Swim Circle

Bleaberry tarn, Buttermere 1st December

After a considerable gap we are underway again – but it’s necessary to adjust to a new situation. Health problems have beset both of us but for me it means I won’t be able to swim until it gets warmer again. So the swims are down to Paul to do on his own while I will do what? That was a question we needed to resolve – how the new balance of involvement would work.

At once when we set off from Buttermere the feeling of being ‘back on the trail’ lifted us as we walked across recently flooded tracks to woods in the wintry light. Once in the woods we ascended steeply to the concealed hanging body of water above. We caught no glimpse of it until we stood on its very edge.

Having so thouroughly engaged in the performance/swim on previous trips, I now had the chance to observe ‘from a distance’. So as Paul got ready to enter the tarn, I climbed on up to a shoulder high above to get a veiw of the whole show – minute figure, tarn and the big picture beyond.

It was far more awesome than I had anticipated – to see this (now) tiny, fragile figure, launch into the lake and begin to paddle across the surface, making painfully slow progress, surrounded by immense arms of rock and more distant snowy summits. It was easy to see it in heroic proportions: ‘ humanity dwarfed by the forces of nature defiantly pressing on’ – a Turner painting of the sublime come alive.

And for me the conflicting desire to be both part of that performance, that art, and yet also to simultaneously witness it – the perennial conflict of how to be inside the adventure and to see it from the outside – one or the other not both.

Was my new role to be solely a witness?

I hastened down the hill to reengage in the performance.

Richard

Bleaberry Tarn 30^th November 2009

After delays in the project caused by periods of sickness for both Richard and I, followed by the Cumbria flooding, we finally made it out to Buttermere for the ascent to Bleaberry Tarn.

Last year, during our Swimming Home project, we had seen the fold of the high ridge that holds Bleaberry Tarn high above the surface of Buttermere. We had imagined it dark and cold – unforgiving in its north-eastern aspect. It was then that we decided to swim this tarn and now, finally, we were climbing the 45 degree zigzag path that kicks upwards from a corner of Buttermere where two men watched a third operating a small digger removing stones and flood debris washed into the outflow towards Crummock Water.

We started the climb at midday. At last a clear bright but cold day after what seemed like months of rain. The sun was already past its highest point, scarcely cutting much of an arc in the sky with a full moon hot on its heels. The snow-clad tops were electric in the clear sunlight, although our entire walk up was in the shade of the peaks to the south.

Above the tree line, we looked round and could take in the whole of Buttermere and Crummock Water below with snow tipped Grasmoor straddling above them timelessly.

I had been thinking about swimming in Bleaberry Tarn for over a year and it had gained epic proportions in my mind, yet, on coming face to face with it, it was both a surprise and a delight. It was smaller than anticipated despite having seen it on maps and on Google Earth and not as bleak and unforgiving as imagined, but sitting snugly below Red Pike, almost welcoming.

The air temperature was dropping fast and the water in the shallows barely 5 Celsius, the deeper water even colder. But the water, though cold when swimming, was so clean it was invigorating to drink.

On the ascent, Richard and I had continued developing our ideas for a public art application we intend to make in the New Year – the energy from this stage of the Swim Circle project feeding ideas for hopefully our next.

I planted a post with a stone from Greendale Tarn into the almost frozen ground by the side of the tarn and took a film of the water’s surface. As we started to walk away, two honking ravens flew back into the amphitheatre to reclaim their territory.

Paul

Greendale Tarn – 24th August 09

A change from the planned swim venue. Greendale replaces Ennerdale water, introducing a new for us, high body of water standing on a shelf above Wastwater. The climb up is through a steep channel of falling water, growing in strength with each additional beck that joins it. The rain has fallen heavily in recent days and the run off from the tarn and hills is fast. Today’s break in the rain brings hot sun and the ascent is demanding. Sweat runs from every pore and we rest frequently. Behind us lies the valley bottom running away to the sea beyond Ravensglass.

