Oliver sacks everything in its place6/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The children, in particular, were so at home in the water that they appeared, in the words of one explorer, “more like fish than human beings.” (It was from the Pacific Islanders that, early in the twentieth century, we Westerners learned the crawl, the beautiful, powerful ocean stroke that they had perfected-so much better, so much more fitted to the human form than the froglike breaststroke chiefly used until that time.)įor myself, I have no memory of being taught to swim I learned my strokes, I think, by swimming with my father-though the slow, measured, mile-eating stroke he had (he was a powerful man who weighed nearly eighteen stone) was not entirely suited to a little boy. Magellan and other navigators reaching Micronesia in the sixteenth century were astounded at such skills and, seeing the islanders swim and dive, bounding from wave to wave, could not help comparing them to dolphins. Everyone there swims, nobody is “unable” to swim, and the islanders’ swimming skills are superb. I was reminded of this when I visited the Caroline Islands, in Micronesia, where I saw even toddlers diving fearlessly into the lagoons and swimming, typically, with a sort of dog paddle. Swimming is instinctive at this age, so, for better or worse, we never “learned” to swim. Our father, who was a swimming champ (he won the fifteen-mile race off the Isle of Wight three years in succession) and loved swimming more than anything else, introduced each of us to the water when we were scarcely a week old. We were all water babies, my three brothers and I. ![]()
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