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In the short story "The Swimmer", the American writer John Cheever wrote about a man at a party who decided to swim through the backyard swimming pools of his neighbors and follow the 8-mile waterway home. Swimming enthusiast Roger Deakin was inspired by this and decided to swim along the waterways and oceans throughout Britain. Starting from the Huzhai River in his backyard, over the course of 18 months, he swam through rivers, streams, waterfalls, mud, deep pools and the sea, and of course there were bathhouses and swimming pools. Sometimes he wears a diving suit that looks like a banana peel, and sometimes he can liberate his nature and be close to the water skin-to-skin. In the water, he swam with frogs, otters, black waterfowl, and eels; on the surface, he looked at foxes from the height of hawthorn and ash treetops, watched damselflies and dragonflies fly before his eyes, eagles circled, and redstarts jumped among the branches; after emerging from the water, he lay down on the grass with small insects and Potentilla, sedum, sage, and thyme to dry himself. Roger Deakin went through these experiences in order to understand the mystery mentioned by D. H. Lawrence in "The Third Thing": "Water is H2O, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. However, there is a third thing, what it is that makes water water, no one knows."