John 'The River Guy'

As a child, I’d dream of being somewhere else at times. I can remember even before my tenth birthday being at my old home on Gadsden’s Mistle Toe Hollow on Green Mt; playing with miniature boats in our main hallway pretending like I was driving the boat down the Coosa River. The same waterway I’d just gone down in a real water craft the day before. That should have been the time, I should’ve realized I was addicted to water sports. The truth is, that spirit of wonderment never left me. From 2008 to 2009 I was a member of San Diego’s La Jolla Cove Swim Club. Weren’t those the times? You know? Before airlines consolidated and monopolized air travel, jacking up the costs of flying. It didn’t hurt that I had a grandfather then who was a physician who’d give me generous birthday and holiday gifts with cash that could cover those trips. So much for the late stage capitalism, most southern politicians and conservative think tanks say are healthy for our society. Of course we all know who tells them to jump and they say , how high? So, in those days I’d fly out to San Diego 3 or so times a year and swim from La Jolla Cove to Scripps Pier, with almost the frequency of living out there.

Other than hang gliding I believe swimming over those kelp forests in 20 feet of water is the closest one comes to feeling like a bird. And it came with the perk of swimming in clear nutrient dense and cool refreshing water in the sixties, temperature wise. It made me feel like I could handle any issue in life from an endorphine perspective. I remember the rounded rolling ground swell that would lift me up about six inches only to drop me back down, before it buffeted some surfer 200 yards closer to shore manifesting itself as a 3-5 foot wave. It was certainly different from the strain of attempting to swim in the afternoon chop along the Gulf Coast.

Lake Guntersville, in Marshall and Jackson County, Alabama, and part of the Tennessee River System; is Alabama’s Largest lake by volumn-area. Like the Pacific Ocean, it is a superlative from that perspective. It also has kelp like aquatic plant life, to the chagrin of fishermen and boaters, called milfoyl, similar to Pacific kelp. I remember back stroking into it three summers ago and fruiting out because it made a weird buzzing noise as I went over it. Most people consider it as a nuisance. I use it to take me back in my mind to San Diego since I can’t go out as much. The wave action of Lake Guntersville is similar to that on the west coast in that the waves are more rounded and not as choppy and sharp, like you have in the Gulf of Mexico or even the Atlantic. Like they come from deeper water.

In closing, I hope you take it upon yourself to visit Guntersville State Park just outside of Guntersville, Alabama, no matter what activity you do. It’s where all of this magic happens. It’s most magical late summer in August. It’s where I go to to live out a dream of a distant place, when I can’t get to it in person.

Stay Wet – J