Swimming Water Foundation

I'm not at all clear on the intent and remain dubious that advertising "special places" would do anything but hasten their end as special places, especially if there is an activity, such as swimming, to be done there. More people come, want facilities (toilets, car parks, food vending stands), rangers are assigned, rules and regs are slapped on, and pretty soon there is a 16-y-o kid in a rowboat saying, "You're not allowed to go above your chest. Don't you know where your chest is?" Then hours are posted and you are arrested for unauthorized entry into the water and spend the night in jail on a misdemeanor charge. I've watched the Indiana Dunes-Lake Michigan swimming experience get degraded in exactly this way. And many, many other places. Backcountry skiers have an ethic of not revealing their lines, their secret stashes. Hikers have an ethic of not posting GPS tracks for a nice bushwhack. I do believe local folks know about wonderful places to swim. They might not want to talk about them too much. And I'd like to think there are some special places left I will never know about, never see; they will be special for the one or two or three others that occasionally make their way there. I would support restoring some nice swimming holes that are no longer swimmable, and perhaps turning them into "public special places." A little longer on the soapbox: I will turn now from the countless semi-wilderness, isolated, overlooked, and quite special areas I have seen turn into Coney Islands in my lifetime, ecosystems destroyed, aesthetic experience canceled, barriers erected, and point to municipalities' insatiable need to raise revenue. What town or county would NOT try to capitalize on anything they could seize on and attach fees to? In two days I will be officially Old. I am going swimming in a special place, even if I freeze my knickers, and I hope everbody else takes a few minutes to enjoy a special place, or think about one, during the day. Happy October! Maybe I misunderstood the original post (I don't think so), but I thought the "special places" which were referred to were just those places that are well known in the swimming/triathlon community. I do not think the intent was to refer to what is known in surfing circles as "secret spots". The places referred to are just those places where races are held. In Portland they started a triathlon where the swimming is done in the Willamette river. There were eye brows raised for that. If you did the race this year and you finished you were awarded/given a frisbee that said "yes I swam in the Willamette". It is just one of the things that people are doing to help people become aware of this important resource. As for the formal designation of special places and the impact such a designation has on the place, that is a more controversial discussion. However, my opinion is close to yours on that one. There are some places which were designated National Parks (eg. Yosemite, Yellowstone, even Denali where i once lived) and have suffered because everyone learned about it because it is a National Park and they just had to see it. On the other hand, in all likelihood if it hadn't gotten the exposure as a National Park I would not have learned about Yosemite and would never have seen it. Truly , that would have been a loss. Oh and by the way, I am already old, but as I like to say, not THAT old.

I'm not at all clear on the intent and remain dubious that advertising "special places" would do anything but hasten their end as special places, especially if there is an activity, such as swimming, to be done there. More people come, want facilities (toilets, car parks, food vending stands), rangers are assigned, rules and regs are slapped on, and pretty soon there is a 16-y-o kid in a rowboat saying, "You're not allowed to go above your chest. Don't you know where your chest is?" Then hours are posted and you are arrested for unauthorized entry into the water and spend the night in jail on a misdemeanor charge. I've watched the Indiana Dunes-Lake Michigan swimming experience get degraded in exactly this way. And many, many other places. Backcountry skiers have an ethic of not revealing their lines, their secret stashes. Hikers have an ethic of not posting GPS tracks for a nice bushwhack. I do believe local folks know about wonderful places to swim. They might not want to talk about them too much. And I'd like to think there are some special places left I will never know about, never see; they will be special for the one or two or three others that occasionally make their way there. I would support restoring some nice swimming holes that are no longer swimmable, and perhaps turning them into "public special places." A little longer on the soapbox: I will turn now from the countless semi-wilderness, isolated, overlooked, and quite special areas I have seen turn into Coney Islands in my lifetime, ecosystems destroyed, aesthetic experience canceled, barriers erected, and point to municipalities' insatiable need to raise revenue. What town or county would NOT try to capitalize on anything they could seize on and attach fees to? In two days I will be officially Old. I am going swimming in a special place, even if I freeze my knickers, and I hope everbody else takes a few minutes to enjoy a special place, or think about one, during the day. Happy October! Maybe I misunderstood the original post (I don't think so), but I thought the "special places" which were referred to were just those places that are well known in the swimming/triathlon community. I do not think the intent was to refer to what is known in surfing circles as "secret spots". The places referred to are just those places where races are held. In Portland they started a triathlon where the swimming is done in the Willamette river. There were eye brows raised for that. If you did the race this year and you finished you were awarded/given a frisbee that said "yes I swam in the Willamette". It is just one of the things that people are doing to help people become aware of this important resource. As for the formal designation of special places and the impact such a designation has on the place, that is a more controversial discussion. However, my opinion is close to yours on that one. There are some places which were designated National Parks (eg. Yosemite, Yellowstone, even Denali where i once lived) and have suffered because everyone learned about it because it is a National Park and they just had to see it. On the other hand, in all likelihood if it hadn't gotten the exposure as a National Park I would not have learned about Yosemite and would never have seen it. Truly , that would have been a loss. Oh and by the way, I am already old, but as I like to say, not THAT old.