GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA
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This public pool shares its Gainesville nook with a large grassy park, an unflashy football field with concrete seating, one volleyball sandpit with a “no loitering” sign affixed to an adjacent fence, and a fire station. First thing in the morning the lane-ropes are arranged length-wise, making the pool an Olympic fifty metres. I’ve only swum here when the lane-ropes were arranged across the pool––twenty-five yards. They were organised this way to open up the shallow end for “free swimming,” and to create space beneath the waterslide. Once, on a weekend when the shallow end of the pool was packed with kids, I swam in the lane closest to the mouth of the waterslide. The force of the water coming down the slide, and the added whoosh created by all those legs and butts hitting the water with speed, gave the lane an upstream and a downstream. When swimming towards the slide, I felt like a spawning salmon, and when swimming away from it, I just felt marvellous. I have wondered about the mathematics of this workout versus swimming in a standard, stagnant pool. Was it like running up and down a flight of stairs? Was this as close as I could get to swimming up a hill? Can you picture that? Is that like swimming up a waterfall? Like the salmon? And is anyone rooting for the salmon? Or are you all for the grizzly bear standing in the water up to her round, woolly belly, fishing for lunch for her kids, the ones goofing around on the shoreline, because all the salmon wants to do is get home so it can die in peace?