Shell-adorned bikini tops. Fishtail skirts. Starfish accessories. Seafoam green eyeshadow. Expect to see all of this and more riding the waves of Disney’s latest live-action blockbuster, The Little Mermaid.

In other words, “mermaidcore”—the personification of aquatic glamor and physical beauty—is back.

Since antiquity, mermaids have embodied our fantasies of the briny deep. Inscrutable, various, and generally scantily clad, these half-fish, half-woman mythological creatures are shapeshifting female figures known the world over, from the sirens of the Aegean, to the jiaoxiao of the South China Sea, to Africa’s Mami Wata, often traced to the coast of Guinea. Historical accounts of mermaid sightings continued to flourish on through the 1800s. While none ever produced a real mermaid, hoaxes like P.T. Barnum’s “Feejee Mermaid”—a Frankenstein-ed monkey head sewn onto a fish’s tail—were plentiful, capturing the public’s attention and coin.

But as the industrial revolution’s rising tide traded wonder for rationality, “real” reports from the ocean began to quiet. Rather than disappear into myth, mermaids performed their next act of transformation: moving from the water to the stage and silent screen. The early 1900s productions that resulted popularized what I’d argue to be the first mermaidcore. And the skimpier and transgressive fashions inspired by them played a tangible role in helping girls and women traverse societal barriers in style and sport.

Of all the early mermaid tales, it was Neptune’s Daughter that might have captured the public imagination the most. Staged in the Hippodrome, the famed New York theater that boasted a stage 12 times larger than its Broadway counterparts, the show was an instant hit when it debuted in late 1906. Audiences flocked to see the actresses playing mermaids dive into an 8,000-gallon clear tank filled with water. People were astounded by how they were able to stay underwater for so long. While the “day of miracles and the belief in miracles is past,” as one reporter commented, the theatrical effect in Neptune’s Daughter kept the illusion intact. To maintain the fantasy, rehearsals were conducted with utmost secrecy, with management threatening to fire anyone who gave away the gimmick (submarine chambers) that allowed actresses to linger below the surface. Such precautions paid off. “No spectacular invention or innovation of recent years has aroused such popular interest or awakened such widespread curiosity as the mermaid scene,” observed the New York Times.

A silent film production of Neptune’s Daughter followed in 1914, shot on location in Bermuda, and starring champion swimmer and actress Annette Kellerman, “the Australian Mermaid.”

Swimming, long considered a “masculine domain,” had opened up to women relatively early in Kellerman’s home nation. Around the 1830s, middle-class women swam recreationally, and by the time a young Kellerman entered the pool at 9 years old, a burgeoning competitive scene had started up. Because Kellerman was bowlegged, her parents had put her in swimming lessons as a form of physical therapy. While she was weak on land, in the water, she found she was athletic and graceful. She began winning swimming and diving titles against girls and boys. By the time she made her way to the U.S., in 1906, she had already attempted to swim across the English Channel and was well on her way to achieving international fame.

But when Kellerman arrived in America, she found women’s swimming culture was stuck in Victorian times. Because there was no long-distance swimming to be had, she first made money doing water stunts in vaudeville performances. She also began campaigning to change American swimwear. As she reasoned, if women wanted to enter the pool, they first needed the freedom to abandon the cumbersome bathing costume of wool skirts, blouses, stockings, and swim shoes that was literally weighing them down.

The best costume is the cheap, ordinary stockinette suit, which clings close to the figure, and the closer the better. It should be sleeveless and there should be no skirts. Skirts carry water and retard the swimmer. They are very pretty and appropriate for the seaside, but not for the swimming pool. Stockings may be worn if they fit tightly, but under no circumstances should shoes be used.

That excerpt comes from the 1907 article “Swimming Hints,” one of many editorials Kellerman authored to encourage more women and girls to lose their bulky swim costumes and adopt a modern one-piece swimsuit.

But perhaps nothing did more to change the conversation than her mermaid motion pictures.

Kellerman made her U.S. film debut in 1911, starring in two Vitagraph shorts, The Mermaid and Siren of the Sea, which catapulted her to stardom. Because the fantasy scenes she starred in filtered her form-fitting swimwear “through a fictional layer,” as author Christine Schmidt put it in her 2013 book The Swimsuit: Fashion from Poolside to Catwalk, Kellerman was able to transcend the norms of the day. Through her mermaid persona, the star could help neutralize “any suggestion of indecency” that her outfits might have otherwise engendered had she appeared in them on screen.

