Down Shifting
Troika Magazine
By Denise M. Spranger
Photo by Sharon Karp
Maybe the generation that was always seeking a rush is destined to be in one. Even now, after thirty years of nibbling health food and sitting Zen meditation, most of us, if we're honest, are still addicted to speed. With the finish line in sight, it is strictly pedal to the floor.
It is no wonder then, when I hit my midlife crisis (or heard it buzzing around a curve) I planned to blast through it like a Pentium chip in a poker game. About thirty grand short of the quintessential red sports car that transported our parents through such times, I yielded to a long held desire of my youth. I would learn to scuba dive.
With only fifty days remaining until my fortieth birthday, I had to move quickly. Regaining my faith in miracles, I found a scuba diving certification course starting up in my New Mexican desert town. Two weeks later, with underwater camera, wet suit, snorkel, mask, day-glo fins and fish identity charts in hand, I was on a plane bound for Miami, giving myself a crash course on the Dive Tables that I'd immediately forgotten after taking the written exam. When I arrived in Key West, almost panting, the exhaust of my rented car mingled with the jet stream of Flight 617 that still ribboned the languid air of southernmost Florida.
At 8:00 a.m. the following morning, I would begin my "Open Water" training, demonstrating those skills in the open ocean which I'd learned in the town pool. In two days, I would be a certified diver.
Oddly enough, for all my attempts to rival a fast-action thriller, one of the first rules I learned in Open Water training is to slow down. Way, way down. Rapid motion wastes breath, of which there are a finite number in your tank. Achieving “neutral buoyancy" is also an art which requires an almost dream-like patience. Divers wear strange things called "buoyancy compensators," jackets which can be filled or deflated with air from the tank by depressing a single button. Filling the jacket causes ascent; deflation allows you to fall.
It all sounds easy enough, but the relationship of air and water and gravity is something like an existential love triangle in a French movie. It takes time, lots of time, and then you still can't figure it out. The reward is, nevertheless, one of the greatest fantasies of our species. Weightlessness. Flight. Unimaginable freedom.
There are other reasons that we humans must pace ourselves in the deep; the first being the need to respect a fragile environment. We are clumsy animals, after all. A coral reef isn't. A hand print on its tender surface leaves scars like the aftermath of battle. If decency doesn't inspire you, certainly the most compelling argument for obeying the speed signs is in the nature of ascent. If you bolt to the surface like you probably drive home from work, you die. Or, if luck is with you, you are hauled off in an emergency helicopter and placed in a small steel room resembling a nuclear warhead bearing the user-friendly name of "decompression chamber." Perhaps you'd actually opt for this fate in the face of a Great White, though I suspect your chances with him are better. Divers are rarely attacked by sharks for the happy reason that we appear, at least, to be healthy animals.
As I stood on the boat staring down into the turquoise water of the Gulf Stream several miles from the shores of Key West, I didn't know all of this. Oh, I'd read it; the instructors had done their best to explain it. Yet there is nothing quite so educational as trying to keep your balance on a rocking platform wrapped in a configuration of hoses, weights, and tubes with a large canister strapped to your back. If you remain upright it can make you feel capable, like a real commando. This delusion is easily lost by merely trying to move; 24-inch fins give you all the agility of clown feet. In any event, this provides great incentive to undertake your first dreaded 'back roll" over the side. Thus encumbered, Bozo is anxious to go.
After all the frantic effort it had taken to find myself bobbing next to the anchor rope, my "line of descent" into the abyss, I hadn't expected to be scared. But there it was, unmistakable as a semi-truck in the oncoming lane: the primal, somewhat humiliating, surge of panic. Fumbling with, my mask, I reached the conclusion that wasting money and suffering public disgrace were preferable to parting with the atmosphere. And then, prompted by that yearning to explore the ocean that had gripped me since I was twenty, I let the air escape from my jacket. Bubbles rose in front of my eyes. The world turned blue. And silent.
Joining my instructor on the white dunes of the ocean floor, my heart stopped racing. Purple fans, stirred by gentle current, swayed in rolling symphony. Iridescent sparks, schools of damselfish, burst from the crimson flames of sea grass. Overhead the sun tossed diamonds. I watched as the tentacles of a lobster sought their wealth.
As I practiced hovering above the sand, letting my shadow fall on the pale outline of a starfish, it occurred to me that I was forty. Only the mouth piece stopped my laughter; nothing could have been more irrelevant. In this floating universe which co-exists with the one we so diligently construct on land, Time itself becomes little more than an abandoned wreck. A vehicle whose gears rust in unpaved depths, impervious to the stubborn clutch of continents.
I am now indeed a certified diver; I have traversed the immense reefs that embrace the islands of Honduras, followed the underground rivers of the Yucatan. Yet whether or not I am diving, the salt of awareness lingers. There are places on this earth not accelerated by vanity. No matter that we might descend as clowns, we rise with awe, forever transformed.
Denise M. Spranger is a freelance writer and part-time scuba diver who lives in Taos, NM.