The Red Rockers

I’m obsessed with the daily swim group in our town. It’s a super informal, super friendly, super regular thing. They meet at 8am for a short swim in the bay. Every day. All year. About 15-20 people seem to show up regularly. Some days more than 20. Most are retired. Most are 60ish or a tad more. As I noted in my last post the ‘coffee after’ at Gracie’s is way longer than the swim. On Sundays they potluck at picnic tables on the beach after the swim. They are called the Gracetown Red Rockers. It is the most wholesome, soul nourishing way to start a day. I’m so jealous they start every day of their lives this way. I’m also so joyful that I get to partake for a few weeks. I feel like I’ve unwittingly stepped into a short class on how to live life. I’m going to capture some notes here. I’d like to figure out how to recreate this sauce back home. I found this photo on Instagram. It sure captures their spirit.

Lesson 1: Connect. All the happiness and self-help and related advice and research increasingly points to our need for human connection. We had to disrupt life so much in the last one hundred years, and lose ourselves, to then have people tell us what was known for thousands of years prior, i.e. for our wellbeing we need to love and be loved and connect with other humans. The Red Rockers have this figured out in spades. It’s so friendly and low key. I have enjoyed fun and funny conversations about politics, menopause, women’s health, gender, transgender rights, children, childhood, high school exchanges, parenting, farming, travel and surf trips. I have discovered new authors like Julia Baird and A.C.Grayling. Mostly these people like to laugh and don’t take themselves too seriously. They are so welcoming. After 4 or 5 swims I had already signed up (and participated) in an art class taught by one of the swimmers and taken the family to visit the pottery gallery of another swimmer. When I told the family I was going to take a drawing class, they wanted to know if I’d be drawing naked people. It honestly hadn’t crossed my mind since I always imagine drawing nature.

I am obsessed with our new mugs from the Wilyabrup Dreaming pottery studio, made by the Bill the swimmer and potter. They sell some of his mugs in Gracie’s. I remember seeing them before I joined the swim group and thought “I’ve wanted to buy and ship home mugs for ages, these are gorgeous”. And days later I was swimming with their creator!!

Lesson 2: Slow down, Be present. These people are water people. They love the ocean. For the artists among them, it inspires their creativity. For all of them, it touches their soul. Folks will often stop to point something out under the water. I’ve had fellow swimmers point out herring, sting rays and schools of striped fish. They see this stuff all the time, and yet there is just genuine joy to share their swim with the ocean critters. They get so excited to observe sea life. There is stuff to see out of the water too. One day I looked up and saw a complete rainbow over the ocean.

Lesson 3: Consistency matters. At the end of the day, our life is made up of the everyday. Our habits and decisions shape our life. How we spend our days is how we spend our years. At first I thought ‘gosh this is a short swim’. And then one morning when I didn’t feel like dragging myself out of bed to swim I thought ‘oh, I’ll just go, it’s a short swim’. It is so easy to go everyday. That to me is part of the magic. With ease, comes participation, and a jolly big group for the afterwards-fun-times. It really is a big daily dose of the happy hormones!!

Lesson 4: Variety is the spice of life. Ocean conditions are always a variable. Wind, waves, tides, air and water temperature, visibility and more. There are so many dimensions to how the ocean changes. You have zero control over it. In one short week I’ve swum in everything from a calm bay to literally the roughest waters of my entire life. It’s wild to me that you can quite easily swim when the ocean is very gnarly. Sure you get tossed around more, and it’s slower, but you just spin one arm and then the other. You just keep going.

Here is a doodle from the outdoor round table at Gracie’s. Endless happy mornings are had around this table. Another source of joy: I go to bed every night looking forward to my morning swim and coffee after :)