"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."
"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."
A selkie myth frames a longing for the sea, describing a seal-woman who returns to the ocean after raising a child. Personal sadness and grief in early 2025 prompted a five-day mission to immerse in a different wild Marin County body of water each day near Stinson Beach. The swims required only the ability to plunge the whole body, offering a new perspective on familiar coastal landscapes. Day one took place at Bass Lake in Point Reyes, a quiet freshwater pond once famed for a rope swing, reached by a 2.5-mile hike from the Palomarin Headlands.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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