The dog days of summer are upon us. I've been spending the afternoons cloud swimming. My friend, the great running coach, Fred Maas, got my attention when he started sending me photographs of him training for the Pike's Peak Marathon. Fred runs, literally, into the clouds. He's at over fourteen thousand feet. Running. Fred's 63 years old. The old boy can still outpace a deer on a mountain top and he can go for hours doing this at altitude.

He's got me beat, Fred does. But I've taken his logo, Cloud runner, to heart. I am in clouds up to my chin -- in my pond. I swim through them like a newt. Fred eats clouds; I drink them. And I come out of the water grateful to be alive, thankful for taking the weight off my feet, proud that I am still a swimmer, a paddler, a poker of noses into the water lilies. You gotta love it. You're weightless. Incorporeal. Bodiless. Fish come and go. Turtles breeze by. Clouds make a tapestry through which your body arcs like a whipped cream diver. You surface with a lily pad on your head.

A man said the other day, "Aren't you scared of gators?"

"No," I answered.

"Why not?"

I said, "One time I was on the Loop Road in the Everglades and there was a Miccosukee family, a mom and dad, and they were bathing their baby, and there were two alligators cruising right around them. Never bothered them."

"Well, I think you should be afraid of alligators," the man said, and left it at that. He wanted me to be afraid, had a vested interest in it.

To myself, I said, "Cloud swimmers don't die from gator bites. They just melt away at a good old age."

At least, I hope so.