Building the Wind: Writing the Butterfly Chapter

When I sat down to write Ring Four: The Book of Butterfly, I knew I was stepping into dangerous territory, not just because butterfly is a brutal stroke, but because it exposes you, and for right or wrong people have strong opinions about it. It might be the most revealing stroke of them all. You can’t fake it. You can’t hide behind endurance, or muscle, or even willpower. If your rhythm is off, if your timing falters, the water tells you immediately.

So, I wanted to capture that truth, not just the technique, but the spirit of butterfly. That’s why this ring became The Book of Wind.

Why Wind?

Each stroke in Swimming’s Book of the Five Rings carries an element, a way of moving through the world. Butterfly, for me, was always wind: unrelenting, invisible, ever-present. You don’t see it, but you feel it press against you. It can lift or destroy.

Wind represents resistance and rhythm, the two truths at the heart of butterfly. The swimmer doesn’t defeat resistance; they shape it. They don’t fight the wind; they learn to ride it. Writing that became my way of teaching the stroke.

The opening lines came quickly:

“To fly is to fall and rise at once. To suffer the wind is to learn its song.”

Those lines became the backbone of the chapter. I wanted readers to feel the paradox, the way mastery in butterfly (and in life) comes from surrendering to what once felt like opposition.

Structure: From Mechanics to Meaning

Every chapter in the book follows a pattern, the philosophy, the form, the master, and the strategy. Butterfly was no different, but it felt different while writing.

The first section, The Rhythm of Flight, was written almost like a meditation. I wrote it imagining the swimmer inside their own movement, not watching from the deck, but feeling the energy travel from the chest through the whip of the legs. I spent a good amount of time on one line:

“The chest is the handle of the whip.”

That phrase anchored everything. Once that landed, I could trace the energy, chest to core, hips to legs, and back through the hands.

I wanted to move away from the mechanical “how to” and closer to the essence, the subtle truth that the arms don’t lead butterfly; the body does. The more I wrote, the more it became about honesty. The stroke doesn’t allow you to lie, not in motion, not in mindset.

On Vulnerability and Power

Writing The Vulnerability of Power was the hardest section. I rewrote it three times. I wanted to balance respect for the suffering butterfly demands with reverence for its beauty. That’s when I found the line:

“Butterfly demands suffering, but with elegance.”

That sentence felt like the thesis, not just of the stroke, but of mastery itself. Watching great butterfliers like Phelps or Meagher, you can see the pain, and if you’ve swum the 200 fly you can feel it, but you also see grace. They charge into the suffering beautifully.

The writing itself mirrored that process, long stretches of pushing, rewriting, collapsing, then finding rhythm again. In that way, the act of writing butterfly became its own version of the stroke.

Mary T. Meagher: The Master of Wind

Including Mary T. Meagher wasn’t a decision, it was an obligation. She is the definition of butterfly mastery. What struck me most wasn’t her records, but her connection, the quiet control, the rhythm that never broke.

Her presence gave the chapter grounding. Up until that point, the text was mostly philosophy and imagery. Meagher made it real. She showed that what I was writing about, harmony with resistance, wasn’t abstract. It existed in the water.

I wanted to end her section not with analysis, but reverence:

“To study her stroke is to study wind itself, resistance shaped into flight.”

Writing the Maxims

The Maxims of the Wind Book were written last short, sharp, and deliberate. They’re meant to read like training koans, thoughts you can hold onto while swimming or coaching.

Each one came from something I learned the hard way.

• “Breathing is rhythm, not escape.” That came from my own fatigue in countless sets.

• “Strength without timing is waste.” That one came from watching swimmers thrash in panic instead of trust the water.

• And the last line — “To fly is to fall and rise at once” — felt like the only way to close the ring.

Closing Thoughts

Writing The Book of Butterfly reminded me that mastery isn’t about control, it’s about relationship. Between body and water. Between effort and release. Between suffering and rhythm.

The same is true in writing. You can’t force it. You have to fall into rhythm, let resistance teach you, and trust that what emerges will carry you forward.

Butterfly taught me that. The writing of this chapter proved it.

Study this.

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