“We all have secret swimming holes. Or, if we don’t, we expect to find them in the future. Some hold lost rings. Some have chronicled the many childhoods of our treasured clans. Some are sacred. Dropping off the mountain into crevices & joining to make torrents of moving liquid, they reach us to disarm our restrictions. Each dip is an initiation. How does the body enter, how does the body cope? These waters haven’t had time to be polluted or stolen, not yet. Too far upstream to be messed with, as they tumble past. If you’re lucky, your spot has prepared itself, and, as if you had made an appointment, no one else is there. At least for a couple hours. When the next wave arrives toting river-perfect lawn chairs, you don’t begrudge them their turn. You watch as they park a cooler on the rocks and set the chairs in shallow water, while their kids disperse to explore with masks and goggles. When one lights up a smoke, I feel nostalgia of days gone by. The tiny whiff that passes my nose reminds me of A&W root beer floats passed in thru car windows or a pickup game of softball. But no. Something weird is going on. No one’s really having that kind of fun now. If you tried to do it, you’d have someone shaming you for your irresponsible actions. That’s why I climb through fields of flowers, brushing up against them as if my life depended on it. The fireweed I remember from 1992 has been supplanted by a next generation of perennials, and someone’s carved stairs into the embankment. I’m not all that opposed to technology like this, based in natural improvements. But don’t bring your app near me. Don’t surveil my location or temperature. Don’t make it your business to monitor my health. Because if you do, I’ll really disappear this time, as if that is what you wanted all along.”
