Eric Stark is a long-distance swimmer. He learned to swim at three, when his mother (a swimmer herself) taught him and his brothers first how to float, then how to swim in the Metedeconk(CQ) River, a shallow, sheltered beach about 10 miles south from Asbury Park, NJ. He’s never left the water since, finding swimming holes wherever he’s lived. In New York City, where he was the curator for The New School Art Collection and previously, an art dealer and gallerist, he swam laps in concrete pools. On Long Island, where he spent summers, it was along beachy stretches of the bay and of the ocean. He landed in Waldoboro in 1986, and specifically, on Dutch Neck. He chose it because it was near the water. These days he swims in Peter’s Pond and in the coves of Broad Bay.
Being in salt water is like being in the womb. You don’t need to do anything. You just relax and lay in it. And let it take you.
I feel free when I’m in the water. I feel embraced. For me, it’s a meditation. However, when I’m swimming – and I swim freestyle — the first half-mile, the first mile even, is not a meditation.
The first mile is an uneasy one. My body is acclimating to the water. I’m getting my breath coordinated, and I’m feeling my stroke. Then I begin to relax, and that’s why the second and third mile are just bliss.
The only thing that is a little scary is that I kind of lose my sense of where I am and what I’m doing because I can stay in there all day without even batting an eye. I’m in my own space. That’s why I use the word “embraced.” I’m held by the water. I feel safe. And the water tells me that, too.
My mother used to tell me that salt water can heal anything. And in the summer, whenever we were sick, whether it was a scrape or a cold or an infection she used to take us to the ocean. Being in the water, swimming in it, that is how I re-balance myself, mentally and physically.
I started swimming long distances when I was in my thirties, out on Long Island. And I started inhaling salt water. It was something I taught myself to do. As I was walking on the shore, I would take handfuls of water to my face and breath in the saltwater, and it would go up my nostrils and through my sinuses and out my nose. Then I started doing it when I was swimming. I still do it when I’m in the Bay. That’s how natural saltwater feels. Maybe I have a set of gills in there someplace.
After all these years, I still love to float. And in salt water, you float so easily! But I can also float in Pete’s Pond, not moving a muscle, just laying there with my arms over my head and my eyes closed and feeling the earth turn.
I love that pond because of its proximity and its depth. It’s spring fed. I call it the kettle hole – though I don’t know if it’s that. It’s just that it feels like it’s something left over from the glaciers. And it’s very deep in the center, so it has this quarry-like quality.
When I’m swimming there, I circle the pond because it’s a confined space. Each turn around the pond is about ¾ of a mile, and I just keep going, going, around and around and around and around. I might be in the water a couple of hours.
I am conscious of how alone I am when I am swimming. But even if I weren’t, if I got in trouble, there’s no one who could save me because of my size.
A couple of years ago, I started out at the pond and suddenly my legs became very heavy. And I was in the middle of the pond. The first thing I thought was, “I’m going to drown.” Then I thought, “No. Stop, relax, roll over on your back and breathe.”
If you can breathe, you’ll never fail. Even that day in the pond, with my limp legs, I turned over. I bent my knees and let my legs sink, and I kept my breathing to fill my lungs. I floated. But it was unnerving because I’d never felt helpless in the water before.
And I made my way to the other side, I said to myself, “Just get across the pond and walk back, because something’s not right today.”
But when I got there, I remembered how my father, a WWII pilot, told me that in a shake-up of confidence, you have to face it and re-engage. Or else you’ll never do it again.
And I thought, “If I get out now, I may never trust myself in the water again.” So, I stayed in, turned around, and swam back with renewed confidence, about myself and my relationship to the water.
Every year I start swimming sometime in May and go to about October, though when it gets cold, I put on a sleeveless wetsuit, just enough to cover my torso. That way I can swim well into the fall, depending on the year and weather.
Three winters ago, I started dipping, though dunk is a better word for it. and I go in naked. I like swimming naked any time of the year, but in winter, it’s mewith no adornment or protection, in nature, no hiding. It’s quite a beautiful feeling.
Anyway, the first time I did it, I walked in and dove. What a colossal mistake! Going headfirst felt like hitting concrete. It just took my breath away.
So now I walk in up to my waist and dunk down. And then I keep walking until the water is about up to my neck. The whole thing can be very quick, maybe a minute, or two, or three. I go in several more times. I’m not looking to break a record – I just want to see how long I can stay in. I want to see if I can figure out some way to deal with how cold the water is.
The thing I love, and what everyone talks about, is how, when you go into that water, you come out different. You can be anxious, depressed, sad or something else, and you go in that water — you don’t come out that way. It’s that intense! That cold makes you forget all of the stuff that’s bothering you, because all you can think about is the water, and how cold it is, and your desire to get out of it. And once you’re out, the air can feel warm! Last winter I went in at least every couple of days. I think it’s more of a cerebral thing than a body thing.
I do it because it takes you away from everything. But it’s more than that. You become totally present.
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