5 days, 5 bodies of water: A soul-awakening swimming challenge in the California wild

In one version of Irish myth, selkies were seals that turned into beautiful women at night when they went ashore. One night, a man trapped a selkie and made her his wife. They had a son. She loved her son, but she missed the sea. Sometimes she tried to escape, so her husband hid her seal suit. But once her child was old enough, she found a way back to the sea.

My husband is not a captor, nor do I own a seal suit, but I can relate. If I’m away from the sea for too long, I grow sad.

For me, the first half of 2025 was filled with sadness and grief, so I decided to embark on a mission. For five days in August, I would immerse myself in a different body of water every day in the wilds of Marin County near Stinson Beach.

In the spirit of “Waterlog” by the great British nature writer Richard Deakin (itself inspired by “The Swimmer” by John Cheever about a man who decides to swim in every backyard pool in his neighborhood), I sought to see this Northern California landscape I love from another perspective. The swims did not have to be hard, I only had to be able to plunge my whole body into wetness. And so, on a clear, bright Monday, I set out.

Bass Lake, surrounded by pines.

(Hilary MacGregor)

Deep in the Point Reyes National Seashore are a cluster of freshwater ponds. A friend, now deceased, showed me this lake years ago because it used to have a world-class rope swing. Each year the locals would string up the swing; each year the rangers would cut it down. It was a playful war that ended when the branch fell into the lake in a winter storm. The rope swing is long gone, but the lake is still quiet, secret and inviting, like a dream from childhood.

Picnic in our backpacks, my husband and I hiked in from the Palomarin Headlands — about 2.5 miles — along cliffs where you can spot gray and humpback whales, and shaded paths where dappled shadows dance. There we saw it, the blue of the lake shimmering through the pines and wild blackberry bushes. Hoping to skinny-dip, we scrambled down a narrow path. My husband slipped out of his shorts and I was just shimmying out of mine when we heard voices. I leaped in, half-clothed, and we left his boxers hanging on a root. We swam across the lake, about 200 yards. Fed by underground springs there is no warm upper layer. Shafts of light cut down through the blue-blackness. Red and blue dragonflies buzzed about our heads. The water was soft and sweet on the tongue. My husband, a lake lover who loves swimming in the nude, said he felt “free.” After, we sat in a clearing and ate peanut butter sandwiches and Tcho chocolate, bluejays trying to steal our food, our wet skin warming in the sun.

The author at Inner Lagoon in Stinson Beach.

(Hilary MacGregor)

For our second swim, we set out for the Inner Lagoon in Stinson Beach. This is a man-made lagoon carved out of the larger, naturally occurring Bolinas Lagoon in a gated community called Seadrift.

It’s a perfect place to train for a race because it’s like a giant, salty outdoor swimming pool, 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the ocean, long, narrow and safe. We planned to swim a mile. My husband waded through a beach of battling crabs and they scattered. We dove in. The water was cool but not cold. I was wearing my arena suit, bathing cap and competitive swim goggles. I felt buoyant in the salt water after the fresh water of Bass Lake.

On this day it was just me, my husband and the birds. A great blue heron balanced on a dock and watched me; a cormorant eyed me curiously. Elegant terns cried and circled in the distance, and pelicans flew from the ocean to the lagoon, so close overhead sometimes I could hear the flapping of their heavy wings. When I got out, my husband was waiting. He said a snowy egret swooped down and looked like it was going to dive for my head, then decided not to.

Swimming with the birds made me feel like I, too, was a wild creature — another element in the web of life rather than the apex predator detached from the natural world that I usually am in my everyday urban existence. We sat at the picnic table breathing hard. The golden hills of Mt. Tamalpais glowed in the late afternoon light, and endorphins flooded our systems. I felt strong and happy, stilled with the peace that comes after a hard workout.

A view from Heart’s Desire Beach in Tomales Bay.

(Hilary MacGregor)

Wednesday dawned. I wanted to swim Tomales Bay, and I knew where I wanted to go: Heart’s Desire, in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Tomales Bay is a long inlet off the Pacific, about 15 miles long and a mile wide. It has brackish waters, a mix of fresh and salt. Heart’s Desire Beach is out the peninsula toward the Point Reyes Lighthouse on the west side of the bay, past the tiny town of Inverness. A ranger charged us $8 to head down the long, winding road to the parking lot and the bay.

The tide was low and I could see it wouldn’t be much of a swim. The swim area had buoys so that boats wouldn’t plow into you, but it didn’t look deep enough to swim at all. Mothers, toddlers and lovers waded through the shallows like shore birds.

The water was cold. I waded a long way out, til the bottom grew mucky and seaweed tickled my legs, then submerged. Halfway across the buoyed perimeter of the swim area I climbed up on the wooden float, like the beaches of my childhood. Kids cannon-balled off the sides and rocked it like a rowboat. I swam on. It was only about 150 yards around the swim area. The water grew shallower and soon my hands dragged along the bottom. I swam back to deeper waters and followed the buoys back to my towel.

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At the end, I flipped over and did a backfloat, and the water pressed against my skin and held me. As a therapist, I know that for children with autism, water offers resistance, pressure and pleasant sensory arousal. I’m not autistic, but in the water everything feels calmer.

Back on the beach, the world was quiet like another time. We were far away from roads, from cities, from engines or motors. You could see Hog Island Oyster Company across the bay, but there were no sounds. The scene looked like a painting.

Bolinas Lagoon is a 1,100-acre tidal estuary, located between Stinson Beach and the town of Bolinas. It is listed as a wetland of international importance as defined by the Ramsar Convention, and is home to harbor seals, who sun themselves in great piles on the sandbars, and dozens of bird species such as snowy egrets, pelicans, blackbirds, warblers, great egrets and great blue herons. Paddleboarding is the best way to explore the lagoon, but I wanted to swim it.

