I discovered freediving in a library in southeastern Wisconsin

A deep dive into my long-standing relationship with large bodies of water that no one asked for

I was born and raised in the Midwest, just a mile away from the shores of Lake Michigan. I may not have spent much time on the ocean growing up, but the Great Lakes are freshwater oceans in their own right, and the frigid water was a constant in my life growing up.

My mother loves bike riding, and from our earliest years, she’d snap my brother and I into the backseat of her bike, and take us down to walk the beaches. She taught us how to look for beach glass and local fossils called crinoids and brachiopods, remnants of prehistoric creatures that used to thrive here. (I still have dreams about finding the rare, tiny, dark blue pieces). We’d run buck-naked through the glacial water and fill up ziplock bags with brightly colored treasures, to be rinsed and neatly laid out to dry upon our return home.

A preemptive shoutout to my mother's facebook for providing the bulk of the photos in this newsletter.

Both my parents were teachers, which meant we always had summers with them. We took long road trips all over the west, but my favorite trips are when we’d join my aunt and uncle to camp in the Apostle Islands. A beautiful string of small islands within Lake Superior, they are just a 7-hour drive and ferry ride away from our front door. We would pack everything we needed for a few weeks into rubbermaid bins, to be loaded into our canoe once we landed, and paddled down the coast to our campsite - right next to uncle’s. A patch of wild blueberries separated our tents; we put them in our pancakes.  

These weeks were something out of a dream. Lake Superior’s water is crisp and cold year-round, and so clear that it looks like a pane of glass when the winds are low. We canoed to the abandoned quarry to jump off a 30-foot cliff, hiked, threw axes at tree stumps; we swam through underwater caves that my uncle discovered, and out to a shipwreck in the bay, a wooden boat that caught fire so close to shore. Retrospectively, this is the first experience I ever had with freediving. Trying to kick our way down to the shallow wreck and write our initials in the algal growth on the wood, my ears shrieking to be equalized, but the thrill of a real-life shipwreck outweighing the discomfort; I kept imagining giant fish swimming out from the shadows. I was too scared to swim through the cave, but I held myself underwater while my brother took a photo on our underwater disposable camera from the other side.

These photos are not so dissimilar from everything I currently post on the internet. Kodak film, water everywhere.

The family posing with mask & snorkel sets possibly purchased at Gander Mountain.

My childhood is a lot like this, interspersed with memories of water. I hated P.E., but each year I waited patiently for swim class to end so we could play “Sharks and Minnows”, where I would hold my breath and swim the length of the pool underwater, always the last minnow. When I was deemed old enough, my friends and I would disappear on our bikes all day, not a cellphone in sight. Usually, we gave a vague, “we’re going to the lake”, and wouldn’t come home til the streetlights came on. I began to drive, and this pull to the lake was even greater, and in the height of summer (up to 100˚F sometimes), we’d pile into my van and run into the chilly arms of our lake for some relief from the heat. We would jump off the pier, go skinny-dipping, teenage shenanigans, etc.

Upon finishing my bachelor’s degree, I moved back in with my family. I felt embarrassed to have done so, but at that time, it felt like the only option. In my head, the only alternative was continuing to pursue biology, and that meant days full of fluorescent lighting and bench work. I just couldn’t bring myself to feel excited about science anymore, and I mostly felt very lost. I took a job as a barista and baker in a local cafe, and when my morning shift ended, I walked the beaches looking for glass, just as I did with my mother (but probably listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens). Then one afternoon, I saw something that surprised me.

I saw two surfers. Surfers. On Lake Michigan. In my hometown. In the middle of winter.

The waves were small, just windswell here, but these two guys were paddling and catching what they could on longboards, shouting to one another and having what seemed like a lot of fun. From that day on, I went to the break every day after work, and when I didn’t work, I’d run or drive there. I never managed to catch them getting in or out, so I’d just sit and watch for a little while, and eventually, one of them began waving when they saw me.  Hesitantly, I’d wave back. This went on for about a week until one day, they saw me again and paddled in. Jim and Alex. They introduced themselves, told me to find a wetsuit and I could join them; they wanted to teach me. Jim and Alex changed my life.

The beaches were covered in ice, creating a slippery shelf that made it quite difficult to get in n out of the water. This is a still from a short video of Jim dragging Alex across the ice and spinning him in a circle. I'm learning right now that I can't embed videos on Substack.

There was a single “bikes and boards” shop in our town, and a single 5/3 women’s wetsuit in that shop, in my size-ish. A local scuba instructor was able to equip me with a pair of 5mm booties and lobster gloves (keeps your fingers warmer than traditional gloves). I felt like a superhero and looked like the Michelin Man. Once I began, surfing was all I could think about. The boys coached me in paddling, pop ups, and not hitting the chunks of ice that sometimes seemed to appear out of nowhere. We would surf until we couldn’t feel our toes, then we’d stand in front of a heater to thaw out the iced-up seams of our wetsuits and go eat something warm. One time, a strand of loose hair froze up and cracked off my head like I was in a cartoon. Maybe it was all the cold water, but these months felt euphoric.

Very cold, very very very happy.

Ever the academic, I wanted to learn more about this thing I was beginning to love, which meant a library visit was in order. I began with “Barbarian Days”, by William Finnegan, a pretty popular title in surf culture. Not unexpectedly, the “ocean sports” section of a Wisconsin library is rather small, but right next to the surf section, there was a dive section. Upon that shelf there was a bright yellow title along one of the spines that read, “Deep”, and as I fingered it off the shelf, the full title actually read, “Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and what the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves,” by James Nestor. It’s quite possible that the word “renegade” made me feel like I might be some sort of badass for checking out this book from the library, but regardless of the motivation, I did check it out - and absolutely devoured it.

I crouched behind the café counter between rushes, pages bookmarked with drink tickets, and read all these wild facts about how human physiology compares to that of a seal’s. How our bodies are uniquely adapted to handle depth-diving, and functioning on a single breath underwater. I told any customer who would listen about what I read. There was a part of me that felt so validated, having now been given a concrete reason for why I loved the water so much - something in my small human body was evolutionarily designed for it.

It didn’t take long for me to start Googling it, freediving, this new term so full of magic and promise. It didn’t take long for me to find out that I could take a class and learn how to do it. I found an instructor on O’ahu and began messaging with him on Instagram. Obviously, I didn’t have any gear, and still didn’t fully comprehend what I needed for class, but he said he had plenty to lend me. Deposit sent. With a few months to plan before his class, I found a work-stay opportunity on the island through Workaway, and bought a one-way ticket.

Left: The morning after my first night on O'ahu. Right: Selfie during my very first dive on the North Shore.

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Welcome to the Orange Tree. For those of you who have been with me for a while, you know how much I enjoy writing. Social media has never quite scratched that itch to share my thoughts, and I have been recently inspired by two of my friends, Margaret Koss of Twin Flame Vernacular and Lucy Lumen of Love Lucy, to create a newsletter. I plan to use it as a vessel for more personal storytelling, sharing news or work updates, print releases, film things, and more. It’s exciting, and nerve-wracking to experiment with a different platform, but I’m happy to be here, and I’m happy you are here too. 

Did you grow up near a body of water that felt precious to your childhood? Have you experienced something unexpected that hugely affected the trajectory of your life? Are you a freediver too, or does the idea of being in thousands of feet of ocean terrify you? Do you love the public library system as much as I do???? Please share your stories below in the comments, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for sitting with me here at -

the Orange Tree xo