On a late July evening, 23-year-old Bella Seagrave was in a car winding up the shoreline of Flathead Lake. She remembers feeling hot and anxious.
“Part of it was the nervous sweats, because we’re driving past this lake that just isn’t ending,” Seagrave recalled. “We’re just going and going, and knowing that I’m going to have to swim all the way back? It was like, ‘Holy cow, what am I doing?’”
Minutes later, just before midnight, Seagrave waded into the lake’s dark waters and began her swim from Somers to Polson – a 28-mile odyssey.
Her support crew of parents and coaches videoed her efforts from a pontoon boat.
Seagrave has been swimming for as long as she can remember. She competed in high school and college, and returned to Montana for grad school last year thinking she’d probably “retired.” That’s when one of her middle school coaches, Monica Bender, rang her up with a suggestion: why not try a distance swim?
Seagrave swam for six hours in darkness, then another eleven hours under a grey sky. Every hour or so, she paused to tread water and throw down some PB&Js and sponge cakes.
Toward the middle of the lake, Seagrave says she hit her lowest point. She battled six-to-seven-foot swells and pain in her shoulders.
“This is horrible — the waves are terrible, I’m afraid for my kayaker, I’m afraid for the pontoon boat, I’m afraid for myself,” Seagrave recalled thinking. “But I don’t want to get out just because I’m afraid.”
She didn’t get out then. Not until she reached the gravel shore at Salish Point did Seagrave finally stumble out and into the arms of a cheering crowd.
Seagrave says she regretted ending her college career with a year of eligibility left. This swim was her way of making it up to herself.
“I like to swim, I’m going to do something with it — let’s go,” Seagrave said.
She says she’s not ruling out another marathon swim in her future.
