Carrie Saxifrage - The Big Swim: Coming Ashore in a World Adrift

Praise for The Big Swim

A stunningly beautiful memoir about a world that I love. Carrie Saxifrage is a poet not just of the natural world but also of the heart, and reading her book is like walking through these landscapes with a wise and knowledgeable guide; with every chapter you turn a corner onto another unexpected and breathtaking vista. She has a keen, compassionate eye for human foibles, and I found myself laughing out loud on one page and brushing away tears on the next. I read straight through. I did not want this journey to end.

Ruth Ozeki, author, A Tale for the Time Being

In a flash of inspiration, Carrie Saxifrage has invented the climate change memoir. Beautifully crafted, often touching and unexpectedly funny, here is your handbook to living deeply in perilous times.

J.B. MacKinnon, author The 100-Mile Diet and The Once and Future World

The Big Swim is a riveting read. Carrie Saxifrage takes us with her to some of the West Coasts most precious wild gems while reflecting on parenting, life, love, the beauty around us and its fragility. Its Eat, Pray, Love for the climate era. I couldnt put it down.

Tzeporah Berman, author, This Crazy Time

Serious adventure on a serious planet. This is the kind of thinking and living we need to engage in.

Bill McKibben, author, Oil and Honey, Eaarth and The End of Nature

Trying to understand what we are doing to the planet based solely upon facts and statistics fails to engage the heart, where all true commitment forms. Carrie Saxifrage knows that real change comes from the head and the heart working together and gently pulls us along on her journey to a deeper place of understanding.

Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians and author, Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever

Carrie Saxifrage has accomplished a feat here: shes written a story about our pressing environmental concerns that youll find hard to put down. Funny, intriguing, eloquent, her emotional-intellectual acuity inspires a refreshing sense of volition.

Betsy Warland, author, Breathing the Page

The Big Swim is a beautiful collection of stories about the biggest challenge of our time: How to live with ourselves in a world we are destroying. Carrie Saxifrage writes eloquently about the natural environment and humanitys disruptive place within it. Her insightful blend of science and personal epiphanies will change the way you think.

Brian Payton, author, The Wind Is Not a River and Shadow of the Bear

Wow. This moving book invites us to reconnect with our own wildness, to submerge ourselves in creation and come out doused with the sweet nectar of being alive. Carrie Saxifrage speaks a beautiful languageprecise, transformative, unafraid. Read this book. It will give you hope.

Shaena Lambert, author, Oh, My Darling and Radiance

Carrie Saxifrage looks unflinchingly at the world around us and reports back the joy, the pain, and the adventure that is there, within reach of all those bold individuals who care enough to grasp for it. The Big Swim is a must read for all those who think they dont want to read another environmental book. It takes you to a place of hope while step by step you laugh or cry because of the humanity of the parent struggling with a teenager, the spouse working on creating partnership, or the adventurer grasping for the next push forward.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, author, Green Mama www.thegreenmama.com

Copyright 2015 by Carrie Saxifrage. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Swimmer: iStock/SilviaJansen; Water background: iStock/davidf; Ice: iStock/Sjo; Compass Rose: iStock /Makhnach_M

Printed in Canada. First printing January 2015.

New Society Publishers acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of The Big Swim should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada
(250) 247-9737

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Saxifrage, Carrie, author

The big swim : coming ashore in a world adrift / Carrie Saxifrage.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-86571-798-5 (pbk.). ISBN 978-1-55092-592-0 (ebook)

1. Saxifrage, Carrie. 2. EnvironmentalistsBritish ColumbiaBiography. 3. JournalistsBritish ColumbiaBiography. 4. Philosophy of nature. 5. Sustainable living. 6. Climatic changesPsychological aspects. 7. Climatic changesPrevention. 8. Self-actualization (Psychology). I. Title.

New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council-registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine-free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com

Nature may not be what it was, no, but it isnt simply gone.

Its waiting.

J. B. MacKinnon,
The Once and Future World

Contents

Rua Mercier, Karen Lee, Yaana Dancer, Carol Tulpar, Janie Brown, Lara Janze, Emily Rose, Lorraine Kidumae and my other colleagues from The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University spent years helping me shape these stories. Their contributions were golden. The Big Swim feels like our book.

I learned much of what I needed to know about writing a book from my excellent mentor at The Writers Studio, Brian Payton, who also happens to be the author of one of my all-time favorite books, Shadow of the Bear and, most recently, The Wind is Not a River.

Amanda Pitre-Hayes, Anne Haven McDonell, Charlie Demers and Manda Aufochs Gillespie (aka The Green Mama who wrote Giving Your Child a Healthy Start and a Greener Future) gave me timely and very helpful advice on various chapters. So did Gerald Amos, Kathy Francis, Lorraine Hathaway and Erin Brown.

Linda Solomon, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Vancouver Observer, an award winning on-line news source, got me started writing a book. She gave me encouragement, practical support and generous friendship at every step along the way. Tzeporah Berman, author of