The public watched with fascination. Kellerman was heralded by the press at the time as being “the most perfectly formed woman in the world.” And an audience hungry to be just like her followed her every move, eager to copy everything about her, including, in time, the trademark “Annette Kellerman suit.”

By 1914, the very same year Kellerman starred in Neptune’s Daughter, America’s premier amateur sporting league, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), officially permitted “mermaids,” as they called competitive female swimmers, to participate in sanctioned competitions. And by the time Kellerman’s film career wound down a decade later, most women were starting to wear the same one-piece “Kellerman suits” the star first championed at the turn of the century.

Mermaidcore, of course, wasn’t alone in opening up the waters for women, but it undeniably lent its sparkle to the cause, paving the way for them to transform their reality on land.

Today, this glamor can continue to offer us a way to shapeshift through fantasy. After all, as Kellerman herself once put it, to become a mermaid is to simply “see a woman make a fish out of herself.”

The post Welcome Back, Mermaidcore appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

There is no one to call, really, so I post my note to Facebook:

Please pray for me. I’m in more pain than I can handle. I don’t know if I’m gonna make it.

Making mental health confessions online is a risk, especially when you’re a woman, and brown. I expect nothing, but the responses come in fast. I wonder why all of these people with spouses and children and careers and weekend plans are on Facebook on a Friday at 10 p.m.

You’ve got this.
I’ve been there.
Sending love. Three pink hearts.

Thoughts and prayers are abundant tonight, and I turn away from my laptop before someone can tell me, This too shall pass.

It takes several calls from a police officer friend, a bear-sized swimmer with a wife and young daughter, who refuses my No, I don’t want to bother you and just shows up at my door for an intervention and a ride to the emergency room.

At 4 a.m., anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds in hand, he and I return from the hospital to Brighton Beach. We head straight to the boardwalk overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The wind whips at our faces. I am freezing, and spent. There is no hope.

But there is the sea.

Several summers before, I began swimming with the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers, a ragtag group of elites and amateurs in various stages of midlife crisis and recovery. But it took until that wretched winter of waiting out my misery for me to finally join them in the cold season. As the sun set too early and rose too late, I let the frigid water shake me out of my suffering, beyond misery and inertia, beyond me.

It requires a certain kind of madness to strip out of winter clothing into a bikini and bare feet on the cold sand. There are no wetsuits here, and no lifeguards. To confront the chill, I wear suits in neon colors, like Sunkist orange and key lime green. Two crimson red silicone caps stretch over my scalp, forehead, and ears, which are plugged with wax, making me look like a skull-sucking sea creature. Cold water neutralizes age and gender. I have body dysmorphia, like most American women, and it normally takes me a while to get comfortable baring my belly. But vanity serves no purpose here. As the winter grinds on and the water temperature drops below 45 degrees, I add a neoprene cap, gloves, and synthetic booties to the mix—the latter at the urging of my 59-year-old friend who explains they will protect my feet when they’re too numb to feel shells cutting into them.

There is little organization among the five or ten of us who show up on weekends, bundled in snow gear. The city prohibits ocean swimming once beaches are officially closed for Labor Day. Each of us is out for herself, though we keep eyes on the bright caps in the water, just in case someone needs to call an ambulance.

It helps that my compatriots, like me, are a bunch of compassionate lunatics, oddballs, and survivors: Sil beat prostate cancer. Capri just had her guts re-sected. Bob was an alcoholic, though he hardly ever talks about it. Sharon converted to Judaism in her forties. Jane’s daughter, Leonora, was killed by a drunk driver. Everyone’s got something to face down, to reckon with, to confess or cry to the water.

Photo courtesy of Hsi-Ling Chang.

On this Sunday, while most New Yorkers are still under blankets in bed, I walk past Russian families looking on in disbelief, dodging broken bottles and mustering toward the waves like a naked fighter: shoulders back, chest open, wide steps. You don’t face the elements with your head down unless you want to lose. The first step is nothing; 42-degree water feels like relief when it’s 20 degrees outside and the wind is whipping against you. But with another step, the skin around my ankles protests.

What no one tells you about swimming in the ocean during this bleak season is that the cold burns. It is made of blades. It stings, and cuts. The air bites like a hungry wolf, and on windy days like this one, sand roars from sea to shore, whips into the skin, lashes at eyes and fills goggles. I’ve never been more thankful for the few extra pounds around my midriff and thighs: Skinny doesn’t survive long here. The core is the only thing that remains warm in the water, and even then, not for very long.

