Growing Old, Going Cold: Notes on Swimming, Aging, and Finishing Last

Playwright McDonnell (Swim Home) revisits her passion for “cold-water swimming” in this gorgeous work that muses on the environment, love, and self-acceptance. In anticipation of her 70th birthday, McDonnell decided to swim 70 kilometers over 52 days in the frigid waters of Lake Ontario. While a considerable challenge, she writes, it wouldn’t be the first of her “cold-water exploits.” Citing extensive evidence of the health benefits of cold-water immersion (from reducing inflammation to relieving fatigue), McDonnell traces how her dive into brisk waters began as a way to mitigate the “unremitting heat” of menopause and swelled into a decades-long habit. She uses her connection with water as the jumping-off point for, among many things, poignant reflections on climate change (notably, how Canada’s water pollution affects Indigenous communities); an embrace of her newfound status as “indisputably old”; hypothermia (and how to avoid it); and the strange beauty of Ward’s Island in Lake Ontario, “the most valuable real estate that nobody can buy.” Readers will find themselves taken by McDonnell’s vivid recollections, as when she recounts swimming during a polar vortex at age 68. A self-identified “psychrolute”—one who bathes regularly in cold water outside—McDonnell’s zeal never feels braggadocious; as she concedes, “I swim in cold water, I’m not the sleekest fish in the sea.” It’s an easy one to lap up. (May)