Despite its popularity with tourists, Cowell Beach in Santa Cruz received failing grades for water quality from Heal the Bay over the course of many years. More recently, though, the beach has cleaned up its act (literally) and is a better place to swim and play. Lucky for me—I’ve been floating and paddling (with arms, not paddles) its still-murky waters for the past few weeks training for the Santa Cruz Triathlon (sprint distance only, natch).
Open water swimming is an unusual undertaking for me, a person who does not consider herself (myself) much of a swimmer. I don’t swim freestyle (only breaststroke) and I don’t like to put my head in water, for starters. My first few swims began with gasps of uncertainty about my ability to survive, punctuated by regular pauses to breathe. My swim coach (a good hire, as without her I’d likely have been swept out to sea, eaten by sharks, or, most likely, rescued by a teenage lifeguard) explained that it’s a mammalian reflex to the cold, which tracks—even in the pool, I find. My most recent swim is the only time I haven’t spent 200 yards or so sputtering and stopping and restarting again. A metaphor for life, maybe. I still tend to pause at each buoy.
As I swim, I wonder a lot of things: why am I doing this? (To survive the triathlon.) Why is the water so damn murky? (Sand, I think/hope.) How long can I swim for? (An hour, so far. I don’t know the distance.) Why was this water so dirty? (Bird shit, largely.) How’d I get somewhere so beautiful? (It really is, especially floating far out with the sun over the wharf and the cliffs giving a little glow and the water sparkling with soft waves.)
And then, sometimes, who’s Henry Cowell? I knew of him for many (okay, two) reasons: Henry Cowell Redwood State Park, where I’ve gone for hikes and runs and even a horseback ride, and the Cowell Hay Barn near the entrance to UCSC. But who was he, really?
Turns out Henry Cowell was an early settler (yep, the colonial kind) and successful business type who ran rock and lime quarries in Santa Cruz. Kind of a dick, too, it seems—he busied himself grabbing land to protect and promote his business, including land around the wharf itself (useful in shipping lime around, I suppose). These were allegedly “legal“ efforts, as the state allowed people (settlers) to apply to claim marsh lands (leaving aside the question of whether one can ever truly own private property, much less be granted it when it was stolen from the original occupants).
Anyway, Henry didn’t get that wharf land he was after (too bad) but I guess the city named the beach after him anyway, because when you’re a rich white dude that’s what happens? Cowell’s (often so called by locals, even though the official name is simply Cowell Beach) is a fine place for beginner swimming and surfing alike, as I discovered after struggling to surf elsewhere; it has a very long and flat and gentle motion and it is easy for even a beginner surfer like me to ride waves all the way in. I’m certainly not hanging ten, I’m simply standing on the board and reveling in not falling until I inevitably do.
Like the surfing, the swimming is something I’m still getting the hang of. I’ve been running for a long time, and I have an innate sense of how fast I can run (not very) and how long I can keep up a particular pace (a pretty long time, if it’s the right pace). I have no sense of this sort for swimming, and so in addition to that gasping mammalian diving response I have a tendency to try and swim too fast, too soon, meaning I have to stop and tread water and regroup myself and catch my breath. Once I somehow get to the right state, though I’m not exactly sure what this state or pace really is, I can keep going for a long time. I’m learning to count strokes and try to make 100 without stopping; this is not far, but it feels far when looking out toward a distant buoy.
As I swim, I look deep into the brown and I contemplate everything I’ve mentioned and more. I’m still getting over how this part of the ocean looks brown from beneath, even through the clearest goggles. It’s certainly a far cry from a brightly chlorinated pool, where each stroke skims over tiles outlined in perfect detail, where I can see the minerals edging each drain. Here there’s just brown. And part of me, a deep mammalian part I suppose, can’t help but wonder if a shark or turtle or sea monster lingers behind the murk.
The murk can be a metaphor for environmental endeavors: we see brown and warm right now, and monsters seem to lurk, but there may be a cleaner and brighter if not necessarily cooler feature ahead. All we have to do is face forward, sight our target (the house with the gray roof—thanks coach) and keep swimming.
As businessmen grab for land, for environmental destruction, the rest of us can look out to sea or up the mountain and move, and swim, and say: this is ours and we will not let you take it. I have yet to circle the wharf, but I see that it can be done; if old people wrinkled with time can do it, then I can too, can I not?
Will you join me?