Cold Catalyst

That first winter, I learned to love the sting of the cold. The water lapped over my ankles, knees, and waist as I lowered myself into the pond. My skin contracted, and every bone gleamed with pain. When I was in to my chest, my breathing stalled, and I had to remind myself: slow, steady, keep moving. Count, a veteran swimmer had told me. So I swam out, counting every stroke.

I was plunging into three-degrees-Celsius water in England—in January—because I was required to: As part of my doctorate, I was carrying out “participant observation fieldwork” with winter swimmers at London’s Kenwood Ladies’ Pond. I interviewed and watched them for weeks, but that niggling word “participant” drew me into the deep with them. If I was going to understand what motivated these women—all between the ages of sixty and eighty, some of whom had been swimming daily for upwards of fifty years, sun or ice—I had to swim, too.

I did not know how dramatically that winter would change me.