{"id":4053,"date":"2012-09-16T13:24:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T20:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/?p=4053"},"modified":"2012-09-16T13:24:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-16T20:24:24","slug":"close-to-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/16\/close-to-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Close to Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started swimming a couple of months ago. I have always been a person who could get around in the water, but I had never learned any proper swimming strokes. I was inefficient.<\/p>\n

I had tried to take classes but without much success. I don’t really enjoy group activities, and adult swim classes tend to be pitched wrong for me. I am a pretty good athlete in general, and comfortable in the water.<\/p>\n

I finally signed up for a series of one-on-one sessions with a coach, and it’s something I should have done years ago. Within a week or so, I was swimming regularly at Aquatic Park<\/a>, an outdoor swim area with an almost 300-meter buoy line. I go a few times a week now, and I always have a good time.<\/p>\n

Mostly. Lately the park has attracted a couple of sea lions. For several weeks, it seemed like this was limited to somewhat shy visits from a younger male, who mostly hung around just outside the swimming area. He seemed hesitant, maybe even safe.<\/p>\n

But people have been bitten at this beach before, although rarely. The consensus on the “rogue sea lion”<\/a> in 2006 was that he was somehow ill. <\/p>\n

\"Well,<\/div>\n

That doesn’t make me feel any better about the large, adult male sea lion that visited Aquatic Park yesterday. I saw him as I sat on the beach, about to get out of water, and I wonder how long he’d been gliding around as I was doing my 7 laps. He certainly seemed right at home, swimming well within the swimmers area, past little groups of swimmers that were still in the water, eyeing us all casually.<\/p>\n

Here’s hoping he’s healthy and has satisfied his curiosity, and won’t be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started swimming a couple of months ago. I have always been a person who could get around in the water, but I had never learned any proper swimming strokes. I was inefficient. I had tried to take classes but without much success. I don’t really enjoy group activities, and adult swim classes tend to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness","category-nature-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4OKzG-13n","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}