But there is a place beyond the burn. I have to want to get there so badly that I keep going. The muscles and fat on my thighs take to the cold better than my bony heels. But the soft space between my legs cringes as I walk forward, my belly sharply contracts, and my collarbones leap upward trying to keep my breasts, lungs and heart from being submerged. I gasp but try not to scream because it will only remind me of how much I hurt. Instead I lean into the surging sea the way a soldier compels her body toward bullets, until my chest and collarbones are underwater and the only thing left above the surface is my head.

If there is really a me, that thing which suffers more than I can bear, it is this stubborn organ inside my skull, with its endless thoughts and feelings. I try to short-circuit its activity with each shallow breath I take. Too often, my brain has let me down. Failed neurotransmitters. Dysfunctional serotonin. Frazzled nerves. Fighting, fleeing, and freezing on over drive.

When I attempt to pull my face below the surface of the ocean, my brain rebels once more. No, not a chance in hell. Get me out of here.

Frustrated, I try again, gently, to override it. My face is all pins and needles, ice picks stabbing my cheeks and forehead and chin. I have never been so conscious of my body and all of its exposed pieces. Each responds. Each cries out for attention. Each is alive, or acts as though it wants to be.

I know I must move in order to generate enough heat to survive the cold. Straining my neck and upper back, I breast stroke with my head above water. My chest is trying to shrink. My toes and fingers are wailing for blood. My body wants to shut down.

Let it throw its tantrum. I command myself to breathe. Deeply, slowly, I do.

Finally, I plunge my face in the water, and I reach, elbow high, stroking, one, two, three, west toward empty rollercoasters, the Wonder Wheel, and hot dog stands that will remain closed for many months to come. I turn my face to the right for a breath, and see a stretch of old buildings and the expanse of sky over my body.

I place my face back in the burning sea, and exhale with force. I reach. I stroke. I breathe left. A wave passes over my head, chilling my skull. I reach. I stroke. I breathe right. I am cold, and burning, and warm, and tingling. I am scared. I breathe left. I am afraid to die. I am brave. I don’t fear dying. I breathe right. I feel everything. I am alive.

Being fearless is not an option. Testing my limits and ego, one January swim I stay in one minute more, and then another. When my feet step on sand again, they feel like they are on fire. It’s not pins-and-needles as much as full-on arson.

My friend Hsi-Ling, the resident kung fu expert, silently watches me exit the sea and approach my towel. My speech comes out slurred, as if the words have congealed.

After a few tries, I say, “My feet are on fi-re.”

I must look terrified. Hsi-Ling says, calmly, “Put your socks on.”

Over the next several weeks, as the ocean temperature descends toward freezing, my post-swim routine becomes crucial. Every few seconds of wasted energy means the loss of vital body heat, and a rapid, imperceptible slide toward hypothermia.

As it turns out, I do not want to die.

I trip toward land, dripping salt water and shedding my gear as I go, clutching caps and goggles in my hand extra hard, so I do not lose them as I shiver. To avoid falling over, I sit down on my towel and start from the bottom; thick socks matter most, followed by long underwear (panties are unnecessary for survival), then another layer of pants. Nothing with buttons, or zippers, if I can help it. Boots that slip on.

It’s not graceful. It’s a mess of trying to stay still while gripping fabric in the nubs of my hands, punching fists and kicking soles where I think there are sleeves and pantlegs. All of my limbs are vibrating. Sand sticks to exposed areas and forms a thick, itchy layer between my skin and my clothing. With my lower half concealed from the wind, I tug at the knot and remove my wet bikini top with a flourish, exposing my breasts without caring who sees. Water drips down my spine. I don as many shirts and sweatshirts as can fit beneath my jacket, force my numb stumps after several tries into mittens, and cover my icy wet head in a hat and hood. A thermos of hot ginger tea tastes like manna, but it is never enough. The ocean has worked her way down to my bones, and my body needs to fast-track warmth.

Hsi-Ling has taught me to high kick like a communist soldier in parade formation—which, because I am no Rockette, takes almost as much energy as burning through the water. When I tire of doing them, I jog where the water meets the sand. My lungs feel as though they are being stepped on by a steel plate. But my knees, still numb, relish the movement without pain. I run around a group of shivering swimmers, and can’t help giggling, knowing I look like a crazed Pillsbury Doughboy in all of my layers, barely able to shuffle my arms up and down. When the cold persists, I drop to the sand for push-ups. When that is not enough, I attempt burpees.

