Annette Lees grew up in Whakatane and now lives with her family in the Waitakere River valley, close to Bethells Beach. A wild swimming enthusiast from childhood, she has just written a book that celebrates our national obsession with water – Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand. Annette’s book chronicles her year-long odyssey to swim every day – without a wetsuit! – all over New Zealand.
With a university degree in ecology and landscape conservation, Annette has had a career in tropical forest and reef conservation, travelling and working in South America, Africa and the South Pacific. She is now a strategy consultant for her business Alternative Endings and frequently works on water-quality issues alongside farmers, communities, iwi, conservationists and government.
Annette Lees's personal quest to swim the natural waterways of New Zealand led to the discovery of New Zealanders' serious passion for water and swimming, and ultimately, to her writing Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand. In her book, Annette chronicles her year of swimming in our natural waterways, from Northland to Fiordland. Across the country people shared swimming stories of their own, introduced elderly family swimmers who swim right through winter, and invited Annette to try their local, often secret, swimming places.
During her watery adventure Annette collected stories of urban swims, night swims, forbidden swims, swimming in the dead of winter, Māori legends of swimming feats, the endurance swimmers of the Depression, and the swimming ANZACs. These memories and stories go back hundreds of years and remind us to appreciate this precious and unique part of New Zealand life.
Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand is a celebration of our love of outdoor swimming, weaving together our stories, people, history and watery places. Every neighbourhood has its river swimming hole, its bike ride to the beach, its back road to the lake, or climb over a fence to splash in the creek. A love of swimming is one of the things that defines Kiwis, and all over the country the start of summer is marked by most of us heading for the water. The start of summer is marked by New Zealanders bombing into wild water. Rolling out of their tents to swim before breakfast, abandoning the Christmas feast to float away on a tide somewhere, stripping off after dark to splash in phosphorescence, tipping off the dinghy to hang suspended above fathoms of clear ocean. The hardy carry on into winter to experience the sharp and delicious glow of cold water swimming.
Extract from Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand
From the very first, each swim changed the day for the better. Part of the appeal lay in returning to the same place. These swims became deeply familiar, but there were always differences – the light, the temperature, the feel of the water. There was further intrigue when I was away from home, tentatively swimming unknown waterscapes. I approached strangers to ask where they swam, and through this a nationwide network of private mini-swims opened up to me.
At the end of summer the water was still an easy warmth, so I decided to carry on through autumn. The working year got busier but I still made time in every day to slip away from meetings or stop on my way to work, to find a little forest pool, or a beach, or an urban creek. I often sat through a work meeting with dripping hair, trying to look normal. And, to the delightful credit of New Zealanders, it is sort of normal that you stop for a quick swim on your way, so of course you’ll have damp shoulders and a cool look about you and a faint smell of river. Into every day I slotted a micro-holiday, making my summer stretch long into the year.
By the end of autumn the water was already cold and I was still swimming. I absolutely did not want to stop. I was discovering swimming gems that I’d driven past for years and never known about. And I was now experiencing the thrilling chill of cold-water swimming, the sharp glittery delicious glow that stays on hours after the swim. What started as a holiday-time amusement had become a daily commitment. I’d complete this mission and swim in the wild every day for a year.
Winter swimming has a seriousness about it. It takes a little more dedication to go out in cold rain and gales. The sun is slow to rise and early to descend, so I would sometimes have to swim in the dark to keep my pledge. I swam alone, although there was more wildlife about now that everyone else had left the water. Swimming through storms and rain and frosts and, once or twice, snow, I felt a little bit heroic, but I stress that I am not a brave swimmer. I’m a common-garden-variety swimmer who stays in winter water long enough for it to feel medicinal but not so long that I would win a medal. In fact, I’m not very brave in warm water either. I might dream of being as fearless as many of the swimmers I met in the course of writing this book, but I know my limits, and those limits are pretty close to the shore.
Then it was spring and the swimming lightened up. People were back in the water around me and the year rolled to its end. I was asked if it had been hard on some days to dive in, but actually it never was. The decision to get in had been made long before I’d reached the water. It was made before I left home, and even months back when I decided to swim all through the year.
Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand by Annette Lees
Published in paperback by Potton & Burton, RRP: $39.99