For the fourth time in three years I returned to Croatia to work, swim and be barefoot. The waning Indian summer of October served as a re-calibration to the internationally-remote lifestyle I had set aside during 5 months living in Denver, Colorado; as such, I focused on walking everywhere, eating healthier and undoing the harm of rigid routine staying in one place always brings me. I did do a couple of touristy things during my first week in Split — a tour of the ship building yard and an excursion to a nearby cave (click link to see photos from each). Other than that though I focused my 5+ weeks more on living a healthy, happy and comfortable life along the sea and developing the daily routine to support it. My apartment was near the beach and afforded a beautiful view of the ever-changing sky between dawn, dusk (here are some highlights).
The irony of escaping Denver, only to reinvent a routine elsewhere is a funny pattern I always repeat. My Split routine is really great; in the morning I walk to the gym, only two hundred meters from my front door. Afterwards I walk down to the sea, 300 meters away, to swim and dry in the sun. From there I walk directly to the office space (100 meters from the sea) where I work until the afternoon when I take a swim break. I finish working in the evening and then walk to yoga — returning home to cook dinner. It’s funny how natural rhythms emerge as routine within each different place I live. I love having multiple routines between places as well as the inevitable disruption of transition which I recognize as necessary to enact the change that I require within myself to keep from getting too comfortable.
For six months I was working to return here — motivated singularly by my solo, morning swims in the Adriatic, I was striving to arrive before the water became too cold. I was fortunate to have been able to swim for the entire 5+ weeks I was there. An uncommonly warm Indian Summer persisted through October –keeping the water temperature near 20 degrees Celsius until the first week of November. After exercising the sea feels like a cool, enveloping, heat-dissipating blanket. The initial ten seconds of which are biting, cold but after which time I am so comfortably equalized that it doesn’t feel I am even in water. I can remain floating, facing away from shore to the island of Brac, a few miles away, separated completely from anyone and anything else around. Sometimes the water is completely still and flat. Clearing my mind becomes as simple and I float here as long as I want until I am ready to leave.
