Waterlogged
On the sinners and saints and the landscapes that heal. An old post brought back to the surface.
A few years back, during the various covid lockdowns in Ireland, a trend took hold, and something elemental and primal came to the surface in this island country: the need to wild swim. Pat was telling me about this as he saw me walking back to my hotel after a swim in the Atlantic. I’m on Inis Meain, the smallest of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway, the far edge of Europe, on St. John’s eve. He stopped me in the road and told me I had to talk to his wife who ran the “dry robe brigade” on the island, a wild swimming group that met twice a day for a swim on the old pier, rain or shine. He dialled on his cell and then handed me his phone and Martina on the other end of the line told me where to be and when, and said I had no excuse, I had to come with them.
