The end of summer is near and I’m sad, which is weird because I love fall. It is probably my favorite season. For starters, I was born in September so there's that. I love the warm days and cooler nights. I love watching the leaves turn and fall from the trees, the sound of leaf blowers, the smell of woodsmoke and everything pumpkin spice. Every season is different and wonderful but at the end of one and the beginning of another there is this sense of limbo where I cling to what is ending. I think this is why I swim more in August than in June. In June the whole summer stretches out in front of me and feels endless and then in August, I realize it is all coming to an end when I wake up to see steam rising off the pool, a visible reminder that summer is fading and so I swim. I swim to hold onto summer as long as I can. I swim in temperatures I wouldn't consider in June, as if it is my duty to preserve every last bit of the season before it is gone. Every August when I’m swimming in cold water and getting out to even colder air I ask myself why didn't I swim more when it was 85 degrees? Why do I take for granted those beautiful days and then scramble to catch up as summer wanes? Why do I desperately try to hold on with one more swim, one more barbecue, one more sunset, when the end of summer is the beginning of a season that I love just as deeply? The notion of an endless summer is like life and the realization that I cannot stop the passage of time. Today I will swim, not to mourn the end of something, but to celebrate another beautiful summer and then I will let go and embrace what is to come.