Taking the Plunge

Every week for the past year, I’ve plunged into the North Pacific. By choice.

On Thursday mornings, I drive 20 minutes to join the Doran Dunkers at Doran Beach, a stretch of muddy sand that curves around Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco. The bay has an average year-round temperature of 53.6°F, or, technically speaking, really effing cold.

On a windy, misty, gray-rainy day — that is to say, most days — it feels even colder. We plunge without wetsuits, but with plenty of shrieks and swearing.

The other Dunkers change into swimwear on the beach, attempting discretion and modesty with the use of large towels and swift movements, but I arrive sporting my turquoise, tropical-­flowered swimsuit under thick sweatpants and hoodie. As the others strip down, suit up, and do warm-up stretches, I sit on the rocks and stare at the gray water in dread.

At the lip of the bay, icy brown wavelets chill the sand and dampen the shining, tangled clumps of camo-colored, washed-up kelp. It is not terribly appealing.

I walk down to the water’s edge grimly. My surf shoes insulate my feet so I don’t feel the shells and sea-muck underfoot. Once my feet are wet, I’m committed, and keep stepping stolidly forward, not letting myself pause till I’m up to my waist.

By the time the water reaches my ribs, I’m hyperventilating and have to stop to calm my heart. I feel my legs getting numb; I feel my life about to end. I hold my arms up high, with fingers extended and shoulders hunched. As the waves slosh around me, I stand on tiptoes, shrieking, “I am never doing this again!”

I say this every week, and every week, I mean it. My body perceives the cold as a threat to survival, which it actually could be if I stayed in more than a few hours, and my mind screams for me to get back on land. I yell, “This is awful! Why are we doing this?”

No one answers. My friends are straggling in, some stuck and silent in the shallows, under­going God-knows-what mental calisthenics to get themselves fully wet. The toughest and bravest one, Andrea, plunges forward, passing but not splashing me. Arms in a V, she dives under and comes up gasping. She swims out deep.

I think about sharks, and then I make myself stop thinking about sharks, and in particular I don’t think about the purported 300 Great Whites that live, breed, and feed in waters around San Francisco. Fortunately, I have a secret shark-safety rule: Always make sure that some other Dunker is farther into the ocean than I am.

Above the complaints in my own head, I dimly perceive other people’s:

“What did I just step on? It moved!”

“Ugh! I just got slapped in the face by a wave!”

No one responds to anyone else; each of us is wrapped in her own, awful, individual experience, like the people screaming in the death scene in Titanic. But we’re not alone, and we’re not freezing to death. Really.

In a few minutes, I’ll be okay, I think, and force myself to crouch down, shocking my nipples. The worst part is dunking my shoulders, especially if they’ve been warmed by the sun (how fortuitous that it’s usually overcast!).

Then, up to my neck in opaque, shark- and seal-friendly water, I stay still, braced against the current. I don’t take a step, because moving any limb makes it feel even colder. Nor do I swim much, because I don’t like getting my head wet. There’s no health advantage to doing so, and the “ice-cream headache” adds to the misery. A few people do some breast stroke or freestyle, but mostly, we tread water and hover in place, tense and nervous as hummingbirds.

In our matching, absurd, peach-colored swim caps, most of us dunk only up to our necks, but we stay dunked for about 20 minutes. We’ve read that 18 minutes is optimal for health benefits, and we usually can’t stand more than 25.

Being the heaviest member of the group gives me the advantage of being able to stay in longer than most people, sometimes half an hour past when the svelte women have to get out. The weight I usually want to lose is a great insulator in the ocean: I am like a seal.

My personal endurance record is 45 minutes. On that day, the wondrous effects of a lowered core temperature lasted till the next morning. I had no pain anywhere in my body and slept well that night.

But the physical benefits aren’t ­really why I do it.

Our ragtag gang of around eight mostly-middle-aged women is doing what thousands of people worldwide started during the pandemic: taking cold plunges in mountain ponds, cold coastlines, and even ice baths. But why?