The lagoon is too shallow to swim in most parts, and from a paddleboard I’ve seen 2-foot-long leopard sharks, which scare me. I chose a channel near the mouth of the lagoon, by the town of Bolinas, where the commercial fishing boats anchor and the water is deep. My husband and I hiked two miles out the spit of Stinson Beach with our dog to gain access to the beach I wanted to launch myself from.

The author’s dog after swimming at Bolinas Lagoon.

(Hilary MacGregor)

I planned to swim the length of the channel from the private tennis courts to the mouth of the lagoon, where the water runs fast and cold, and seals (and sharks) are rumored to gather. It’s a short swim.

I walked to the tennis courts and waded out. The shore dropped away sharply. I dove into the icy blue depths. It was so cold my eyebrows ached. I could barely catch my breath. My beloved border collie Peach (who doesn’t love water) paddled behind me. I only lasted a couple of minutes before I swam to shore. My skin tingled and burned.

But it was a perfect moment. The pelicans watched from their island across the channel. Elegant terns swirled and glimmered at the far end of the lagoon (My Merlin app told me they were elegant terns and not some other kind). Seals swam by, one hauling itself up to sunbathe on a fishing boat. My husband waited for me on shore. Every cell in my body sparkled, awake. I wanted to hold onto it all, so I did it all again.

Slowly, my body got used to the water. This time I swam the corkscrew, a crazy stroke my kids learned at summer camp, where you do a freestyle stroke, roll into a back stroke, then over again into a freestyle stroke. It’s silly and ridiculous and you can’t help but laugh. Then I flipped onto my back, looked up at the sky full of birds, and gave thanks that I’m alive.

For my final day, I wanted to do something I’d never done before: swim straight out to sea. When I do open water swimming, I swim parallel to shore. This would be different. No markers. No sight line. Just the horizon. The currents. The waves. On top of this, we would be swimming from Bolinas, a quaint fishing town that is famously hostile to visitors and removes its signs to keep them out. This is where the Bolinas Lagoon opens out to the open ocean. Seals gather here, and the sharks supposedly come here to feast on the seals. I didn’t know if this was just a rumor to keep out-of-town surfers away, but the Farallon Islands just 20 miles south of Point Reyes are the winter playground for some of the world’s largest great white sharks. For this endeavor I enlisted the help of my friend, Greg, a local.

We wore wetsuits. He gave me a cozy neoprene hat to wear over my cap and goggles to keep my head warm. He also provided me with a special anti-shark amulet that I wore on my wrist like a watch. Developed in Australia, these wrist magnets repel the sharks, he said, and “feel like a punch in the nose” to the sharks if they get too close. Sounded good to me!

The day dawned foggy, but the low blanket of mist that hugged the land the day before had lifted. I was terrified of swimming straight out and losing sight of land. Greg assured me that even in dense fog you know where land is by sensing the direction of the waves. That may be true, but I wasn’t ready to swim by the feel of the currents yet. Greg also wore tiny flippers that looked like duck feet and a neon bubble attached to his waist to carry our valuables and make us visible to boats. We agreed to swim out 15 minutes.

The waves were big. The surfers were already out at a local spot known as the “patch.” We dove through the waves, swimming hard between. The water visibility was nil — just a blur of yellow, brown and eventually black. We wouldn’t be able to see a seal or shark if it swam right beneath us. I didn’t like the feeling.

But my friend was beside me. Finally my shallow, panicked breath slowed, my stroke evened out and I settled in. Out past the waveline we stopped. The early-morning sea was glassy and smooth. It felt viscous, velvety and otherworldly. Pelicans and terns swooped and dove around us. Surprisingly, once we swam out, I could see the land encircled us with long arms. Stinson Beach stretched out to the right, Bolinas to the left. We would not lose our way. We swam farther out. Every few strokes we stopped to take in the view. We were just specks in the ocean, as tiny as a velella or an anchovy, part of a big, watery world.

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Out here my perspective changed. I realized we could swim forever and still see the shore. We lay on our backs and let the swells gently lift us, then fall. The words of my father, a second-generation submariner, often recited when I was a child, drifted through my head: “Rocked in the cradle of the deep, I lay me down in peace to sleep.” We swam to where the glassiness ended and the wind rippled the surface, 14 minutes out.

The magic of the open water experience was better shared. No GoPro or camera can capture the vastness of the ocean for someone back on shore. Or what it feels like to ride the slow heaving of the ocean, pulsing like the heartbeat of the world. We came ashore in a big set, swimming frantically in, then turning to face the waves so we didn’t get wiped out. We swam until our feet touched the sandy bottom and crawled out happy but exhausted.

My body carried the rocking of the ocean for the rest of the day. I could close my eyes and be back there, gently rising and falling under the low, gray sky. I held onto that feeling as long as I could.

My friend promised me that by next year, he would have more bodies of water and more secret swims. Already he had come up with new watering holes I never knew existed. But for me, the quest had been a success. Being in water every day helped me regain my equilibrium. Surfers say the ions in salt water make you happy. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m 60% water and I felt I had moistened my dry skin, lightened the pull of gravity on my aging body and shed some of the heaviness of the first six months of the year.

When I first went to my therapist many years ago, she told me the story of the selkies. At the time I was feeling overwhelmed with work, marriage and motherhood. Much of our work has been my journey back to myself. After my vacation, I told her of my adventure. She said, “You were able to put your pelt back on. You’re spending more time in your seal suit.” Yes. On land and in the water. I am. Sometimes the metaphor is the medicine.