By Nate Seltenrich

Get Out is Petaluma Voice’s monthly outdoors and nature column.

The swimming pool is a bastion of summertime – of cannonballs and diving boards, of Marco Polo and sharks and minnows, of cold drinks and lounge chairs. For some, it’s also a year-round venue of fitness and sport. For a few, however, like Petaluma’s Morgan Filler, it is but a stepping stone into the comparatively boundless world of open-water swimming.

“I grew up in the D.C. area, and my twin brother and I spent every summer at the pool, hanging out as pool rats,” Filler said. “We continued on with swim team, and then my dad got into swimming. Then, as a family as well as with my swim team, we started doing our local open-water event, a 4.4-mile swim across the Chesapeake Bay. That became an annual family tradition.”

From those youthful roots Filler went on to become a professional open-water swimmer, competing in places like Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Egypt. She won a 16-mile race in Japan, a 28-mile swim around Manhattan Island, and a 21-mile crossing of the Catalina Channel. In 2000, she received a Certificate of Merit from the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.

Today, with her five-year pro career well behind her, Filler stays plenty busy as a mother of two girls; entrepreneur and business owner with her own swimwear line called See Her Swim; and instructor of private and small-group swim lessons at Active Wellness in Petaluma. 

Still, open-water swimming is never far from her mind. When we spoke in mid-July, she had just participated in the 50th annual Trans Tahoe Relay, an 11-mile team race across the largest alpine lake in North America.

But I was even more interested in what happened the day after the race, when she took nine kids from Petaluma’s AC Swim Club, ages 9-15, out to Tomales Bay to try their hand at open-water swimming, in preparation for an upcoming group swim from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco’s Aquatic Park. 

The swim on September 20 will be Filler’s ninth time introducing local youth swimmers to the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay. Before moving to Petaluma she organized four such trips from the East Bay, alternating between crossing the Golden Gate and escaping from Alcatraz, as it were. 

She paused the practice upon moving to Petaluma as a new mom in 2013, then resumed in 2022, starting with Alcatraz. This year will be her fifth in a row, and she hopes to support as many as 25 strong young swimmers from Petaluma and beyond as they exit a boat near the rocky shores of Alcatraz to brave cold, choppy waters; busy boat traffic; and a looming tide – they’ll target the “slack” between high and low, but slower swimmers are at risk of missing the window – in pursuit of the protected cove at Aquatic Park, adjacent to Fisherman’s Wharf. 

Both the Golden Gate and the Alcatraz swims are about 1.75 miles in length and take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes, Filler said, depending on conditions and the swimmer’s speed. Participants are guided by a fleet of kayaks and other craft, at a ratio of four to one. 

“The Golden Gate crossing seems scarier because it’s farther out – one side is the ocean and one side is the bay – but the conditions often are easier because it’s more rolling waves, more rolling swell,” Filler said. “Often Alcatraz is more challenging, because it’s choppier, and there’s more boat traffic that goes through. Maybe the ferry goes through, or more fishing boats. You just have to be more alert.”

Yet beyond the logistical and technical challenges of navigating the bay, Filler is ultimately interested in conveying something less tangible – something almost mystical.

Open-water swimming has grown in popularity in recent years, but it’s “still the off thing, the alternative,” she said. “It's neat to bring kids to the open water, to look back and say, "Wow, look how far you swam!” You can't see how far you swim in the pool, right? You can just see 25 yards. But you can look all the way from Heart’s Desire to Indian Beach, like ‘You swam all the way over there!’ It gives a whole different perspective of time and space.”

Even more than that, she’s hoping to light a fire, like the one lit in her all those years ago in Chesapeake Bay. “For kids, I’m trying to make it another way of exercising and integrating with nature,” she said. “That’s breaking down some barriers.”