(Christine Nesheim)
Taking the Plunge
Step foot on the Door Peninsula in the winter, and you will no doubt be awed by the transformed shoreline.
On the bay side, the warm blue waters of summer disappear, replaced by an expansive field covered in snow — complete with vehicles and fishing shacks.
On the lakeside, water remains water, only deathly cold. But the shore becomes an alien planet, ever changing. Sometimes gentle, slow waves tinkle like invisible ice shards clattering together. Other times, icy waves crash onto frozen shelves spraying everything in their wake.
It goes without saying, these aren’t ideal swimming conditions; especially for someone perpetually cold from autumn until sometime in June.
Yeah, that’s me. Nevertheless, I have plunged myself into the water during these conditions.
Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was daring-do. Probably, it was mostly attention-seeking behavior. Whatever the reason, despite my better judgment, I’ve become a Polar Bear.
It happened many moons ago, 1983 or thereabouts, when I was a high schooler in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I got caught up in a local Polar Bear club’s enthusiasm.
At that Kenosha location, the water became deep very quickly. I took three running steps and found myself submerged momentarily.
Shocking? You bet. But I couldn’t wait to try it again.
When I moved to Door County out of college in the late 80’s, I was surprised there wasn’t a Polar Bear Club on the entire peninsula — with shoreline up the ying yang.
It seemed like a vacuum that needed filling. So, I talked with people — people who seemed like pent-up Polar Bears. But, oddly enough, nobody bit.
I persisted. I wrote columns in the Door County Advocate. I pleaded with co-workers.
My public efforts got noticed. Not by potential swimmers, but by a Green Bay television station. They said they were sending a team up to tape the fledgling club. By that time, I had found two people — complete strangers — who had agreed to the frigid dip.
The big day came. My mother and brother came along to watch. We went early, so I could talk to my new club members and greet the TV crew.
The problem was I had chosen the beach in Baileys Harbor. But that harbor had become completely compacted with ice.
OK, no problem. We’ll move the operation to Jacksonport. I’d just have to tell the club.
So I waited. And waited. At the prescribed time, the TV reporter and cameraman pulled up, but still no other swimmers.
Sheepishly, I explained we would have to move the operation to Jacksonport. And, quite obviously, no one else had shown up.
She was undaunted, saying the station would simply run a story on my efforts to start a club. I breathed a sigh of relief.
But, before leaving Baileys Harbor, the cameraman said he wanted some video of the ice. He trudged out. I remember telling him the ice probably wasn’t very stable — but I wasn’t full of conviction. I let him go without another word.
As I sat in the car with my mother and brother, my brother piped up: “Did he just fall through?”
“Did he?”
“Oh no…”
We jumped out of the car in time to see him thrust the camera out of the water and onto the ice. A moment later, he pulled himself out, too.
So, I guess I had a club after all.
What I didn’t get, however, was my 15 minutes of fame. The camera was ruined.
More specifically, the intern cameraman ruined a brand new $15,000 camera. And in the late 80’s, that was real money.
I offered him a towel. But he sat in the car, shivering, refusing the help. “I’m from Duluth,” he muttered.
OK then.
Nobody knew what to do next. With the camera
ruined, there would be no story. But I offered to go swimming at Jacksonport, just the same, if the reporter wanted to watch. At the park, I got out of the car and ran into the lake.
The water’s surface there was covered with slush. Running through it was like shaving your legs after a college keg party. My shins were bleeding from a
thousand little cuts.
The reporter, horrified by the blood and not too happy with the cameraman, returned to Green Bay without a story.
But that wasn’t the end of the Polar Bear story. No, as it turned out, it was only the beginning.
After the wrap-up column about the sorry state of my fledgling club appeared in the Advocate, I received a letter from an Iowa reader. The letter writer, Sue Jarosh, suggested I team up with her teenage son, J.R., next year since he had been taking the plunge alone, too. He made his dip during winter vacation for several years. In 1986, he’d been dubbed the county’s first Polar Bear.
We kept in contact and the following winter designated a day to take the plunge. That year, the club expanded to three members: me, J.R. and Richard, an Advocate co-worker. Another news crew showed up to tape this, more successful, effort.
From that point on, the club grew yearly.
The next year, we invited newscaster and Green Bay Packer Hall of Famer Larry McCarren to join us. He did.
And the club grew.
Today, the annual Jacksonport Polar Bear Club Swim is one of the county’s biggest winter events. It’s also the quickest festival on the peninsula, lasting only a few minutes.
The club, currently overseen by now-full-time county residents, J.R. Jarosh and his family, is unofficially one of the largest in the country.
As such, the club was used as marketing for the animated “Ice Age” movie and featured in the film “Feed the Fish” starring Tony Shalhoub.
People have come from around the nation, even other countries, to participate.
Yeah, it’s a scene.
I definitely feel my effort to start a club was one of my greatest contributions to mankind.
If you agree − even if you are shivering − I hope to see you there this January 1.
