What does the Lake, the Baggersee mean to me? It means genesis, it means peace, it means nature, it means power, it means connection, it means feeling, it means existence. I channel a lot of meaning into the lake, and the practice of ice bathing connected to it. I started in the winter of 2020. It was the time of the second corona lockdown in Germany. I was in the 12th grade. I had been going to the lake almost every day in the summer, and as fall and winter approached, I made the decision to just not stop. I can’t tell you why exactly, it might of been because I had stopped playing basketball and had had the intention to make swimming my main sport from that point forward, it might also have been that I didn’t have much else to do, it being lockdown and all. But what I soon found was an activity, a passion, an experience that would change my life. As the water got colder and colder, at a certain point I pondered stopping for the season. The average temperature at that point was about 10°C. I started to do cold showers regularly to get better acclimated to the cold. Then I went back in. The entire winter, 2-3 times a week on average, I went to the Baggersee, got in, swam or just sat in the water for 2-10 minutes, got out, and went back home. It was painful, especially getting heat back into my hands and feet after being in the water. I sometimes walked, sometimes rode my bike to the lake. The walk took about 30 minutes. On multiple occasions, my hands spent the entirety of those 30 minutes burning white from the cold. But being in the water made me feel alive. It made me feel strong. It made me feel connected to nature in a way I had never known before. I often call it “forced meditation”, and indeed, ice bathing is the most effective form of meditation I have experienced so far. When the water is almost freezing cold, you as a human in such conditions can do nothing but breathe, focus and let your body keep you alive. You can think of nothing else, it’s just too cold. That was the reason why I kept going, all winter. I went on Christmas, I went on New Years and I kept going into 2021. The feeling of being surrounded, of being engulfed by ice water is indescribable in its totality. When you have a certain foundational cold resistance, you start to feel it: The peace, the total interconnection with nature, the humility. In the water, the borders of your being dissolve, that is what I mean by total interconnection with nature. It is a deeply real, visceral, ethereal feeling. I felt a special type of power for the first time, not power I had personally, but an indifferent, real, natural power. The power of the cold. I could not and cannot wield this power, for it is deeply rooted, unable and unwilling to be pulled from its medium, from its place. All I and anyone else can do is enter it, open ourselves to it, incorporate it into our being for an ephemeral moment of reality. The power of nature is all around us. But we shut ourselves off from it on so many occasions, that many of us have forgotten what it feels like be within it. I will never forget. I can never forget. I have felt the power of nature through the ice cold water of the Baggersee. It has made me exist in ways I cannot describe in words. It was there long before I was born, and it will remain long after I have died. But in my existence, I have felt its power, its love. I have felt the gift of being alive.

Inspired by The Dirtbag Diaries: “Esker Calling”