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[gentle music]
[fabric swishing] [footsteps crunching]
[Jennefer] That’s insane.
Holy shit.
That is unreal.
[Helen] I know. Isn’t it beautiful?
Hey, Deirdre.
[Deirdre] Morning.
[Helen] Careful. It’s super slick.
[Deirdre] Oh my god, look at the lake.
Isn’t it gorgeous?
[Helen] It’s spectacular.
[ice cracking] [gentle music]
Wind’s picking up.
[Deirdre] Yeah, wind.
[wind blowing]
It’s raining ice.
[gentle music]
[waves crashing]
[water burbling and sloshing]
[wind blowing]
The cool thing about swimming at sunrise is
every day is different.
Some days you get to see the sun just starting to rise
and it looks like liquid fire.
[wind howling]
And then other days it’s all overcast.
Some days the waves are enormous
and you think, should I get in today?
[waves crashing]
But every day it’s exhilarating and it’s fun.
No fishermen.
[water splashes]
[gentle music]
You get in the water and it envelops you
and you move through it.
It’s otherworldly.
And when you swim far in the open water,
it’s moving meditation.
You are also, every day, learning something different.
About the way that the water moves,
about the way that your body feels,
when the water moves this way,
you know, when the waves are bigger,
I get a little seasick if I stop to look at the sun.
So, you know, it’s a daily education.
I was treated for cancer back in 2011,
and I remember going into the water when I was finally
cleared after the surgery and the radiation and the chemo,
and it just felt incredible.
It was this feeling of just being not broken anymore.
[gentle music]
I feel just very in tune with my body.
All I’m really thinking about is am I kicking?
Am I stroking?
I’m breathing.
[gentle music]
[water splashing gently]
When the pandemic hit, initially I was in denial about it.
Then it got serious very, very quickly.
[feet shuffling]
[Jennefer] I don’t know that I ever would’ve been prepared
for how affected I became this year.
I just went into an extremely deep depression.
[fabric rustling]
Just getting up every morning and going to the water
was an attempt to sort of have a little moment each day
that I was getting up and out.
It was a reason to keep waking up every morning
and getting out of bed.
[door creaking]
[wind blowing]
When I started swimming in the lake,
I liked actually being by myself.
But maybe mid-summer, Deirdre, Helen, and I
began to, like, say hello in the mornings.
And even though we weren’t swimming together,
there was always an acknowledgement
of being there together.
I was gonna stop and get coffee and I just…
[Jennefer] I think there was comfort
in not feeling as isolated
as we all were feeling in our own homes.
Cold out here.
[water splashing]
[Jennefer] I think that was the impetus also
to just continue on through the winter.
[wind blowing]
I’ve always seen the world as the glass half full.
I’m a lucky person in that way.
But from the onset of the pandemic,
when we first started hearing about it in January,
I was very concerned.
[soft solemn music]
My husband, John, woke up April 1st,
he couldn’t breathe.
And April 4th, 2020, John died from coronavirus.
The children and I couldn’t get together.
We couldn’t have any kind of ceremony.
We couldn’t do anything that would feel normal
when somebody dies.
[waves crashing] [soft solemn music continues]
[Helen] She was trying her best
to make sense of a situation that was beyond reckoning.
[soft solemn music continues]
[Deirdre] Swimming is this marvelous antidote.
[leaves rustling] [wind blowing]
And then November happened,
and I didn’t want to get out of the lake
because it would mean that I would be isolated again.
Jennefer and Helen were talking about how they thought
that they could swim through the winter
and what did I think?
And so I just decided, well, I’ll just keep going
and see what I can bear.
[gentle music]
[Helen] The feeling of getting into cold water
is electrifying.
You are just briefly breathless
and everything that is wrong or stressful just dissipates.
Wonderful.
[Helen] My skin feels as though I’m turning bionic.
I feel metallic.
[water splashing]
[Jennefer] That’s Deirdre’s signature.
Yeah. Woohoo.
[Deirdre] The exhilaration is just remarkable.
[people laughing] Gorgeous. Woohoo.
[Deirdre] I feel like we’ve discovered
the Fountain of Youth.
[Helen] It’s a balmy 40 degrees out.
[chuckles] Oh my god.
We became very obsessive about
how cold the water was getting.
You know, it’s 50, then it’s 40,
then it’s 40.2,
then it’s 39.
I had two thermometers
that both busted this year in the cold water,
so I didn’t get another one.
We just figure that it’s cold.
[Jennefer] So then it’s about
I can’t wait to swim in the snow.
Then it was like, I can’t wait to swim when there’s ice.
And then we had no idea what did ice mean?
You know, this winter
it meant so many different kinds of ice
because you know, there’s the first ice
that was like a very thin, thin layer of ice.
Almost like snowflakes on the water.
Break them as I stroked and then turn around
and they would have reformed behind me.
[Jennefer] Ice that was so sharp
that you actually were getting cut
and you needed to be careful.
[wind howling]
And then, you know, we got real ice.
[gentle mysterious music]
[ice cracking]
[people chattering]
[person hoots]
[Speaker] Okay, girlfriend.
[people chattering]
We knew that this was not to be taken lightly,
and we, each step along the way, reassessed
whether this was something that we could safely do.
The shore is hell. Getting dressed is hell.
The after-drop is brutal.
[Deirdre] I’m starting to feel cold now.
Yeah. Whoo, oh my gosh.
[Speaker] I put on.
However, there’s a massive rush of endorphins.
You feel superhuman.
It’s an amazing feeling that lasts the entire day.
Jen, I haven’t been this happy in months.
[Jennefer] I know. Do you see?
[people laughing] It works.
The feeling of being fully, utterly alive and joyous
in contrast to 2020 and Covid.
It was well, well worth the effort.
[water burbling]
[Helen sighing]
Right there. All right.
[indistinct] . Yep.
There’s another ledge right in front of you
and then there’s a bigger ledge that I’m on.
Yep. Whoo.
[Helen laughing]
Amazing. It’s beautifully freezing.
[Helen] Swimming with these women
through the pandemic means the world to me.
And sit down,
and then you’re gonna come right over here,
there’s a ledge.
It is like being embraced every single morning.
In there.
Okay, wait a second. We should spread out.
Should we do patty-cake?
No. [people laughing]
We were like three strangers that came together
and we forged a friendship through this experience.
Oh my god, Chip, thank you for making the hole.
I’m hoping John’s watching me
and can see what a gift it is.
Now that I’m, like, purple, I’m getting out soon.
I’m getting out.
Okay, go ahead.
There is strength
in being able to do something yourself by yourself,
but I think for me it’s created in my life
a tendency to feel like I have to do things alone.
I think what this experience has done is, you know,
showed me the importance of community and support.
There is power in being with people.
[people chattering]
[Helen] Swimming through the winter,
it helped us get through.
It helped us cope.
[gentle music]
[gentle music continues]
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