This past week’s unseasonably perfect weather in the Pacific Northwest has warmed the water, air, and soil enough for us to believe that Spring has fully arrived. No doubt cooler rainy days will return, but what a week for daily wild swimming in 60-degree-F water.

All winter my swimming buddy and I watched the cottonwoods on the shorelines of the lake, dreaming of the day—months hence—when the tree would green up, leaf out, and shimmer in the breeze and we would be swimming—actually swimming—and not just endurance dipping and shivering. The day finally came and what a glorious day it was. The the sun, the scent of cottonwood, the water that allowed us to relax, loll, and revel.

My friend put it best when she said she felt like she was “springing through the water.”

Like the once dormant and tightly budded cottonwood tree protected itself against the winter, we have come to life in the lake. After a winter of wool hats and gloves, fleece robes, shivering, shaking, and thermoses of hot tea, we can again swim the length of the lake with a “spring” in our stroke. We can relax in the sun on the shore afterward. Only when the leaves of the cottonwood turn yellow will our minds turn to “falling” through the water.