There comes a day when we learn that we have gotten so far away from nature and simplicity that it’s laughable.
That day was yesterday for me, when a friend of mine laughingly shared an article on Facebook called, “If you haven’t tried wild swimming, here’s what you’re missing.”
Wild swimming
Even though my kids just call it “swimming,” (and we do it for free on a regular basis) city dwellers are spending big money to do it, according to this article. As you can see by the photo accompanying my little essay, my dog and daughter are both exceptionally fashionable.
In London, England, a pond was dug. It is home to frogs, lily pads, and other water life, and you can (gasp) swim there. It’s part of a $4.5 billion project to jazz up King’s Crossing. Artist artist Marjetica Potrč dreamed up the idea of the pond, and Ooze Architects of Rotterdam designed it. Folks are in awe of the fact that it is naturally filtered by…well…nature. According to an article posted on Quartz.com, “It will be 40 meters (131 feet) long when complete, and filtered by a “closed-loop” process that utilizes wetland and submerged water plants.”
So this “wild swimming” experience is actually manmade. The author says, “It may sound a bit strange to be swimming among plants, but it’s tamer than the swims in lakes, rivers and seas.” I guess this is “wild swimming lite.”
If you’re confused at all, the article even explains “How to wild swim.”
“When we started the general perception of wild swimming was that it was cold dirty, dangerous, and possibly illegal,” says Kate Rew, who nearly a decade ago founded the UK’s Open Swimming Society, which orgnizes group swims and provides information for dippers. She says that perception has changed completely. The OSS now has 25,000 members, a “huge community that’s grown in this country that’s quite different to the rest of Europe,” Rew explains. She chalks up the increase in wild swimming’s popularity to the growing interest in extreme sports like surfing and mountaineering.
There’s even a website totally dedicated to this fascinating new pasttime:Wildswim.com will help you find bodies of water near you if you happen to be in England and don’t know where they are.
This isn’t just a UK thing, though. There is a Facebook page dedicated to “wild swimming” in the US also. In fact, books also exist on the topic: this one includes a hike as well as a swim
Wild swimming. This is how far we’ve come from our roots. The fact that it’s at all unusual to swim in a natural body of water blows my mind. I’d much rather go for a dip in the ocean or the lake than soak in chlorine and algacide in a concrete swimming pool, but apparently for some people, that is considered the “normal” way to swim, while hiking out to a wide spot in the river is outrageously adventurous. As a survival-minded person, you have to be reading this and shaking your head along with me. As a frugality-minded person, why on earth would you pay to dip yourself in chemicals when a perfectly good swimming hole is only a hike away? What better inexpensive day out could there possibly be for a family?
So, if you’re looking for something to do with the family on this hot summer day, find a local pond and go for a dip. You can even show your , trendy teen this article so he or she knows that, regardless of personal thrift, this is an activity on the cutting edge for hipsters everywhere.
http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/swimming-in-a-pond-is-now-a-trendy-thing-06132015
I have plenty of wild swimming available here. I call it “leech beach”, and it’ll be fun to watch you pull them things off yourself after you take a dip.
When I see these “bike dorks” with helmets on paddling down my river like they’re Daniel Boone it makes me laugh heartedly at the total ignorance these “yuppies” have experienced actually “risking their lives” so they got their helmet, goggles, and life vest floating down a peaceful river like it’s the raging rapids of the Colorado in spots. I can’t count how many of these “retards” I dragged out of the river still alive and only have me to thank for their remaining days. Is it against the law to let retards lead themselves to their own demise?
they regularly drown on these local creeks in their canooooos
“When we started the general perception of wild swimming was that it was cold dirty, dangerous, and possibly illegal,” says Kate Rew,…”
Possibly ILLEGAL??? Such a GOOD little communist slave.
It should be illegal for people as stupid as you to be allowed to breathe our air.
I consider it an unhealthy activity to swim in ‘wild’ water considering it will be inhabited by water moccasins around here.
Hey Enbe, we got the leeches in certain spots and timber rattlers, but water moccosins, I’ll pass too.
And they’re aggressive, too, known to jump in boats on occasion.
Is there an anti-venom injection available for water moccasin bites?
None available for a jewsnake bite.
Fatal.
Always.
Well then, let’s make it a blood red ashtray.
Pay-per-view to see that one.
Worth it at ANY price.
#1, I met this “Special Forces” veteran who went on to be a “military contractor” last night. He was, quite possibly, the most insecure, mirror loving, “do I look good” even though I’m 160 lbs dripping wet kinda guy. I detected “mind-f#*king traits that suggests the presence of past covert hypnosis. To be honest, they f^*ked him up good. He was so bought in to Madison Avenue and image, I feel little hope for recovery from of which many will return with.
Merely more proof that ‘programming’ works, Millard.
Growing up in Okla. we swam in the ponds rivers and lakes, all the while avoiding the cotton mouths.Today I wouldn’t do that for all the cows in Texas. Guess I’m just spoiled now on the waters of the Pacific Northwest.
The treatment for all North American poisonous snake bites, should they meet criteria (http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/168828-treatment), is CroFab which, at wholesale, is somewhere around $1500 to $2300 a vial, but people are charged, from what I’ve read, $10,000 to $20,000 a dose. It’s another western medicine Rocke-felon profit racket.
We have a creek and a river (as much as you can actually own these things) and in Summer they are a haven for Red Bellied Black Snakes and Brown Snakes. Every now and then we get a Brown inside and they are agro critters.
(sarc)
If wild swimming is trendy, then
being thrown into the green pond is going to be a splash!
Friends don’t let your “wild swimmer friends” go without trying out the trendy new “fly-swimming” into the Nancy Pelosi sewage treatment plant. Afterwards you can enjoy your fukushima slurpee as you browse the wildlife in the “never been drained” Bush Swampland Preserve (fed by nearby Pelosi’s Treatment plant)
Somewhere (free image hosting? archive.org?) I had a map drawing out there. It showed how the wastelands would expand into swamplands, the relationship and text labels of how it all worked, and then pollute the ocean with the toxic swamp output. Yeah I spent lots of time on this back in the day. There were even Nancy Pelosi Swamp Monsters. While this may not be ideal for learning how to fly-swim into a treatment plant, it provides a nice place for everyone to have a poison bbq and nice toxic flouride hexaflourine meal, drink up.
(PS do not do this! it was sarcasm)