Exclusive: Breaking Waves Chapter 2

The Taste of an Iceberg

As the copy edits come to a close and Breaking Waves is hurtling ever closer towards actual publication, I am sharing an exclusive excerpt from each of the 10 chapters between now and September, when it will become available for pre-order.

Last week I shared this excerpt from Chapter 1: The Shape of Water, and today I would like to introduce you to Chapter 2: The Taste of an Iceberg.

This is for you 🌊💕

Chapter 2: The Taste of an Iceberg

At the heart of my book are the stories that were shared with me from women across the world. Women from Fiji to Finland, Africa to Canada. I have met with women who paddle but can’t swim, yet collect sea water to bring back to their homes in bottles; and women who swim tens of kilometres through timeless oceans. Women who have birthed and are reborn in water, and women who describe how the moon pulls at our female tides and how the water feels like home.

One woman who embodies the power of the connection to the water is the subject of my chapter 2, Jaimie Monahan. Jaimie is simply one of the most radiant individuals I have ever encountered - a world record breaking ice and marathon swimmer who has swum around Manhattan Island in New York four times consecutively (!!) and became the first person in history to swim an ‘ice-mile’ on all seven continents. Jaimie emanates an ethereal charisma and grace, her demeanour belying her fierce strength and determination. I chose this excerpt because there is such beauty and depth in her relationship with the ice, it’s truly remarkable.

I hope you enjoy it, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🫶

“When Jaimie speaks of the ice, she lights up in equal measure as to when she speaks of New York. She chases and embraces the ice, living a whole different experience in freezing waters. It brings her back to her perspective on the water: working with it and not fighting it, an ethos that helped her to become the first person ever to complete the Ice Sevens, which is modelled on the famous Seven Summits challenge of climbing the highest peak on every continent in the world. The Ice Sevens requires the completion of a mile-long swim in waters under 5°C, in each of the seven continents, defined as: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America and Polar – North or South (take your pick: polar bears or penguins). Not only this, one of the swims has to be an ‘ice zero’ mile with the water under 1°C – which for Jaimie turned out to be in Siberia, with an air temperature of under -30°C and water below zero – the coldest recorded air temperature for an ice mile swim ever. I can’t bring myself to ask her if it felt cold, reminding myself how I once asked my firefighter husband if being in a fire felt hot, but suffice it to say her physician noted afterwards that she had ‘no vital signs but … seem[s] okay’[i] while she was smiling and laughing. For her polar mile, Jaimie joined a team in Tromsø, Norway, and celebrated the end of the swims under the magical phosphorescence of the Northern Lights. She wasn’t done yet though, she still wanted to join the penguins.

Jaimie believes we should all ‘be more penguin’. Penguins hold a special place in our fascination, as we imbue them with the personality traits of love and loyalty, rejoicing at their monogamy, at how the males look after the eggs, and marvelling at how their bodies metamorphose into something so graceful on contact with the water.  When Jaimie is on land, she stands tall with a rigorous posture, but as she hits the water, she melts into it, transforming as the penguins do when they go with the flow. In Antarctica, she finally swam alongside these creatures in their world, in their way. When she talks about this swim, she glimmers like the icebergs themselves – speaking of swimming in water like liquid mercury. Perhaps most strikingly, she tells of the taste of the water, the unique gustatory sensation of acrid salt meeting ice-cold freshness at a point where glaciers melt into the oceans at this meeting of worlds. While talking about icebergs she describes how rare and special it is to be in the presence of something so ancient and so cold that you can feel it without needing to touch it, while holding the privilege of witnessing something that will soon be gone forever.”

[i] Steven Munatones (2020) Dreaming Big with Jaimie Monahan on Wowser Live, available online at https://www.openwaterswimming.com/dreaming-big-with-jaimie-monahan-on-wowsa-live/.

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Chapter 3 excerpt next week…if you like this, please do share! It means the world 🙏

As always,

Love & lemons 💕🍋

Em xx