Big River

Swimming across the Hudson

You hurry down the dock toward the river, wincing as the hot metal scalds your soles.

Sweat sluices down your temples and armpits. Your skin glistens, slathered with viscous Vaseline, greasy as a glazed doughnut. Between your pungent perspiration and the petroleum jelly, you smell like you’ve been smoking a spliff at a gas station.  

Soon you’ll try to swim across the Hudson River—with two friends and 200 strangers—in a charity swim to benefit the River Pool.

You are apprehensive, but no longer afraid.

From speakers on the shore, you hear “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,” an interminable soft-rock anthem that only exacerbates your restlessness to get going. You arrived two hours ago and have since stood shirtless in the sun for an hour, waiting for the tide to turn and for two barges who missed the memo that the waterway was temporarily closed to boat traffic. Waiting, you chat with two women from Brooklyn. You notice: a woman with a watermelon print bathing suit; two guys with Pikachu tote bags; and a guy with a campaign slogan scrawled on his bare chest: “Vote 4 Trump 4 Jail.”

At the edge of the dock, you pause to scan the flotilla of kayaks for a familiar face. When you spot Tom, you lift your arm to flag his attention.  He raises his paddle. You glance at your buddies one last time on dry land. Then you bend your knees, leap, and plunge feet first into the river.

The water is warm, way warmer than you expected, maybe 80 degrees. You surface, sputtering, and breaststroke through the scrum of swimmers toward Tom.

At the bow of his kayak, you pause to get your bearings, then start to swim freestyle.

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. Breathe left.

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. Breathe right.

The water is beige, murky, dappled with sunlight. When you breathe to the left, you glimpse Tom and the Newburgh-Beacon bridge to the north. When you breathe to the right, you see sun, sky, and river to the south.

Swim Squad

You are swimming yourself, but you are not alone.

You wear an ankle bracelet with a GPS device monitored by the race organizers. In the water, 95 support kayaks, including Tom’s, can guide you and ensure your safety. If you get tired, you can hang onto the bow of the boat. Or the kayakers can toss you a flotation noodle. If you want to stop swimming, they can summon a pontoon boat. And in a medical emergency, they can signal a Jet-Ski to speed you to shore.

Last summer, when you first flirted with the idea of swimming across the Hudson, you asked a friend at the gym if he would join you. He said he was terrified of open water—and cited a guy who had a fatal heart attack during a recent local charity swim.

You are not afraid of a heart attack. And you are not worried about drowning. Not anymore. Still you appreciate the safety precautions, which alleviate your anxiety and allow you to focus on the swim. You appreciate Tom and his calm steady presence.  And you appreciate your two friends, one old and one new, whose proximity in the water adds further reassurance.

Up ahead, Dan swims breaststroke. Like you, he is a writer, educator, and distance runner who switched to swimming in middle-age Recently he swam 1.5 miles along the Hudson to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride. You met Dan in college, where you both studied Japanese. Once, he pricked you with a safety pin to keep you awake during classes, which met four days per week, from 8:00-11:00 A.M. Decades later, you have forgotten the Nihongo (日本語) you labored to learn, save a few key phrases.

Ganbatte ガンバッテ Good luck.

Kiwotsukete気をつけて Be careful.

Ja mata. じゃ、また See you later.

Behind you, Jason swims freestyle. You met in 2020, when your family moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs, part of the panicked pandemic exodus. Your sons are friends. Jason is an NYC firefighter based in the Bronx.

Last night, he was hospitalized with a double ear infection. His physician wife extracted giant clumps of yellow-brown wax from his ear canals. Most likely, he contracted the infection swimming in the ocean, training not only for our one-mile swim across the Hudson today, but also for an upcoming swim in the river—from the Statue of Liberty to the World Trade Center. The annual event—restricted to cops, firefighters, EMTs-and former Navy SEALS—entails a 3-mile swim, plus 300 push-ups, 66 pull-ups, and a sprint carrying the American flag.

 In her memoir I Found My Tribe, Ruth Fitzmaurice recounts her husband’s devastating illness and how she found solace swimming in the Irish sea with the “Tragic Widows Club,” a creative collective of women united by unfathomable grief.

 Nobody you love is terminally ill.

Still, swimming across the Hudson, you have found your tribe.

Swimming Home

You swim and swim and swim.

How long have you swam?  How long until you reach the shore?  Who knows? Who cares?  You did not wear a watch and do not ask Tom for the time. You are in no rush.

Your goal is to reach the other side—nothing more, nothing less.

No surprise: the river current is choppier than the local lake in upstate New York, but mellower than the Long Island Sound in Connecticut and not remotely as turbulent like the Atlantic Ocean in Rhode Island.

Surprise: You do not feel fatigued. You can now swim a mile and a half in a pool, but only with regular rest breaks and pushing off a wall every 50 yards,

Another surprise: You are not thirsty. At the local Adult Swim camp, where you’ve been training for the last five weeks, you are always parched. You guzzle water between every break, draining two or three big bottles in a hour. Then again, you have been hardcore hydrating—you peed five times in the two hours before the swim start.

You swim and swim and swim.

Once, you pause to avoid getting kicked by a swimmer who turns out to be Dan. Another time, you pause to flick a strand of brown algae from your face. Periodically, you pause to ask Tom if you’re swimming straight and reorient accordingly.

At last, the shore. You are still not tired or thirsty. Near the finish, you switch to breaststroke so you can see ahead—and not crash into other swimmers or kayaks or the dock. After countless concussions and four years of chronic migraines, you do not need another headache.

You hear your name. You pause, tread water, and scan the shore. You see your mom, your wife, your son, your wife’s mom and her husband—and your new dog, whose name happens to be River.

Almost exactly a year ago, you stood in that same spot with your wife and son, watching the swimmers approach the shore, chatting with them after the swim, admiring and envying their strength and courage, and vowing to swim across the river yourself the following summer.

More than 40 years ago, your parents moved to a sleepy suburb on the Hudson River. You walked to the river, biked to the river, and waded in the river. But you never swam in the river. Too deep. Too dirty. Too dangerous.

Now, swimming across the Hudson feels like coming home.

Nearing the shore, you approach an older guy wearing a bright yellow cap. Your competitive switch flips. You switch from breaststroke back to front crawl and try to pass him on the left. He does not yield. You swim faster, then dart in front of him a few feet before the dock.

Surprise: The digital clock at the finish says 56 minutes. You thought swimming across the Hudson would take you between 60 and 90 minutes. Later, Dan tells you the clock started when the first wave of swimmers hit the water—and you were in the last wave. So likely you swam between 45 and 50 minutes. But who’s counting?

“You’re a better swimmer than you think you are,” your son says later, while recapping the day. “You always do better than you think you can do.”

You smile. He knows you. He sees you.

Then he says he wants to enter the swim in a couple of years when he’s eligible. And when he does the swim—not if, Dad—he’ll be even faster.

You smile, waiting for the inevitable moment when he’ll lap you, in the water, in life.

Not now. But soon.

Later, you watch Caleb Dressel, Katie Ledecky, Leon Marchand—and all the other Olympic swimmers with a new appreciation for their strength, speed and grace.

Now, after all the swimmers and kayakers and organizers have dispersed, you attack the picnic your mom packed: iced tea and seltzer, yogurt and pesto pasta, and a gooey dark chocolate cupcake.

We wade in the water and let River splash in the river.  Black mud squishes between our toes. We toss rocks and try to hit the rotted pilings, the remains of a former pier. We skip stones, which skim the surface, ripple the river, then disappear into the deep.