It takes an hour of this calisthenic circus for the iciness to thaw from my core and limbs, though the freeze stays in my toes, my belly, my nipples, for several hours.

When I finally take the subway back home, huddled and dozing in a corner of the train, I am blissful. Serene.

I encounter my cranky old father as I dump my sandy backpack on the floor of my apartment. He wants to ask me why I do such crazy things.

He expects me to protest but my gentle smile disarms his lecture, and he attempts one as well.

A hot shower feels too luxurious. I keep it lukewarm, and short.

I fall asleep hard with sand still in my hair, without dreams, or nightmares.

The post Where I Go<span class="colon">:</span> The Biting Cold of Open-Water Swimming appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Kahanamoku was at a crossroads in his life. He was about to turn 35 years old and his days of winning Olympic gold medals for swimming were over. He’d moved to Southern California to become a movie star, but instead had only landed roles as an extra, playing Moor pirates, Indian chiefs, and South Seas tribesmen.

It was a sobering comedown for an extraordinary athlete who, while less remembered today, was considered to be both the Michael Phelps and the Jackie Robinson of his era.

His American journey, a story well known in the early 20th century, had begun with his birth in Honolulu in 1890, when Hawai‘i was a sovereign nation under Queen Lili’uokalani. Then, after pro-U.S. forces overthrew the monarchy, the United States annexed the kingdom of Hawai‘i. This ruthless (and illegal) display of imperialism, made him, at age 10, an American citizen and changed the direction of his life.

When he displayed extraordinary speed in the water, the white powerbrokers who controlled Hawai‘i championed the cause of this high-school dropout. In 1912, they helped raise the necessary funds to send Duke to the mainland to try out for the U.S. Olympic team. Their motivation, in no small part, was to use him to showcase Hawai‘i’s splendors to the outside world.

In 1912, few Americans besides Jack London and Mark Twain had journeyed across the Pacific to visit Hawai‘i. Fewer still had ever encountered a full-blooded Native Hawai‘ian like Kahanamoku. Years before the likes of Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson tested their skills against white opponents, the dark-skinned Kahanamoku integrated swimming pools and beaches that were reserved for whites, broke records that earned the respect of his opponents, and impressed audiences and journalists with his gracious spirit. He also quietly endured racial prejudice: He was refused service at restaurants and hotels on the mainland because of his skin color.

Kahanamoku captured the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and, along with Native American track and field star Jim Thorpe, returned home a national hero. Duke repeated his triumph at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, then took the silver medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics (behind Johnny Weissmuller) at the ripe old age of 33.

His enthusiasm for promoting Hawai‘i earned him the nickname “Ambassador of Aloha.” He did so in a variety of ways, including demonstrating his skill at surf-riding, as the ancient pastime of Hawai‘ian royalty was called. Whenever he traveled to compete in swim meets—to Australia, to California, to New Jersey, to France—he’d take the time to fashion a board from wood planks, make for the ocean, and “walk on water” before spellbound audiences and newspaper reporters. He was surfing’s Johnny Appleseed, spreading the gospel of the waves on redwood boards that weighed as much as 125 pounds.

Kahanamoku wasn’t the first to surf in Southern California, but his presence sparked the first boomlet in the region. When he settled there in the mid-1920s, he checked out every locale from Malibu to San Diego. That’s how he and a few pals from the Los Angeles Athletic Club happened to drive down the coast to Corona del Mar in June of 1925: The word was out that the south-facing beach got killer waves.

Suddenly and violently, their plans for a relaxed weekend of surfing were interrupted. At Corona del Mar, Kahanamoku watched as a massive groundswell from the fierce Pacific nearly upended the 40-foot, five-ton fishing boat named The Thelma. As the boat struggled to right itself, a green wall of water crashed over the bow and destroyed the rigging and the mast. The Thelma capsized, and a dozen passengers were swept into the not-so-Pacific Ocean like bowling pins.

Kahanamoku didn’t hesitate. Grabbing his enormous wooden surfboard, he plunged into the sea and paddled furiously into the deep. He managed to corral one panic-stricken man and wrestle him onto the board, then another, then a third. Torrents of briny water cascaded over them as Kahanamoku propelled them to safety with urgent, powerful kicks.

