Between Rivers: A love letter to the Cherwell

How wild swimming in Oxford brought me back to myself

“Balls to it” says Jim Marsden, when I tell him about my pipe dream of going to circus school and how that might be a ridiculous thing to do at the ripe old age of 38…

Jim and I are in Oxford’s ‘Mesopotamia’, where the upper and lower levels of the Cherwell meet parts of the Thames, shooting for his current photography project Bodies of Water. When I spoke to Jim about his plans for this project, everything about it spoke to me. Jim wants the photos and the words that he curates to be a reflection of real women exploring their relationships with wild pools, lakes, rivers and the sea. It’s not another wild swimming book, or anything to do with competing against the environment, more a love letter to nature and an exploration of how being in water allows us to simply ‘be’. The project has taken Jim from the Lake District to Devon, and now to Oxford, and asks: What draws us to water? Is being in water a spiritual experience? What do our particular bodies of water, those liquid spaces and places, mean for us? And why do we come back again and again throughout the bitter chill of winter?

I’ve been a water baby my whole life, but prior to swimming in Oxford, being in water was more about competition; ‘how far can I go, how fast am I going, can I keep up, how many waves?’ Growing up by the sea, I’d contemplated having my photos taken in the Solent off Hayling Island (my home town) and on the beaches of Croyde (my favourite surf spot), yet I realised that it was the rivers and lakes of Oxford, the flow of the Cherwell, the swirl of Port Meadow and the unforgiving ice of the January Thames, that really taught me to how to be in water.

I love the parallels between the title of Jim’s project and the area that we are in. Bodies of water are everywhere in Mesopotamia, and in the summer, there are bodies in water everywhere too. Summer in Oxford has a feel of another place, another time, with punts, and readers, and swimmers and scents of Virginia Woolf’s ‘mint and mud’. I know Woolf spoke of the River Cam, but I haven’t found another phrase that is as evocative for these rather particular summer feels. As I enter the water by the small weir to launch, and scull, and float, and perch in between shots, I barely notice Jim, expert photographer that he is. In this moment, we too are part of the riverscape, shrouded by the proud willow and veiled by the Cherwell’s silky surface. Around the corner, out of sight, the river ambles off to who knows where. An eccentric Oxford Prof tips his straw hat to us as he wanders by on his way back to Magdalen College fields. I am soaking wet, have the beginnings of goosebumps, mud between my toes and feel a bit like Alice in my own watery Wonderland. I have never felt more alive…

For this particular occasion, I have chosen to wear something that I wouldn’t ordinarily wear. Long gone are the sexy neoprene socks of February winter dips and the sweaty sportswear that usually gets a dunking after a run. My deep red wine coloured dress has a floaty diaphanous skirt that billows out around me as I run. It is one of my favourite things to move in. I’ve long had a dream to dance in the woods in this dress, and swimming in it in the River Cherwell by two of my favourite willow trees feels like a natural precursor to that. For this, I knew I wanted to wear that dress, I could visualise myself in it, in Mesopotamia. It was one of those things that you know to be true, and true to you, before it’s even happened. Being in water feels a lot like that. It’s a truth to me. Being in water allows me to become part of the landscape itself; to integrate with nature, a reminder that we all are nature, not separate from it. In turn, this connection always brings me back to myself.

Mesopotamia comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος (mesos, 'middle') and ποταμός (potamos, 'river') and translates to '(land) between rivers’. I’ve always felt that I’ve lived ‘between rivers’, holding fast in that place between possible routes and possible choices. Sometimes excited by not knowing where each one leads, throwing myself down whichever on a whim, and at other times, completely paralysed by not knowing which one to choose; or mourning for the river and route that I’ve left behind. Although it can be uncomfortable, being ‘between’ places feels like my literal and metaphorical home.

Right now, I’m between rivers again, on sabbatical from work and about to go and train full-time at Circomedia in Bristol at 38 years old ( I did say ‘balls to it’). It feels exciting, and scary, and ridiculous, and somehow exactly where I’m meant to be. I’m trying to keep water in my mind as I approach this new phase. I want to see where it takes me, not force or rush or swim too hard against the current. It might even bring me back to right where I started, and for the first time, I’m OK with that.

Jim asked me to write a few words about what being in water means for me. Thinking about being in water, and trying to write about it in a way that it captures the intense joy, sensation and lifeblood that it gives me is one of my favourite things to do, even where I can’t quite reach what I want to say. In her novel, The Penelopiad (a re-telling of the ancient myth), Margaret Attwood says it better than I ever could:

“Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone…

Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

For more about the Bodies of Water project see the Bodies of Water Substack and their website.

All pictures by the very talented Jim Marsden.