Jonesing for Squares

The Polar Bear swim ended last Wednesday. Many cities boast “polar bear” swims. In Chicago and Boston, bathers wade into Lake Michigan and the Atlantic on New Year’s Day and stay for several seconds. In the arctic countries, people cut holes in the ice and immerse themselves as many as two minutes. The Dolphin Club Polar Bear swim lasts all winter. It runs from the Winter Solstice on December 21 until ending on March 21 with the arrival of the Spring Equinox when the water temperature is between 48 and 53 degrees. This swim was the inspiration of Bill Powning and began in 1974 when the requirement was set at twelve miles. An official notice on the sign-up sheet some few years ago proclaimed that “the use of wetsuits and/or swim aids is viewed with scorn and contempt." This sentiment has not changed.

Members keep track of their distance in quarter-mile increments on large, quadrille-ruled charts mounted at the entrance to the club. Logically, swimmers often refer to the distance they’ve covered in a day in terms of squares. “We did four squares today—at least a mile.” Since 1984, earning a polar bear requires swimming forty miles (or 160 squares) in the San Francisco Bay or equivalent cold, open water. For swimmers over the age of 60, the benchmark is 80 squares. Over the course of a winter, the sign-up sheet develops a personality as members exercise artistic license to record their daily distance. Making these individualized marks on the chart after each swim bestows a sense of completion and confers a coda on the cold water plunge.

The chart becomes a touchstone, a measure of resistance to mortality. The deep satisfaction associated with marking squares creates a craving that any addict would immediately understand. When the chart was moved this winter to allow workers to repair the lobby floor, many of us experienced “square shock.” Our beacon was mislaid. Our anchor had dragged. Although realization dawned quickly, the feeling was visceral—a shock to the solar plexus.

Now that the Polar Bear is over for this year, the chart is dismantled and square withdrawal has set in. The chart is not just temporarily relocated. It is gone. It is history. The unique configuration of colors and patterns contributed by the 135 participants this year is obliterated like a Tibetan sand mandala. It has left a vague, empty space in our souls. I can't wait until next winter.