Swimming Nine Rivers: One Woman's Adventure
Over four summers, Akiko Busch, 53, of Unionville, N.Y., swam across nine rivers, including the Hudson and Delaware in New York; the Connecticut in Massachusetts; the Susquehanna, Cheat, and Monongahela in Pennsylvania; the Mississippi and Current in Missouri; and the Ohio in Kentucky. Her crossings began in August 2001, a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks, when she impulsively tackled the Hudson at a half-mile crossing near New Hamburg, N.Y. As she saw the world grow ever more divided, pondered middle age, and encountered fears about the health of America's rivers, the swims took on enough significance for her to pen a book, released July 10, about the experience. U.S. News spoke to Busch about "Nine Ways to Cross a River: Midstream Reflections on Swimming and Getting There From Here."
When people think about exercise, it's often the gym and timing and calories burned that come to mind. Your river swims sound quite different.
It's the complete opposite. If you're just sort of floating along with the current or swimming down or across a river, it can't help but be a meditative exercise. There's something also about swimming that's very rhythmic. It's all about breathing and moving. It's really a pleasure to lose yourself in the rhythm. If you're sitting there worrying about the calories, or how many strokes you're doing, or how quickly you're going to get there, you're missing the whole point. Or at least I would have been missing out on what I wanted out of it.
Did you train at all for this?
No. Swimming is just what I do for exercise. I usually swim in an indoor pool three or four times a week for half an hour to an hour. I never belonged to a team, but I did have swimming lessons when I was a toddler. The great thing about swimming is that anybody can do it. You can do it slowly. You can be a lazy swimmer and do it in a leisurely way.
How did you get started on this project?
When I first had the idea to swim it I really didn't think it was possible. I live by the Hudson and I had always heard: It's too dirty; it's too deep; it's too strong. I actually called an environmental official from Albany. I thought for sure he would say: "It's illegal. You can't do that." But he didn't. He just gave me really good advice. He said do it at slack tide, do it when there's not a lot of traffic, and get an escort boat. Then he actually said: "Have a great time. It sounds like fun." We had such a great time during the first Hudson swim that we decided to swim back as well. It went so well I started to get the idea that trying other rivers might be fun too, so I could get a sense of the different tastes, colors, and textures.
Was there something appealing about the dangers posed by river swimming?
No. I know what you're saying—I think a lot of people are drawn to doing things outdoors because of the appeal of danger. Certainly danger came up from time to time—such as when I saw a large rat snake on the Delaware—but the thrill-seeking aspect was of no interest to me. I'm a 53-year-old woman with two children. It wasn't a huge athletic feat. It wasn't about stretching myself to the max or testing my limits. I think as you get older and hit the half-century mark, you can't help but assess things. You start to think about time in a different way. There's something about drifting along with a river that really helps you think about time.
This didn't start out as a book, but as a series of swims. It didn't occur to me to do a book until I realized that the sense of personal restoration I felt was happening all along these rivers in a much bigger way. These communities were finding ways to clean up their rivers and waterfronts and use the river, and I realized the sense of reclamation I felt was happening in a much broader way.
One of the interesting things you describe in the book was your encounters with officials who said you shouldn't be swimming there. How did you deal with that?
Everywhere we went people really love rivers. They look at them. They walk by them. They go on boats on them. But almost always when we said we were going to take a swim people would say: "Why would you ever do that? You're crazy!" To me there was this incredible disconnect. Rivers are just these wonderful images in our lives, but people don't want to get in them because they're afraid the water isn't safe for swimming.
What was the concern? Bacteria? Drowning?
I think it was bacteria. The Susquehanna has a lot of outdated sewage treatment plants that can overflow in stormy weather. The Susquehanna also has a real legacy of both industrial and agricultural pollution, but those are being cleaned up and aren't a danger to swimmers. With Three Mile Island, the toxicity of the river almost becomes part of an engrained mythology. Whether it's true or not people almost just don't care. They just think you don't get into the river. Part of our doing these swims was just to say: "Oh, yes, you can." I never got sick, and I didn't wear a wet suit or even goggles usually. Of course, I didn't swim in any urban rivers. Maybe that's next. I guess I would take the health concerns a little more seriously there.
What would your advice be if people were going to try doing this sort of thing?
The first thing I would say is be safe about it. Know what you're doing. Know the current. Know the tide if there's a tide. Know the depth of the water. I know some of the things I've said have seemed a little blasé, but there are real safety concerns.