Today the image of glaciers cutting out this landscape is vivid.

We reach the tarn. It’s smaller than expected despite having seen the maps. It is a welcoming place despite the blanket of weeds that clearly delineates the shallower contours of what lies beneath. It is just 8 meters at its deepest point. Today, because of the rain, it’s 12 Celsius. Immersion brings instant invigoration.

We use a rock to drive in the post with the stone from Burnmoor Tarn beneath a standing boulder. I film the water surface and eventually find a small stone to take away before the hard descent. Footholds are small and tricky with my big boots and legs are soon tired again. The descent is always the riskier journey.

Almost down, the light over Wastwater has changed and now strikes the cliff directly. Steep rock cuts into deepest metallic water. The dynamic forces are inescapably evident.

Paul

Greendale tarn 24^th August

We ascend the beck from near the edge of Wast Water. Dramatic waterfalls are disclosed by the curved valley and we stop frequently to look. Neither of us has visited this tarn before so there is more charge and anticipation in the air.

Finally we see it beneath the cliffs on one side and the curve of Seatallen on the other and in the distance Haycock and beyond Steeple.

Each tarn feels special and unique, each has its own valuable personality. Many tarns have the circular shape of a corrie – but then there are tarns like Sprinkling (sparkling) tarn and Angle tarn (at Patterdale) that are full of bays cliffs etc where the direction of exploration is not so much down and under as round the edges, into the inlets, and across to islands – these are reasons to linger, de-focus from any particular goal, leaving room for the aesthetic experience to enter which otherwise fails to appear in the presence of a too-insistent-objective . If we’re too focused on the goal we end up with the feeling of an immanence of something that fails to come to pass.

Greendale is the sort of tarn that lies between the two – not circular but nor is it as intricate as Angle tarn.

Another realisation occurs at this tarn – my/our style of art has changed as a result of the swims; but not only style – the format, for me, has changed from rectangular to circular. ( I think that Paul’s idea for the ‘Full Circle’ project on Morecombe Bay, which we completed two years ago, put the circle on our agenda.)

But there are further ramifications of the performance of ‘Swimcircle’ which are relevant – complete immersion in the subject of the art, immersion in the forces and sensations of the water; dissolving into the physical world rather than looking at it from a distance, from dry land; viewing the world from a horizontal swimming position, rather than standing; complete mingling with the subject matter rather than looking at it through the window of perspective produces a different art, necessarily involving the forces experienced in the immersion. Maybe this is all stuff already written in academic studies of performance art but this felt first-hand and therefore had depth to it.

Paul swam up and down, while I swam less this time having to adapt to the cold. Finding a small rock to use for the next post proved difficult as the tarn had a dark weedy bed strewn with boulders, but we finally locate one near the outlet just as we leave another fabulous body of water.

Richard

Burnmoor tarn

Another chance to enter what for me is an enchanted domain above Eskdale and this time the weather is brighter. We weave our way through the furns past Eel tarn and on towards the horizons that we looked longingly at last time, knowing that over the lip of one shoulder lay hidden Burnmoor tarn – infact it lay hidden for most of the journey there. Something about the shape of the hills round here, their lazy slow curves and unobtainable colour I find hypnotic. Later I read that Burnmoor refers to ‘Borrans’ or burial mounds on the moors. We cross a bridge over the river before the final slope to the edge of the tarn. I long to linger and somehow penetrate and possess the secrets of the place, where the river divides. This must all constitute the aesthetics, the art of the project and yet it remains terribly elusive.

Arriving at the edge of the water and looking across, the need to deal with practicalities steals the moment. We have a good and relatively easy swim despite a breeze wiping up some waves and emerge tired.

Afterwards the magic qualities of the place give way to a more mundane effort to get ourselves back, carrying packs that get heavier by the moment, and down for refreshment and rest.

Richard