For my ultimate day, I needed to do one thing I’d by no means accomplished earlier than: swim straight out to sea. Once I do open water swimming, I swim parallel to shore. This could be completely different. No markers. No sight line. Simply the horizon. The currents. The waves. On prime of this, we might be swimming from Bolinas, a quaint fishing city that’s famously hostile to guests and removes its indicators to maintain them out. That is the place the Bolinas Lagoon opens out to the open ocean. Seals collect right here, and the sharks supposedly come right here to feast on the seals. I didn’t know if this was only a rumor to maintain out-of-town surfers away, however the Farallon Islands simply 20 miles south of Level Reyes are the winter playground for a few of the world’s largest nice white sharks. For this endeavor I enlisted the assistance of my pal, Greg, a neighborhood.
We wore wetsuits. He gave me a comfortable neoprene hat to put on over my cap and goggles to maintain my head heat. He additionally supplied me with a particular anti-shark amulet that I wore on my wrist like a watch. Developed in Australia, these wrist magnets repel the sharks, he mentioned, and “really feel like a punch within the nostril” to the sharks in the event that they get too shut. Sounded good to me!
Swimming with the birds made me really feel like I, too, was a wild creature — one other component within the internet of life reasonably than the apex predator indifferent from the pure world that I often am in my on a regular basis city existence.
The day dawned foggy, however the low blanket of mist that hugged the land the day earlier than had lifted. I used to be scared of swimming straight out and shedding sight of land. Greg assured me that even in dense fog the place land is by sensing the course of the waves. That could be true, however I wasn’t able to swim by the texture of the currents but. Greg additionally wore tiny flippers that appeared like duck toes and a neon bubble connected to his waist to hold our valuables and make us seen to boats. We agreed to swim out quarter-hour.
The waves had been huge. The surfers had been already out at a neighborhood spot often called the “patch.” We dove by means of the waves, swimming exhausting between. The water visibility was nil — only a blur of yellow, brown and finally black. We wouldn’t have the ability to see a seal or shark if it swam proper beneath us. I didn’t like the sensation.
However my pal was beside me. Lastly my shallow, panicked breath slowed, my stroke evened out and I settled in. Out previous the waveline we stopped. The early-morning sea was glassy and clean. It felt viscous, velvety and otherworldly. Pelicans and terns swooped and dove round us. Surprisingly, as soon as we swam out, I might see the land encircled us with lengthy arms. Stinson Seaside stretched out to the proper, Bolinas to the left. We’d not lose our means. We swam farther out. Each few strokes we stopped to absorb the view. We had been simply specks within the ocean, as tiny as a velella or an anchovy, a part of a giant, watery world.
Out right here my perspective modified. I noticed we might swim endlessly and nonetheless see the shore. We lay on our backs and let the swells gently raise us, then fall. The phrases of my father, a second-generation submariner, usually recited after I was a toddler, drifted by means of my head: “Rocked within the cradle of the deep, I lay me down in peace to sleep.” We swam to the place the glassiness ended and the wind rippled the floor, 14 minutes out.
The magic of the open water expertise was higher shared. No GoPro or digicam can seize the vastness of the ocean for somebody again on shore. Or what it feels prefer to trip the sluggish heaving of the ocean, pulsing just like the heartbeat of the world. We got here ashore in a giant set, swimming frantically in, then turning to face the waves so we didn’t get worn out. We swam till our toes touched the sandy backside and crawled out joyful however exhausted.
My physique carried the rocking of the ocean for the remainder of the day. I might shut my eyes and be again there, gently rising and falling below the low, grey sky. I held onto that feeling so long as I might.
My pal promised me that by subsequent yr, he would have extra our bodies of water and extra secret swims. Already he had give you new watering holes I by no means knew existed. However for me, the hunt had been a hit. Being in water day-after-day helped me regain my equilibrium. Surfers say the ions in salt water make you cheerful. I don’t know if it’s true, however I’m 60% water and I felt I had moistened my dry pores and skin, lightened the pull of gravity on my growing old physique and shed a few of the heaviness of the primary six months of the yr.
Once I first went to my therapist a few years in the past, she informed me the story of the selkies. On the time I used to be feeling overwhelmed with work, marriage and motherhood. A lot of our work has been my journey again to myself. After my trip, I informed her of my journey. She mentioned, “You had been in a position to put your pelt again on. You’re spending extra time in your seal swimsuit.” Sure. On land and within the water. I’m. Generally the metaphor is the medication.