The scientific research is plentiful but inconclusive. It’s virtually impossible to conduct a controlled study of cold-ocean bathing, because so many variables come into play: the ages, genders, and mental and physical health of the individuals plunging; the season, the wind and waves, and the air and water temperatures; how long the bathers stay in, how often they go, and protective gear worn (or not).

But the research that does exist indicates the possible benefits of plunging: boosted immunity and circulation and decreased stress, inflammation, and depression. There’s also plenty of evidence that cold-water immersion can threaten people with heart conditions or high blood pressure (not to mention what some studies call the “psychological discomfort”). But all the studies show one consistent conclusion: People who regularly get into cold water feel better!

After the first five (or ten, or more) minutes, the agony is over, replaced by surprise and pleasure that we are surviving. We start to move around, turning in place, forming loose circles, or swimming a few strokes. Sometimes we make up songs or improvise water ballet, doing back somersaults or pointing our toes in the air.

“How long has it been?” someone asks the woman with the waterproof watch.

“14 minutes, 50 seconds,” she says.

“Let’s stay another five!”

As we grow physically numb, we emotionally warm up. After a quarter-hour, we’re chatting to each other, sometimes admiring the clouds or sailboats, and looking out for seals (they can be ferocious in pup season — Dunkers have been bumped by annoyed underwater mamas). Mostly, we laugh.

I feel close to everyone in the group then, though actually only one or two Dunkers are my friends. I don’t know any of the others, and I don’t see them anywhere else. But on the beach, Thursday mornings, they’re my best buddies.

When it’s time, we emerge from the water in twos or threes, moving up the sand to where our rainbow of towels, clothes, and thermoses wait with the promise of dryness and warmth. I rinse off under the unheated, outdoor shower on the beach, and it feels hot.

My après-dunk movements are extremely slow, and I’m as uncoordinated as a drunk. It requires great planning and intense effort to pull a poncho over my head and slip down the straps of my bathing suit. Drying myself with a towel seems nearly impossible, and putting on pants is impossible, which is why I bring a loose, elastic-waist skirt to pull up and wear like a dress. Undergarments are unthinkable.

The post-dunking hour is the best part of my week. I’m pain-free and proud of us for doing something hard.

As we get re-dressed — no longer caring who sees us naked or not — sometimes a passerby stops and asks if we’re in the polar-bear club, and if we’re crazy. “Isn’t it cold?” they ask us.

“Yes,” we tell them. “It’s cold, but it’s great. You should try it.”

Once in a while, a new person does join us. Usually they come in for only a moment, in the shallows, and then rush out, ignoring our shouted encouragements: “Don’t leave now! It will get better!” Newcomers rarely come back.

In my early days of dunking, I once went in alone, on a day no one else showed up. Getting in was misery, and even after I numbed up it didn’t get any better. I was alone in a huge bay, with who-knew-what jellyfish, seals, or sharks. But it wasn’t the wildlife that bothered me; it was awful because I was alone.

Every week, we go into the water separately, each one with her own worries, each facing her own fears and struggling against her individual survival instinct. But we emerge as a giddy, exultant group, full of salty adrenaline and endorphins, nearly hysterical with relief and appreciation for existence. We’ve survived! We can drink hot tea! We don’t have to do this for another week!

No one minds how long it takes to change into dry clothes. Numb hands make it hard to do up buttons or zippers, but we help each other dress; we share thermoses of hot tea. Damp and chilled, healthy and happy, we take a picture every week and share it on group text. In the photos, our skin is hot pink and our hair is lank as seaweed, but our faces are bright and exultant.

 

Having lived in both hemispheres, five countries, and seven states, Gillian Kendall  has “settled” in Northern California. Her next book will be Notes from the Strangers’ Corridor: A Story of Editing, Insomnia, and Minor Mental Illness, from Australian Scholarly Press.

This article is featured in the July/August 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.