This morning took the dog down the path from the house to the small mountain stream at the bottom of our valley. I took a refreshing dip. Skinny dip. Cold, clear, fresh water coming from higher up.
There is something almost sacramental, certainly religious about putting your body into water and then with a final decision, submerging your whole self. It represents a “giving up” and a surrendering to the natural world which truly is everything despite our illusions otherwise. We wash away something, however temporary.
It’s why religions have baptisms. I especially love baptisms that are in lakes or rivers. I’d consider joining just to experience that!
One strange part of this all, is my love of freshwater. I don’t get the same feeling or effect by jumping into the ocean. Doesn’t do much for me. Is it the salt? The fact it is warm? Or is the ocean itself, so large to be impersonal, something one just can’t related to?
Or maybe I’m biased by my own memories. Long days working or after a hard run - going up to Pumphouse, our secret lake in the woods. I’ve never experienced the same feeling and effect of water on my skin. You are left with a silky, so clean feeling.
I remember John Micha - a great artist and family friend. When he’d stay over, he’d lumber down the stairs (we had little extra room so I happily volunteered to sleep on the couch - John got my small bed), he’d head right for the door, only in his underwear, and jump outside into the snow, splashing around in it with shrieks of delight and delirium. Us kids looking and giggling from the kitchen window. I think John was experiencing the same thing as I experience each time I take the path down to my swimhole.
A sense of washing away the sins, the worries, the travails of a day, a week, a life …
How do you temporarily baptize?
PS. I found this in my google drive of photos as I tried to clear up space. Poem I wrote about the photo. Let’s call it Baptism. It was taken during the Balkan War.