Thursday, August 04, 2011

Gorge Swimming and the Veins of Life Watershed Society

Today there was a column in the TC by Paul Willcocks about how wonderful it is that a place that was thought to be lost forever is now healthy again.  His inspiration to go swimming in the Gorge was from the pictures he saw of my boys enjoying the water the other week.

In the same edition of the paper there is an article about the state of the Veins of Life Watershed Society and how it is in financial trouble.  

I have had some involvement with helping improve the Gorge, but not as much as I should have given this is my neighbourhood and I do enjoy being able to use the water.   I will do what I can to help the situation.

In going for regular swims here, I am beginning to understand the waterway better.   This is the sort of thing that is very important to me as I believe it is crucial for humans to know their neighbourhood and not feel alienated from it.   Too many people are still not willing to swim in the Gorge because they still think of it as a smelly and polluted ditch bisecting the city.

Yesterday at 4:30 pm I was in the water and the tide was flooding in.  The water was high, but it was still very warm and wonderful swimming.   I installed a ladder at the dock near Tillicum bridge yesterday afternoon and convinced my wife to try it out after dinner.   We got there at 6:45 pm and the water was even higher, it is a very high tide at the moment.   I had not expected the water to be much different than a couple of hours earlier, but the full force of the water from the Strait of Juan de Fuca had reached the narrows and the water was markedly colder than earlier.

Lakes do not change their temperatures quickly at all.   They also do not fluctuate like the salt water does with the tides.  Swimming at the Gorge is something different.

We will be back at the Gorge and in the water around lunch time today.   Given the shortage of warm summer days in this city, we are going to try and make use of as many of them as we can to swim in the Gorge.

If you can, please help with the Veins of Life Watershed Society

No comments: