Swimming the Hellespont
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
I don't know exactly when I first wanted to swim the Hellespont. I heard the story of Hero and Leander and the Hellespont in high school. In senior English, Miss Jimerson considered it a duty to interest her rowdy boys in poetry and she set her literary snare by enticing us with details of the poets' lives. Early in the year she exposed us to the ribaldry of Chaucer so by the time we reached the Romantic period, no seventeen year old boy could resist the handsome young pursuer of women, Lord George Gordon Byron, who proved his virility by being the first man to swim the Hellespont. I was impressed, as she intended, but mainly because I could swim just enough to avoid drowning. I knew I would never be capable of swimming across a wide body of open water. It was not until I stumbled upon Richard Halliburton's books in college that I discovered anyone else had dared to swim the Hellespont. I found Halliburton an even more romantic figure than Byron – he was, after all, an American; from Memphis, Tennessee, my part of the world; a smallish man with nothing physically imposing about him except the love of adventure in his blood and bones. After reading the account of Halliburton's swim across the Hellespont, I realized this was something possible for mere mortals. But it was fifteen years later before I began to swim regularly. In my early thirties I joined the American mania for running but after a knee injury I was advised to transfer my energy to water. That first day in the pool I swam with my head sticking out of the water, like a snake, and managed only nine lengths in twenty minutes. I was hardly more than a buoyant rock. Only after years of swimming laps three days a week did I begin to feel comfortable in water. At that point I looked for open water, where my energy and momentum wouldn't be dissipated by turning every twenty-five yards. At that time, I had runner friends who had completed marathons, including the original Marathon course in Greece. What swimming challenge could I find of comparable nature? Of course, there was the English Channel but I dismissed that as impossible. Lakes and rivers were in ready abundance nearby but they all lacked distinction. Then I remembered the Hellespont. Perhaps an almost sixty-year-old man could manage that.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Here is the story of a man who never forgot the lessons of his high school English teacher. His memory of her inspires him to attempt his boyhood 'impossible dream' at the age of sixty – to swim the Hellespont. In homage to his teacher and in imitation of Lord Byron and Richard Haliburton, the author explores the romantic history and mythology of the Hellespont, then trains and travels to modern Turkey to swim the dangerous strait himself. This story about pursuing a dream is also about youth and maturity, about past and present, about success and failure and what they have in common. Here is a poignant, inspiring tale of the effect of a teacher on the life of a student for more than forty years, a story that will make the reader begin their own short list of the things they most want to do in life.
About the Author
Ben Bridgers lives with his wife of almost forty years in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina where he practices law, swims, writes and now dreams of playing string bass with a bluegrass band.