Chandra Brown
LEARNING TO CHILL
For Adventure journal 27
Words by Chandra Brown.
“Northerners have been swimming in their seas for generations; many modern
Scandinavians claim that winter swimming staves off the seasonal sadness of the dark
months at lofty latitudes. Growing up in Alaska, I didn’t know anyone who got into the
ocean in winter. Nor did I know anyone with a cold plunge tub on their porch. Cold-
dipping wasn’t part of my Alaskan upbringing.”
“Cold-dipping has offered me a new way of knowing my body: its utility, its
composition, and its place in the physical world. It’s a way of interacting with my
environment that defies patternization, technology, recreation, or work; it’s something
linked, perhaps, to natural continuity and an elemental ancestry. It’s something to do
when I come across a swimming hole on a banner summertime adventure.”
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