On this day 35 years ago…

… I swam around Manhattan island, New York City. That’s 30 miles. Nonstop.

I’ve written about this event elsewhere, but I’ll take this anniversary day to reveal a bit more. About the swim. And how it relates to what I’m now doing.

As you may recall (here if not), I was the winner of the second annual Manhattan Island Marathon Swim—a race—in 1983. On July 24th.

I remember the day. It was sultry with a bit of haze in the sky. The water was warm, and I was ready. I had shaved down for this (an old swimmer’s trick that works on your psychology as much as the physics of reducing water resistance), and I chatted with my swimming buddy Richard Marks after we had jumped into the East River at E. 96th Street and were treading water with the others, waiting for the start.

Richard and I had both flown in for the event from L.A., where we lived. We swam at the same swim club and had completed several training swims in the Pacific Ocean to prepare. I think 17 miles was the longest swim we’d done prior. I was counting on adrenaline and guts to get us around that island in the middle of New York.

The gun sounded and we were off! At first, it was the usual melee of arms and feet splashing (and the occasional pull and grab to gain advantage), but both Richard and I were experienced veterans of this type of chaotic free-for-all. We had both completed the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii the previous fall, and that was an 850-person mass start. So 28 swimmers fighting for position was nothing. I was just excited to get going!

The “circumswim” course (Richard came up with that word, which can evoke questionable emotions among men, if you get my drift) took us from 96th Street north past the infamous Hell Gate, then into the Harlem River (like the East, not really a river, but that’s what they call it), around the top of Manhattan and into the Hudson (an actual river), downstream under the George Washington bridge (the world’s busiest, I’m told), over the spot where Sully Sullenberger landed his jet, down around the lower tip of “the Battery,” and back up the East River to the starting point.

I was feeling good after I broke away from the pack (and Richard) going down the Hudson, but at around the six-hour mark—right about where Sullenberger would eventually ditch his plane—I started to struggle. And it wasn’t really about the unknown objects I kept running into (a bag of rotting melons was a memorable one). Or about getting hungry. I was tiring. And so was my brain. I was seeing things. Ghosts of Henry Hudson’s crew, who had traveled this same stretch in 1609. Alexander Hamilton dueling with Aaron Burr literally a hundred yards to my right on the Jersey shore. All kinds of crazy things.

So when I finally approached Battery Park at the bottom tip of the island—with a sizeable lead in the race—I paused to look at the Statue of Liberty rising in the near distance. That seemed to snap me back to the present. What was it I was doing out here again? Oh yeah, swimming around an island. So put my head down and kept stroking.

But as I rounded the point at the Battery I hit a powerful ebbing tide coming out of the East River, and I couldn’t make any headway against it. If I had persisted, I would have been swept past Governors Island and into the open bay. All I could do was back up, tread water, and curse my luck while my competitors (including Richard) caught up to me. Then the tide slackened, and it was a six-mile mad dash to the finish line where we had started. I pulled out whatever mental and physical energy I had left and ended up barely ahead of Richard, who was catching me. He had run out of river.

So why did I do it? Why did I swim around Manhattan island 35 years ago today?
— A younger man’s need for adventure? You bet.
— A fun challenge? That, too.
— A bit of competitiveness? Definitely.
— And something else. Something in the back of my mind that I didn’t fully comprehend at the time.

Hoping not to sound pretentious, I believe that someone/something was pulling me back to the place where I had arrived as an immigrant with my parents exactly 30 years earlier. To re-experience an island and the waters surrounding it that were a touchstone not only for me personally, but also for the millions of people who had had—and who would have—contact with one of the most important places on earth.

I believe that I am a channel to a specific past. I see a line of history that stretches back 400+ years. To a verdant island where wolves stalked their prey. Where Lenape Indians smeared bear grease on their skin to keep the mosquitoes off. Where European traders came to make a buck and start a web of commerce that continues to this day.

I believe—and I’m being serious here—that I am a conduit picked to tell a story. Of the birth of New York City. From the beginning.

That’s really why I swam around Manhattan island 35 years ago today.