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Man Spends Eight Years on Quest for Perfect Swimming Hole

SPRINGVILLE, Calif., Sept. 18, 2004 - Somewhere out there in America right now is a man who spends his days driving the back roads and hiking remote trails.

His name is Pancho Doll, and he's looking for those hidden places where mountains, rivers and rocks come together to form a perfect swimming hole.

He spends his life in places with names like The Shoe Box, Rattlesnake Pool, Frenchman Falls and Death Hollow.

What he looks for are holes with clear, cool water, cliffs to jump from and naturally carved "buckets" for sitting, created by thousands of years of swirling water.

"The Holy Trinity of swimming hole quality is height, depth and privacy," he says.

Doll started his quest eight years ago when a friend took him to a California swimming hole. He liked it so much he went looking for a guidebook to swimming holes, and found that there was none.

A former reporter for The Los Angeles Times, Doll knew how to write, so he decided to write the guidebook himself.

So far, he's written three of them, Day Trips with a Splash, about swimming holes in California, the Southwest and the Northeast. You can find him, and his guides, on his Web site, www.swimholes.com.

Doll, 41, is tall, single and goes to work in a pair of Patagonia paddling trunks.

"You find these small little pockets, niches that have a sense of enclosure or surrounding that makes them special," he says.

The old swimming hole is something that lingers in the American imagination. It was where your great-grandfather went swimming. Norman Rockwell used them in his paintings of American life.

Doll grew up swimming on a small river near the family farm in the Ozarks. He wrote in the introduction to his first book, "Whether skipping stones, diving off logs or doing spectacular parabolic exits from a rope swing, wet was the only way to stay during humid Midwestern summers."

In a world of water parks and swimming pools, most people probably have never seen a swimming hole, but there are thousands of places more fun and more interesting to swim in than anything built by humans.

They're water parks built by nature. And they're free.

In Swimming Holes of California, Doll wrote, "Oddly enough, it's not the water that makes a swimming hole great; it's the rock. The best ones have an architectural quality."

Now, Doll lives in the camper back of a small Toyota pickup truck, traveling the country, using global positioning satellites and a computer to document hidden and forgotten places to swim.

He's a kind of transcendental humorist who wrote, "I'd even argue that swimming holes are the most complete trip to the mountains. Hiking alone isn't. There is always space between the hiker and the trees, always a separation between us and the ground we travel over. But water touches every part of the body with the perfect contact of immersion."

He writes in a casual and humorous style. Crowded spots are said to have "a high Volvo coefficient," and a bubbling bowl is called a "Sierra Jacuzzi."

Havasu Falls, a popular swimming hole northwest of Flagstaff, Ariz., is described by Pancho Doll as "a divine blue crystal." (Pancho Doll)

Here is what he wrote about "Captain's Tub," a hole in Northern California: "Not the place to hold a fraternity rush party or Labor Day picnic, but it's just fine for a couple."

Of "The Crack" in Arizona, he wrote: "A combination of rock and water that could make a poet out of a plowman."

And of "Frenchman Falls" in Maine: "A popular place that nobody can find."

But Doll found it. His directions are very specific, giving landmarks down to a tenth of a mile.

But keep in mind, we are talking about hiking in the wilderness. Even Doll occasionally gets lost following his own directions.

But it's summer, it is hot, and those swimming holes are out there. The journey is part of the fun.

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By Brian Rooney

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at September 20, 2004 11:42 AM