what I need. And all that winter of 2021/22 I couldn’t do it because of my achilles.

But it didn’t matter. I’d found a thing that for me does in 20 minutes what typically takes 40 minutes of running to accomplish. I found a reset button in the creek bed. It honestly struck me as a sort of wonder drug I’d found for myself. I went everyday that winter, no matter the temperature outside. As it froze over, I found new places to crawl in, often laying in small cracks in ice.

Sometime during the winter one of the older men I’d bump into along the creek trail who noticed my strange undertaking asked the goal… Goal? I blindly stated I wanted to do it for a year. During that winter I went even on the coldest of days, -12 that first winter I think, and when the weather got warmer, my time in the creek increased. By summer the water was obviously not even challenging to stay in, but as fall rolled around again, I saw no reason I’d quit. I couldn’t quit. It had come to compliment my running on the days I did run, but it had even surpassed running in the sense that if I were to have to choose one or the other during a given day, I found myself defaulting to a cold swim. I entered year two with enthusiasm.

I’ve been doing it every day since. The coldest of days has been around -25F plus wind, and on these days it is an exciting event. The trail always empty on the coldest days on my way to the creek. I wear full winter gear, goggles, a scarf, wrapped like a winter zombie on my bike to get down there. My creek time is calculated in the severe cold. I agree to myself that frostbite is not worth the endeavor so I take precautions of keeping my ears covered, and I wear mittens, and keep my hands in mittens. I wear socks into the water, which takes the edge off, but more importantly protects them when I immediately get out. I keep to set number of breaths which I know to be a certain amount of time, knowing my own tendency to say to myself in the moment, “I could go another minute easily” but I don’t allow it on those coldest of days. Those extreme days require a bit more discipline and I stick to it. I have a towel to step on and immediately pull my feet out of their socks and dry my toes. After a quick swish of the towel over my body, already forming ice across the skin, I step into my puffy pants and immediately get the socks over my feet and put them in the boots. Having had frost bite on a winter backcountry backpack trip in Yellowstone in the 90’s I’ve dealt with frostbite, and it sucks. My toes are still sensitive all these years later.

Then I am in my fleece jacket. Then my puffy jacket. Hat. Hoods. Scarf. On these days my hands inevitably get cold in the process of dressing and zipping and I put them in my armpits as I dance around a little warming them, before returning them to my mittens. I still have a several minute bike ride home.

As I pick up my shorts and two towels from the ground they are already frozen stiff. That is how cold -20 is. I awkwardly stuff them in the top of the pack and begin marching towards my bike, twisting my scarf around my face with the goal of not frost biting my nose. Then slowly crank the pedals home, trying to not go too fast to keep the wind to a minimum. I’ve spent three minutes in the water, and a total of about 6 minutes near naked in the elements, wet, and about 20 minutes in the heavy cold. And it feels amazing.

These are the days where it feels like I’ve accomplished something. Been on a miniature expedition. By myself, in the real world cold.

Often finding a place to actually get in the water on these days is a challenge itself. This year I had to find a small natural opening in the ice and pick at it for a few minutes with an ax just to create a large enough spot to sit down in. Once in it felt like a dangerous little tub, sitting on rocks covered in ice, with slush, not water, rushing past me. I had hundreds of micro cuts from the ice on my back that were numb at the time of getting them and I didn’t realize until much later in the day.

Last winter there was a dead deer in the ice near just down stream from one of the places I went to swim. It had crossed the creek in the night and gotten trapped. By morning it was dead. Within a day it had become a meal to several creatures, coyote prints, a mountain lion, eagles and other birds. Even some local dogs made off with a few bones. I’d sit in the creek looking at its last few remains over the course of a several days, hoping to not become a victim like that. Of course when you take on this sort of habit there will be people that naysay it. What if you get a heart attack? What if you get stuck? Sitting looking at the final remains of that deer I couldn’t help but think about those questions family members had already posed to me. But something has kept me going. I’ve now read a lot about the science of the cold and it’s benefits, but for me those aren’t the reason, or at least not consciously about why I continue.

Something happens when you sit in the cold. Your body takes over. Your mind says, at least at first, “what the hell are you doing?” - A very naturally fight/flight response. But if you can take on the roll of monk with yourself, you can sit into it. You keep breathing, focus on the breathing. Your body after the first 15 seconds or so, gets it, and follows your mental lead. There we are. Here we are. We’ve got this. It’s not a panic breath. In fact it’s not even intense. It’s just steady. Slow. Deep. But gentler than you might imagine. It’s not a fight. You do not have to fight the cold, your body has in it the knowledge and ability to work through it. And at that moment where you reach that, where it isn’t fighting it, but is going along with this strange game you’ve put it in, it is an incredible sensation. You are completely enveloped in the cold, it is working into your pores, but it is not overtaking you. I’ve always been one to enjoy pushing myself physically, be it in the winter in Yellowstone, or on runs pushing into the window I know will make me sick, but this has helped create a clarity to the realization of just how resilient my body is.

With so much influence by outside sources that we have this day in age, I feel like one of the things praised in media, and given attention and algorithmic attention is weakness. Weakness has become a badge. Social media’s algorithm loves it. But it’s tiring. Humans are incredibly adept and strong creatures, when we choose to be. We are capable of so much more than we are told. We have so much more capability than the media would lead us to believe. I’m not going into this other than to say there is a societal interest in creating weakness that has become prevalent in our modern culture. Weakness, when perpetuated and taught systematically creates the ability to control with more ease, and there is no denying that there are forces at work that would love to see a weak society. But perhaps one of the very reason I’ve decided to put these experiences in words is to help inspire people to realize that we are capable of so much more than we are told. We are not victims to society. We have as much strength as we are willing to challenge ourselves to obtain.

And while I found cold swimming, I am sure it is not the thing most people need, or even want. But I found the thing I needed by simply listening to my own internal question. I’d finished a run and was looking at the creek on a cold day as fall leaves were blowing off the trees. “What if I just kept getting in, all winter?” I asked myself. No one else asked me, it was a question posed from within, in that weird place we call “consciousness.” It’s our gut. Our instinct. My instinct told me not only would I be ok, that it would be good for me. So I did it. Even when my conscious brain tried to then take over again, “hey, this is cold, get out.” I learned again to go deeper into it, again following my gut, knowing I’d be ok, that my body would figure it out. And it did.

I think that is an important thing to remember in life. Any advice in life comes from another human, just like you. We all get one round here. The potential is there for all of us, in all of us. We all have in us far more ability and knowledge than we give ourselves credit for. Something as simple as pushing outside our traditional day to day, trying something that makes us uncomfortable can have a profound change on our daily lives.

Well, as I write this, suddenly everyone is home. I think I’ll wrap it up here for now.

Thanks for tuning in.

Cheers to the cold, or whatever it is that gets your blood flowing.