Jenny D has been writing the most delightful posts lately about her passion for swimming and biking and all the reading she has done along the way. (This is Jenny D, so of course she is reading as well as doing all these sporty things!)

The other day she wrote most exuberantly about Roger Deakin and his book Waterlog which celebrates outdoor swimming in Britain. Here's a bit of her post:

I've just almost finished reading a book that is perhaps my favorite of everything I've read this year, a magically good book about swimming but also about a host of other things. Imagine if Sebald had a light-hearted English cousin with a passion for natural history, and this is the book that cousin would have written!

She is quick to point out the book is not completely perfect, and perhaps a bit overly full of anecdotes which can get wearying read straight through ("Reading too much at once, the taste began to cloy--anecdote piled upon anecdote--but in small bits and medium-sized stretches it is simply miraculous."), but still her enthusiasm for the title and author had me clicking over to read his obituary at the Guardian as Deakin died last year at a very young age (63) from a brain tumor (blast cancer - blast it blast it blast it). It seems he was a most remarkable man:

In his relaxed contrarianism, his environmentalism (he was a founder member of Friends of the Earth, and co-founded Common Ground, the organisation which has campaigned so significantly for "local distinctiveness") and his enthusiasm, Deakin was a latter-day Thoreau. Except that where Thoreau lived by his pond for a total of several months over several years, Deakin lived by his moat for nearly four decades, watching and noting the habits of the trees, creatures, wind, sun and water around him. Walnut Tree Farm was a settlement in three senses: a habitation, an agreement with the land, and a slow subsidence into intimacy with a chosen place.

It was while doing lengths in his moat that Deakin had the idea for what would become Waterlog. Published in 1999 in a small print run, the book quickly became a word-of-mouth bestseller. Starting from the moat, Deakin set out to swim through the rivers, lakes, streams and seas of Britain, and thus to acquire what he called "a frog's-eye view" of the country. The result was a masterpiece: a funny, lyrical, wise travelogue which was at once a defence of the wild water that was left and an elegy for that which had gone.

Is there any better introduction to a book: "It was while doing lengths in his moat that Deakin had the idea for what would become Waterlog." I mean really - while swimming in his moat?! How wonderfully, perfectly delightful! And so of course I am adding his book to my list of those I must read as he sounds like the best combination of Gerald Durrell and the man I miss most in all my life, my father.

I just came back from Florida and again, all over again, I am reminded that my father is not there.

We drove past the beach - his beach, the beach I grew up on - several times in the course of running different errands but I never went. I think this is the first time I have been home ever without going to the beach. It wasn't a conscience decision - it would be more melodramatic to say I couldn't bear to go - but there was so little time for everything I had to do and everyone I had to see. The was a very compacted visit on every level with the big trip up north crammed in the middle of it, and so the beach just never happened. (There was a lovely afternoon at my brother's and fishing off my mother's dock so don't pity me too much! ha!) The thing is though, if my father was alive then I would have gone to the beach; I would have been there with my son at 8AM because that was when my father hit the sand and set up his "office" at the same spot next to the steps where he parked himself for decades. And we would have been in the water and my father would have taken my son out to catch waves, just as he took my brother and I when we were very little. And he would know what that is like because it was still important when my father was alive.

And now - now it's just something to try and fit in around everything else.

At another piece written after Roger Deakin's death, a friend wrote about why his book was so very important:

In Britain this book created a significant change in the mood of public opinion, back towards open-air swimming (the revival of lidos is indebted to Waterlog), to greater access to the tarns, ponds and rivers in Britain, as well as the fields and landscapes in which they were set, and a rejection of the over-chlorinated, chemically enhanced, fitness culture of the gym and indoor leisure centre.

Other than the beach when he was very small (younger than three) and trips to throw rocks or entice the dog to swim in a local lake, my son has only been in those "over-chlorinated" pools. He has never caught a wave, something I have done thousands of times - something I was really very good at - something that I still think about and miss even now, even so far away from "my" beach. But until I read about Roger Deakin I honestly did not think my son was missing something significant. I mean we all get romantic when remembering our childhoods and as wonderful as body surfing is, there are also a lot of scrapes and bruises and sunburns (and future skin cancer) that came along with all those hours hitting the waves. It was my past - mine - and I was willing to accept that my son just would not have that, that without my father there to show it to him, he would have other things but not that.

But maybe that is wrong.

Now I'm rethinking how easily I gave up my beach. There was more to all of it than just playing, there was all that time truly learning the ocean - truly knowing it - that I have taken for granted. And I loved it once, I loved everything about who I was, out there with him, treading water, waiting for the right wave, digging into it and dropping down and then flying - flying further and stronger than I ever did on a board, then I ever did on anything.

I was so good at it once and I loved it more than anything; the beach was everything for a long time when I was growing up. It was my life.

My son should know that more than any swimming pool; he should know it so he knows me and his uncle and his grandfather. He should know the ocean I grew up in.

I think Roger Deakin would understand.