One physical activity I rediscovered during my time in Sumatra was open-water swimming. I alluded to this in my previous post about Lake Maninjau – but whereas my swim to the bat-infested slopes of Tarandam Island was a one-off undertaking, I swam over mile each day during my stay at Rimba Ecolodge.
Specifically, I made a habit of swimming out to Sironjong, the conical, tree-encrusted island that I could see from the porch of my beach cottage. Sironjong sat about one kilometer out into the Indian Ocean, and I might not have made the effort to swim there each day had the reef-studded bay in front of our beach not been so shallow. Navigating the reef was always the hardest part of the swim, and I came to savor the stretch of deep open water that led out to the island.
It helped that the water was warm and calm, and the ecolodge had plenty swimming goggles on offer (a luxury I didn’t enjoy on Lake Maninjau). As a kid I racked up many pool-miles each summer training for my youth swim team, but that experience – stroking out 25-meter lengths, back and forth, on chilly Kansas mornings – was like a frigid gerbil-wheel compared to the balmy ease of the Indian Ocean saltwater.
There wasn’t a lot to see on Sironjong Island – just a shrimp farm and a few fishing skiffs – but I always made a point of swimming around its reefed fringes and exploring its beaches. The first morning I swam out to the island, the Dutch, French, and German birdwatchers eating breakfast in the Rimba dining lodge gave me a clapping ovation when I waded back ashore on the mainland – and while I’m sure this cordial gesture was a half-ironic, it was a weirdly satisfying way to start the day.
I realize that I can’t veer into meta-commentary every single time I post a selfie here – almost by definition, travel-themed social-media images infer that there’s a degree of performance going on – but I must confess that this could be the first time I brought a camera with me on an open-water swim. (I never took the camera all the way to Sironjong Island, but this image, which I took on an otherwise failed attempt to photograph the reef fish, illustrates that activity just fine.)
Twenty years ago I might have taken a dim view of capturing so many travel-selfies, but I’ve found that taking photos has become its own way of looking and remembering – one that isn’t so experientially pure as just embracing a moment, perhaps, but I’ve come to appreciate the visual memory-narrative it leaves behind.
These images have become their own kind of journal, and it will be interesting to see what role my written journals play with them moving forward – how my written words work in tandem with (or at odds with) my photos as I remember a given travel experience.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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