He deposited the would-be victims with his companions, inhaled mightily, and again dove into the turbulent ocean. He secured two flailing fishermen, maneuvered them onto his board, and brought them back to shore alive. And then, for a third time, he headed toward the stricken boat. He picked up stragglers and placed them on his board until, finally, he could do no more.

Five men perished that day. Eleven were saved, eight of them because of Kahanamoku’s actions. He and his friends were honored for their bravery and praised in newspaper columns. “The Duke’s performance was the most superhuman rescue act and the finest display of surfboard riding that has ever been seen in the world,” Newport Beach police chief J.A. Porter told the Los Angeles Times.

When Kahanamoku was asked how he’d managed to save so many lives, he replied with typical modesty. “I do not know,” he said. “It was done. That is the main thing. By a few tricks, perhaps.”

These heroics did little to boost his acting career: He was unable to overcome Hollywood’s ingrained racism and the studios’ refusal to cast a non-white actor in a leading role. He officially retired from competitive swimming after the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics and returned to live in Hawai‘i. He followed his father into law enforcement and was elected sheriff of Honolulu, a post he held for nearly 30 years.

He became part of Hawai‘i’s entrenched Establishment: He joined the Republican Party and the exclusive Outrigger Canoe Club. He married Nadine Alexander, a haole woman much younger than him, and the couple moved into a tony neighborhood overlooking the Pacific. His deep affinity with the waters in and around Waikiki endured. The waterman “got wet” every day, either paddling, rowing, sailing, surfing, fishing, or swimming.

Sculpture of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku (1990) by Jan Gordon Fisher, in Honolulu. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

He was eating breakfast at the Outrigger on the morning of December 7, 1941, when Japanese forces attacked nearby Pearl Harbor. As Sheriff, with charge of the coroner’s office, Kahanamoku was witness to the devastating loss of life. Hawai‘i was put under martial law during the war years while serving as a crucial strategic post for U.S. forces in the Pacific. He worked closely with the Office of Civilian Defense, helping to coordinate emergency and medical services for residents in Honolulu. Later, he was named as the defendant in Duncan v. Kahanamoku, a landmark case about the limits of martial law that was eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After the war, as aerospace innovations and greater prosperity fed a tourist boom, Duke—as he was known—advocated for statehood for his homeland. Hawai‘i joined the United States in 1959.

And, in 1957, he was fêted on the TV show “This Is Your Life.” He was shocked when several of the men whose lives he saved in Corona del Mar came onstage to thank him personally. “I have waited 32 years to thank you tonight,” Harry Ohlin said to the silver-haired Duke.

The final decade of Kahanamoku’s life featured yet another boom, one that few could have predicted. Thanks to the popularity of Gidget (the book and the movie), and the manufacturing of lighter and cheaper foam boards, surfing became wildly popular. Duke’s exalted status as surfing’s Babe Ruth turned his name into a brand. He peddled Hawai‘ian shirts, floral sneakers, and skateboards. His eponymous nightclub in Waikiki made an icon out of entertainer Don Ho. The Duke Kahanamoku Invitational was one of surfing’s first serious and prestigious competitions, complete with prize money and trophies.

Kahanamoku passed away in 1968 at the age of 77. At his request, his ashes were taken out into the Pacific in an outrigger canoe and deposited into the turquoise waters that were his everlasting love.

Today, Duke Kahanamoku is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Surfing Hall of Fame. Surfer Magazine crowned him the “Surfer of the Century” in 1999, and the U.S. Postage Service issued a stamp bearing his name and likeness in 2002. In a 2014 exhibition, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., declared him to be among the 100 “coolest” American icons.

That he was “cool” before the term was even coined shows the breadth of a life that spanned the modern arc of his beloved homeland: from monarchy to U.S. Territory; from Pearl Harbor to statehood; from Don Ho to “Hawaii Five-O;” from pristine tropical islands to tourist mecca. His legacy looms as large as the gigantic bronze statue of him that stands sentry on Waikiki Beach: He was the first Olympic star to emerge from the Pacific Rim, and was one of the finest, if most unsung, multi-sport athletes of all time.

Wearing his trademark Hawai‘ian shirt, always at the ready for another game of beach volleyball, Kahanamoku was perhaps the first citizen of a new and globalized age that prioritized the pursuit of leisure and championed the environment.

