Swimming at Dawn

First I Pretended to Be A Morning Person, Then I Became One

“I’ll pick you up at 5:40,” I text Crissa, yawning, as I prepare to go to bed at 9 p.m.. Crissa, my swim sister, is training several times a week before dawn in San Francisco Bay so she can get in an hour or so of swimming before going to work.

“Thanks,” she replies. “we will pretend we are Morning People again!”

Crissa has confessed that she is not a natural morning person. I was never a morning person either. My whole life B.S. (Before Swimming), I resented duties such as going to work and children that interfered with my preferred midnight to 8 sleep routine. B.C. (Before Children), I stayed up even later and happily slept in on weekends until noon or 1 p.m..

Now that I have adult children and a writer’s life, which means I can make my own schedule, I could return to sleeping late if I felt like it. Instead, I’m getting up earlier than I ever have.

Crissa (with duck), Elaine, and me (on beach) getting in the water at 0600 one February morning. Note the light swelling in the east (2026).

Swimming Friends Make Friends Become Morning People

If not for swimming with people like Crissa and Elaine, her real-life sister and real-life Morning Person, who knows if I would have done it on my own.

The three of us have done many six-dip days the last couple years for our winter Polar Bear mile goals, days that began with toes in the dark water at 6 a.m.. Swims like the Mad, Mad, Mad 24-Hr Swim Relay, gave me supported exposure to night swimming that made me more comfortable with it.

Me, pretend Morning Person, on the Dolphin Club stairs before swimming in the dark dark before dawn (2026).

Crissa has a BIG swim coming up this summer and it’s my privilege to support this preparation and get my butt in the water with her before dawn.

Many of these early training mornings have been silky and magical. February and March in San Francisco this year have been unusually windless and warm in both the air and water. I try not to take conditions personally as a swimmer but mild conditions mean that instead of freezing my tits off in a biting wind and getting in the slapping water as soon as possible, I can linger and soak up the magic of the pre-dawn morning.

As I stand on the beach in the dark, I breathe and take in the orange light majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and twinkling lights of Sausalito and Belvedere across the bay. There is the regular white sweep of the Alcatraz lighthouse just a mile and a half in front of us and Pier 45 is all lit up as the fishing boats come in and go out. We are protected from all that vessel traffic in our little cove of Aquatic Park.

There are other swimmers out there already. Yellow and orange bulbs crawl across the water like fireflies in the dark woods while a lone red bulb stands out like a Chinese lantern along the barely visible swim buoy line. Are they all Morning People, I wonder, or are they pretending like me?

In we go. Always a shock to wade into this 55-degree water, even after all these years, but it should be around 52 this time of year so who is going to complain? After breaststroking and chatting for about 75 yards, we put our heads down and swim.

We tow our glowing duck buoys behind us (mine is named Papparella and Crissa’s is Quackers), and I can see Crissa’s green blinkie light on her goggle strap.

Here’s what else I see:

Dark grey-green as I nose-exhale face down in it and the flash of my blue blinking goggle strap light. I remain in awe that the dark water doesn’t fill me with terror as it once did. Countless repetition of baby steps has gotten me here in my immersion therapy towards comfort in the water.

Taking a breath to my right, there’s the Ghirardelli Square sign in its winter pink and white peppermint lights.

This is a night shot of the sign that lights my winter swims on dark mornings (2026).

Stroke one, two, three…

Taking a breath on my left, I catch the tip of Alcatraz and the Marin lights though the opening between Muni Pier and the breakwater. We swim.

Then the Blue Hour begins. The eastern sky is warming up the clouds and the water takes on another dimension of stillness and a light blue metallic sheen.

My first memory of sunrise on the ocean (as opposed to sunsets, which though beautiful, seem so common as to be unremarkable) was fall of 1984 aboard the R/V Regina Maris, a 1908 wooden barkentine. I was studying marine mammal biology on a semester at sea and this was my first time aboard a tall ship. I had been assigned the mizzen watch (named after the mizzenmast, the third and aftmost of the ship’s three masts), crewing and keeping watch from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. I was most definitely not a Morning Person at age 19, but I managed to pull myself out of my tiny bunk and get on deck. There was darkness and coffee and swells and waves dousing my foul weather gear, but later the clouds brightened and the water was becalmed by a pale silvery blue light. Then the sun began to rise. That fleeting light, that shade of blue on the water off the Georges Bank, has never left me.

Crissa and I stop swimming to float for a moment to soak in the sunrise. The Ghirardelli lights are still on. A half moon and bright Venus still call out in the brightening sky as the gold from the east spreads towards us, a wave of warmth coming to meet the cool blue. I am immersed in the miracle of nature.

Crissa and I finishing a dawn swim in Aquatic Cove. The Blue Hour is almost finished here as the clouds begin to pinken.

I smile and commit the scene and my sense of calm and awe to my memory bank like Leo Lionni’s Frederick the mouse storing colors for the winter. Next time I think I want to sleep in, I will recall this scene and be glad to set my alarm.

Even on non-swim days, my body wakes early. Let’s go, she seems to be telling my 61-year-old body, time is fleeting.