s h u i   l o n g
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FIELD NOTES
new year's dives

New Year’s Shuilong 2002:
Winter Solstice, River Great Stour, Kent, England

It’s the twenty-second of December, the day after midwinter. Last night I joined in an old English ritual where representatives of the holly king of the old year and the oak king of the new symbolically fought to the death, slipping in the darkness and rain of an ancient site. The oak was victorious and the world turned.

Now we’re shifting towards light, yang, renewal. In a high mood I tramp across muddy fields with two-inch sprouts of winter wheat. Lines of white along the horizon show where the river’s flooded. The air whispers warmth today. A south wind has broken the freeze.

As I drop deeper into the valley of the Great Stour, remembering last night’s battle, I think of how, just five or six miles downriver from my bathing place, Julius Ceasar’s Romans fought their first battle on English soil. On either side of me, the chalk uplands of the downs stretch away to eventually break into the sea as the white cliffs of Dover.

Catching the first glint of the Stour, I consciously drop all my sickness and negativity into the earth where it can transform, and request the ability to communicate with the river. When I first came here to practice, I touched a sad, neglected feel, and bathing had a gritty, unpleasant quality. Gradually things are moving begin to approach the silky tone of other, happier rivers I’ve entered.

As I approach the valley bottom, I can see swans swimming on the flooded fields, enjoying the sense of new space. A heron crouches over the mirrored greys and reds of the late afternoon sky. Twenty or thirty geese in vee-formation honk their way southwards.

Picking my way over the sodden ground, I come to the riverbank - my training place, beside a little footbridge. Despite being in the most crowded corner of one of the most crowded countries in the world, somehow I’m always alone here.

I walk onto the bridge and bow in greeting to the eight directions, water, earth, sky, asking for help, guidance and energy, then two more bows, straight up and down. I’m immediately in another dimension, which is this dimension, except that I’m home, connected. This is where homo sapiens belongs.

I ask the river for permission to train here, and wait. The response is affirmative. The water’s running high and fast, the colour of milky coffee, glinting with myriad dimples and spirals.

I sit cross-legged on the bridge and begin the inner heat meditation given me in a dream. Gradually the glow spreads into my fingers and feet. I’m ready. I slip off my boots, my coat, my clothes and stand on the bank seeking for the yang within the water’s yin, seeking to become the yang within the water’s yin. I bow and step forward.

I hardly notice the shock of the water as I’m concentrating hard on keeping my footing. My normal place on the bank is under water and I have to feel my way to the edge. The ground falls away and I’m in, over my head. I hold my breath in the belly and begin my immersions, the river tugging me backwards each time. I swim hard back to the bridge and feel for weeds and stems under the water to pull myself out with. A glow of warmth strikes me as I stand naked and dripping on the bank and join again with the energies of the river, the sky, the land.

As the cold starts to bite I head back onto the bridge. The energies of the river, the sky the land, continue to enter as I dry myself off with another round of inner heat practice. After a bit, it’s time to dance; to dance the pale stars, dance the swirling water, the delicate wind and give voice to them. Not singing or chanting, not shouting or howling but something of all of them. I don’t do anything, it just comes, the voice of homecoming; nature giving back to nature.

And it ends. I put on my clothes and, renewed and grateful head across the darkening fields back towards the streetlamps and cars and the world of men.

©2002 julian skinner

February 2001, Applegate River, Oregon:
First dive of the metal snake year....

It is a foggy, gloomy day as I leave home for the river. I drive through the Bear Valley, into the Rogue Valley, and then, through Jacksonville and around Jacksonville summit. The sun makes the fog hanging on the pavement glow with an eerie earthy tone, and then—a dazzling blue sky is overhead, and long, white, creamy trains of fog dragons hug the contours of the mountains.

The sun has baked the river bank, and glitters on the water's surface, so all the rocks below glow golden with the earth's energy, and slightly green with the promise of spring. By the Chinese calendar, it is Spring; by the weather, it seems that fall has bled into spring with only a brief, mild wintry interlude. The weather has been strange since fall, the water levels low from a spring and summer without any rain at all to speak of....until the past week. The rains over the past few days have raised the river level a little, the current is gentle, and the ripples on the surface go all directions, even upstream in some places, but mostly, back and forth, undulating from river bank to river bank, so the sunlit surface of the water looks like gently rounded scales.....

The water is strong, and cold, the current strong enough to keep me going in the water after I surface, so I swing my legs forward with the downstream flow to stand. when I emerge to do my warming exercises (bringing heart fire down to the lower dantien) I realize the feeling of the water on my skin is the feeling of soft, spring water.

The hard edge of the late fall cold is gone, there is a slithering softness in the water. after my second dive, as I lie on the river bank in the sun I feel a cool rushing in parts of my body where muscles have an old habit of tensing--and they release as if pulled and pushed to let go, I am forced by this cool force to relax....it rushes into my fingertips where they feel not tingling and numb, but solid and strong. the surface of my skin feels the same, solid and strong, while just underneath, everything feels fuzzy. I feel as I lie on my back that I'm gently tilting....the wind shifts like the water, from one direction to the other, cool and gentle, sometimes feeling like a hand on my shoulder or my neck. I arrive home full of energy, and lighter, and all the harried feelings of the busy week are gone somewhere, I don't know where. I asked the river to wash them away, and they are gone, as if they could evaporate under the strong powerful fuel of a gentle, clear, cool river in the sun.