And he would surely take great satisfaction in knowing that surfing will be an official medal sport with its entrée at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The post The ‘Ambassador of Aloha’ Who Showcased Hawai‘i’s Splendors to the World appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Swimming holes were born of necessity at a time when fabricated pools didn’t exist in most of America. Just before the turn of the 20th century, public “baths” started appearing—the first municipal pool was built in 1887 in Brookline, Massachusetts, followed soon after by San Francisco’s Sutro Baths. But for the many Americans living outside of major urban areas, far away from oceans and lakes, and before air conditioning, swimming holes were the best chance to escape summer’s heat.

Americans were the original swimming hole entrepreneurs, customizing this time-honored practice to suit just about any circumstance by creating thousands of impromptu DIY cooling pools across the nation. Then, we named them, to establish their real-ness and to claim a stake, in so doing bestowing on each of these places a distinct personality that held some truth about both the named hole and the person doing the naming. Big Eddy, Four Corners, and Circle Current hint at what you’re in for. Paradise, Diana’s Baths, and Letter S leave the details to your imagination.

Warren Falls, Vermont.

I’ve even encountered a few holes called “No Name Hole.” The need to name even nameless swimming holes suggests to me an essentially American urge to establish ownership. Not to “tame” these places, necessarily, but to draw them into the identity of the community, where the lore of the hole travels from one generation to the next, even as the nature of the hole itself might change with the mores of the day.

Deep Eddy, the oldest swimming pool in Texas, actually began as a swimming hole. Located along the Colorado River in Austin, it was a resort in the 1920s. In the 1930s a bathhouse was added, built by the Works Progress Administration. Its historic value has since been recognized both officially, via landmark status on the National Register of Historic Places, and informally, in “Deep Eddy Blues” by Texas crooner Jimmie Dale Gilmore and at the nearby post-swimming-hole watering hole, Deep Eddy Cabaret.

Some of the most beautiful swimming holes—those you’ll see featured in tourist guides—are naturally occurring and remote, the verdant reward after a long hike. The swimming hole at Havasu Falls
is probably the best example of such a place—a steep 10-mile hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon’s south rim. This spectacular swimming hole and accompanying 100-foot waterfall boasts an especially rich history—it’s situated on land belonging to the Havasupai Indians, one of just a few Native American tribes inhabiting their original homeland. The tribe’s name translates as “people of the blue-green water.”

Other destination holes include Utah’s Homestead Crater Resort, which features a deep underground hot spring covered with a 55-foot-high limestone dome that opens to the sky, and the Lava Hot Springs resort in Idaho, where 112-degree Fahrenheit water emerging from the ground flows through a series of man-made pools, open year-round. Visiting in the winter is an especially ethereal experience. This is the Edenic swimming hole retreat, the place as immortalized by 19th century American painter Thomas Eakins in his 1885 masterpiece, Swimming, which depicts a secret, peopled idyll far from the demands of daily life. These dream-like places are the ones you plan for and visit once in a while.

But in the day to day, many of the most beloved swimming holes are those close at hand, often abandoned quarries or mills. A stone’s throw from town, they provide a cool respite at the end of a hot day—less picturesque, perhaps, but no less satisfying. More than once I’ve found myself enjoying a massaging current in such a spot, imagining how it once powered a mill that fueled the growth of a town.

Havasu Canyon, Arizona. 1942.

These lesser-known swimming holes are often known only to the communities around them. Knowledge of location, lore, and water condition is more likely to be held by locals than by a website or guidebook. These are the places we go to be together and to be apart, to rejuvenate and to exhaust ourselves with physical exertion. The wonder that I’ve felt discovering a “new” hole is the same wonder felt by those who discovered the hole before me, and will be the same for those who will discover it in the future. The rocks smoothed by running water and by the passing of human hands are a testament to the perpetual relationship between us.

Towns change, people change, but swimming holes remain the same; touchstones that link us to the pleasures of our forbears. For Americans of all ages, the swimming hole offers a vestige of freedom in a hovering world ever more tightly proscribed. Here, lifeguards are rare even in the face of sharp rocks, hidden crags, fast currents, and slippery slopes. If there’s a good tree overhead, a swinging rope is nice. If there’s a high rock well-situated, it can be designated for diving. But these are embellishments to the core nature of the place: a hole with water and a name to call it are all that is required.

