Swimming in Puget Sound - Super 8 proves I did

Back in the day, you just couldn't beat the old Super 8 home movies. Dad was a great fan, taking the small, wind-up movie camera everywhere - including the deck of our home in Seattle, (Washington USA) to film the sunset...

... so some home movies were more interesting than others.

The movie camera went with us to Disneyland in 1962, thus  proving I was there. The grainy footage showed me about to lose my lunch whilst being flung about in the Flying Teacups, and rumbling down the Matterhorn.

Another movie shows me swimming with my sister in Puget Sound at Seahurst, an admirable feat considering how cold the water is there, year round. But when you're 6 or 7 years of age, cold doesn't matter. The photo above is of Seahurst Park - gives you an idea of the terrain.

I don't remember all of the details of the death-defying swim, but it's a sunny summer's day, and we're at a beach near our home. I say 'beach', but the shore is rocky. Where we're swimming, the water is a deep, brilliant blue and there are rocks with big, thick, brown strap-like kelp, the type that slithers along the skin, threatening to tangle and pull you under, a possibility of which we are blissfully unaware. 

I have on an orange brown swimsuit with some kind of skirt apparatus, no doubt fashionable at the time. My sister and I are playing with a large, round-shaped log, black and slimy with that almost iridescent green seaweedy stuff that covers the rocks too. I think we're trying to get on board but can't. It's too slippery.

When I look at the movie, I think, yes, I can remember the feel of that log - smooth, slippery but with some splintery bits. And I recall the texture of that green seaweedy stuff, soft, almost fur-like.

The most powerful thing I remember is the smell - deep and rich, confronting, the scent of heavy brown kelp, the water (probably ten feet deep just beyond where we're playing) and salty sea so intense I don't think I've ever experienced the like of it anywhere else I've been in life.

Swimming in the freezing waters of Puget Sound didn't scare me but those Flying Teacups at Disneyland did. The movie proves it. Suffice to say, I've expunged the memory of the teacups. 

But the Puget Sound swims, yes I can remember those. As a young child, my senses were on high alert, all the time,  exploring, experiencing, discovering, learning.

Sometimes the things we remember most strongly are those where our senses are profoundly involved and connected. 

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