A Year in Water by Beth McDonough review: 'A guide to outdoor swimming free of 'swimachismo''
Beth McDonough’s new book suggests that there's no right or wrong way to approach outdoor swimming, writes Roger Cox
There are many things to admire about A Year in Water, the new book by poet and former Dundee Contemporary Arts writer in residence Beth McDonough. First of all, there’s the fact that it doesn’t even try to conform to some preconceived idea of what a book should be. There are poems in it, but you couldn’t describe it as a poetry collection. There are prose passages in it, too, roughly charting a year of outdoor swimming in and around the Firth of Tay, but although the book is divided into seasons not all of the prose sections are season-specific, so it’s not really a diary either.
There are also occasional recipes for hearty, post-swim snacks like rhubarb and ginger flapjacks; instructions on how to make useful things like marine-friendly dandelion salve (for those who suffer from saltwater chafing); plus a liberal scattering of evocatively inky illustrations by Grace Gubbins. Reading A Year in Water, then, feels a lot like sneaking a peek at somebody’s private scrapbook: a pleasingly chaotic jumble of the practical, the whimsical, the meaningful and the throwaway.
A more conservative publisher might have insisted McDonough turn all this into a more conventional prose format – something easier to market; perhaps something very similar to that other book that just sold quite well if you could manage? – but it’s to the credit of new-ish Scottish imprint North House Press that they seem to have been happy for McDonough to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Not interested in a brief aside on the curative effects of the “cold water hankie” for those who suffer from chesty colds? Never mind – on the very next page you can read a beautiful poetic meditation on a slowly decaying sea wall.
Another big plus point is that even though McDonough is evidently an experienced swimmer, taking a dip in the Tay “every day if she can” according to her author bio, she wears her experience lightly. When offering advice, her general demeanour seems to be: “Here’s some stuff you might find useful, but you can take it or leave it.” This approach is perhaps best summed up in her attitude to cooking. In her recipe for that delicious-sounding rhubarb and ginger flapjack, for example, she gives precise quantities of all the ingredients but then adds at the end: “If you decide to include extras like dried fruits, mixed peel, almonds and essence... that would be rather excellent. I urge you to subvert the recipe to suit your own tastes and store cupboards.” It’s hard not to warm to somebody whose core philosophy seems to be something akin to “everyone’s going to have their own way of doing things, this is my take but you do you”.
Perhaps the best thing about A Life in Water, though, is its undramatic, level-headed and all-round healthy approach to the act of outdoor swimming itself. There are some notable exceptions, but as a general rule, first-person books about outdoor swimming – and first-person books about the outdoors in general – can usually be placed into one of two groups.
In the first group are books in which the authors have set themselves some sort of intense physical challenge, which they then either overcome, following a few hundred pages’ worth of adversity, or fail to overcome, but still learn a few important life lessons along the way.
The second group, meanwhile, consists of books in which the author has suffered some sort of tragedy or trauma and has taken up outdoor swimming or some other outdoor pursuit as a form of therapy. In these books, the story arc usually (but not always) charts the author’s recovery, with nature / the outdoors / prolonged bouts of hearty exercise in the fresh air cast as a mystical healing force that somehow succeeds where conventional medicine has failed.
McDonough isn’t against any of this. She does have an enjoyable dig at what she calls “swimachismo”, and cautions readers thinking of taking up outdoor swimming to beware of getting embroiled in arguments between “Skins” (those who wear swimming costumes) and “Suits” (those who wear neoprene), characterising the two camps as “The ‘I-can-swim-so-many-miles-more-than-you, faster-than-you’ll-ever-manage-in-my-sleek-neoprene’ team up against the ‘I-am-so-incredibly-tough, able-to-withstand-skulking-around-in-just-ground-ice-for-several-hours-dressed-only-in-a-fraying-macrame-bikini-and-a-smile’ types.” But she is quick to add that “of course, there’s a place for the fastest, the record-breaking, those magnificent endurance swimmers – and these very special people are to be feted.”
Similarly, while she has a bit of fun with the media-concocted notion of “wild swimming” (“people wonder if I’m a ‘wild swimmer’, but I’m not sure that I am particularly wild”), she is open to the idea that outdoor swimming could have (modest) health benefits, and she does briefly allude to the fact that she and a friend both started swimming year-round while going through “turbulent times”. Rather than some sort of quick-fix, however, McDonough evidently sees outdoor swimming as something to be permanently absorbed into her daily life. Not a competition to be won or some sort of magical elixir – just a way of making the remarkable everyday, and every day remarkable.
A Year in Water: Swimming, Writing, Living by Beth McDonough, North House Press, £15
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