The post To Understand America’s Small Towns, Ask About Their Swimming Holes appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The Richmond Plunge is one of the most beautiful indoor swimming pools in the nation, and at $5 for a day pass, a visit is cheaper than a Big Mac. It is right in front of a major bus line. But most of the black and brown Richmond residents I work with don’t think the Plunge is for them. At most, they might take their kids to the Plunge once a year on a Saturday Family Swim Day, and if they are brave enough to wear a bathing suit, they will splash around in the shallow end. Almost no one—parent or kid—knows how to swim, and no one is going to the deep end.

But that’s not the only barrier keeping certain people from the Plunge. There’s a lack of money and time. And beyond that, there’s a lack of motivation—feeling isolated and stuck in your neighborhood, your body, and your situation. Fear of the water, fear of being out of place, and fear of looking foolish get transmitted from parent to child. These barriers add up to an unhealthy community, where large groups of people might suffer from obesity, depression, fear, and distrust.

I started as a community organizer in Richmond nine years ago. I come from a similar background to many of the people I work with: I am an African-American parent, and I’ve been on my own since I was 18. I know how little things can be a big hurdle. So, I had been building trust with the Navigators for six months, doing things like driving one woman around to get the documents she needed to sign her kids up for school.

When the community nonprofit Richmond Swims got a grant to offer adult swim lessons and chose the Navigators to be the first participants, I did my best to help the Navigators clear the hurdles. I helped the ladies fill out the paper work. I got some fees waived. I promised rides to get them to the Plunge. And for three months before the lessons started in October, we talked about them, learning who loved the water (two women), who didn’t mind walking around in the water (a few women), and who was deathly afraid of water because of a traumatic childhood experience (a few more).

On the first day we all went into the locker rooms and changed into our suits (mostly provided by Richmond Swims, along with swim caps and goggles for everyone), passing the women from the Masters Swim training, who were toned and strong in their Speedo racer suits. Our little group was feeling shy, our mom bellies pooching out. The Latino ladies were trying to get their long hair in the caps, and the African-American ladies were wearing two caps, to make sure their hair did not get wet.

When we walked out on deck, I was surprised to see that we were the only ones in the pool besides the lifeguards and Coach B, our instructor. We could relax without being distracted by kids splashing or people staring. Coach B asked us to sit on the edge of the pool and put our feet in, kick, and slide in. She had us walk the length of the pool, and finally we held hands in a circle and bobbed our heads under water. Holding hands was key. The ladies who were not afraid to go under were able to support the ladies who were.

One woman was deathly afraid: getting in a pool was Gloria’s worst nightmare. She is about 70 years old, and she also suffers from depression. On that first day, just walking the length of the pool was terrifying: She was crying and shaking. Coach was on one side of her, and her sister was on the other, and they were practically carrying her. I didn’t think she would stay in the water, but she did. She walked across the length of the pool again and again, becoming less afraid each time; all the while the Navigators cheered her on. At the end of the first lesson, no one wanted to get out of the water. I knew right then that this experience was going to be about more than exercise or learning a new skill.

The pool was a place of vulnerability. We had to allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of each other and in front of Coach B, a stranger. But would Gloria have stepped into the pool on her own? Would any of us have done it on our own? No, but together we were a team. By going to the place of her deepest fear with the group, Gloria also was able to believe that she was not alone at a school meeting with the principal for her grandkids, or talking to the housing agency.

Everyone came back for the next lesson and the next, and many completed not just the six we had originally signed up for but 18 lessons. At the pool they had to let go of the edge, to put their heads under water, learn how to float. What would happen if they trusted the water to hold them? The unfamiliar is scary. Getting rid of a barrier is scary, because it also means an excuse is gone. The Navigators could now say yes to the pool, the beach, the lake. Having one more thing to say yes to means there is a greater chance you will say yes to the next challenge, be it lose 20 pounds, or learn to read, or send your child to sleepaway camp.

A year later, at a camp for caregivers and their families run by YES, I could see how our time at the Plunge had changed not just the Navigators but their families. At a swim lesson taught by Coach B, the women got in the water with their children, swam, and helped their children learn to swim. They were no longer sitting on the sidelines.

This past year, Navigators have signed up to go back to school, and are teaching everything from diabetes workshops to ZUMBA classes at their local school. They are going to Richmond Food Policy Council meetings and addressing school board members at district meetings. That’s what a healthy community looks like—no longer isolated, or afraid—everyone jumps in the pool.

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