Move Over Tom Sawyer

A year can seem like a whole lifetime to a child. A lifetime of adventures can be had in 365 days. I was 13 the year my family lived in Prineville, Oregon. Prineville is a small town nestled in a valley between flat topped high desert mountains. The town is in the very heart of the state. The big event of the year is the annual Rock Hound Festival, where people from all over gather to show off their prize rocks and trade or buy rocks from each other. What I loved about the town was the weather. It was exciting weather, it invited adventure.

We arrived in the summer. It would get so hot that you could see the air blur in waves over our new backyard. On these days we would pack our inflatable raft into our Ford Pinto and head for the reservoir. The water there was thick with tiny floating algae and I loved to jump into it punching holes through the bright green surface exposing the dark water below. I would watch as the algae rearranged itself like clouds metamorphosing to cover up the dark water. In the evening, when the air cooled quickly, thunderstorms rolled over the valley crackling and streaking the steep cliffs with light. Then the rain would start. Giant, bloated raindrops crashed into the ground, each one creating a small crater and a puff of dust until the ground was thick with water.

In the fall, school started. It was the only year I remember with any detail as an adult. I had career planning, sex education and indoor/outdoor sports. I learned about aptitude and interviews, syphilis and c-sections, archery and candle making. I couldn't have created a more interesting curriculum myself. We took field trips to a ski resort where the bunny slope became our classroom. We spent the day sliding and skidding through the snow, mostly on our behinds. We did science projects where the whole point of the experiment was to see how badly it could go wrong. The only thing better than going to school was snow days.

Snow was a novelty to me, I had only experienced it a few times before. In the high desert it snows a lot in winter. My mother hated the snow. She had to put chains on the car just to get to the hospital where she worked a few blocks away. To me it was endless amusement. There was an irrigation ditch behind our house that froze over and made a treacherous skating rink. I nearly caught pneumonia there after falling through the ice on two occasions. The hills nearby were a bonanza of whoopdy-doos for riding inter tubes down. The snow was so deep at one point that we made giant snowballs the size of our car. We rolled them all around the field until they were to big to push any further. Our plan was to build the biggest snowman ever. When we couldn't figure out how to lift the gargantuan things into place we foraged for some plywood and laid it between the giant balls to make a room. We expanded our ice house over the next two days while it continued to snow. We spent a winter full of frigid days inventing new ways to play with ice and snow.

When spring came, I started to venture further from our home. The flat-topped mountains were an irresistible destination. The closest one to our house had a large pale green patch near the top the size of a football field. My brother and I had been discussing the green patch for weeks trying to figure out what it was. A UFO landing pad, an Indian burial ground, Kryptonite? We couldn't wait to get up there. One sunny morning we woke to a familiar note left on the table. "Hi kids, have some cereal for breakfast and don't forget to brush your teeth. I'll be home soon." My Mom left these notes whenever she got called into the hospital. She was a surgical technician and she had to drop everything whenever someone needed an emergency appendectomy or to have their spleen put back together. This was our chance to go to the green patch. We packed some peanut butter sandwiches and headed for the hills. We crossed the mint fields hitching a ride on the automatic sprinklers that crawled around the field in massive circles. We balanced on the giant pipes and let the water rain down, cooling our upturned faces. There was no path up to the green patch, so we disregarded all fences as we worked our way up the mountain. A full skeleton of a cow lying bleached in the sun distracted our progress for several hours. We studied each part and then used the favorable ones as weapons against the imaginary forces of evil. It was late afternoon by the time we reached our goal. We were unimpressed with the pale green scree that spilled down the side of the mountain. We returned home with bits of the rock in our pockets as proof of our accomplishment.

When summer began to heat the valley again, we were packing our things into a U-Haul truck. I was not happy about leaving this place that was so full of things yet to explore. My mother told me that it was too difficult to keep track of us if she was on call at the hospital all the time. We were moving back to our boring old hometown. The seeds of independence had already sprouted though and even moving back home didn't stifle my desire to explore. The sense of adventure I found that year never left me.

Breaking Ground

Island of Crete, Greece

In the middle of the Agean Sea there is an island that's held hidden treasures for thousands of years. Just out of reach of the sapphire waves that lick its shores, secrets are buried. A time long forgotten lies waiting to be discovered. Along the rugged hills and fertile valleys of this island a dusty path curves through olive trees. A mule plods along the path in the heat of the morning sun. The burden it carries is not olive oil or wine, but a lady. Her face is shaded by the wide brim of her hat. Her petticoats sway with each step of the mule. She has come here to uncover the secrets of this island. She notices every feature of the passing landscape. A lifetime of preparation and a bit of luck would lead Harriet Boyd Hawes to the discovery of a lifetime.

Harriet spent her formative years preparing for a career in a field that was not yet open to women. Her mother died when she was an infant. She grew up in a house with three brothers and shadowed her father as he went about his work as an archaeologist. She was accustomed to holding her own in a man's world. She graduated with a degree in classics and began teaching. When her father died in 1895, she decided to follow her inquisitive mind to Europe.

Harriet Boyd Hawes  Photo by:  http://www.proarchaeologia.org/OnlinePaper/EHAegypt/HaBoHawe.gif

She must have felt right at home as the first and only woman at the American School of Classic Studies in Athens, Greece. The school was not prepared for a woman with an inquiring mind and an explorer's spirit. These traits would normally be dampened in a young girl growing up in Boston in the late 1800's. The school did not permit her to take part in any excavations and instead encouraged her to become the school's librarian. These duties were deemed more suitable for a woman. This inspired Harriet to take her fellowship money and lead her own excavation.
Harriet had her sights set on the newly opened lands of the island of Crete. This island was filled with antiquities that had been untouched for thousands of years. When she arrived in the spring of 1900, archaeologists had just begun unearthing artifacts. Harriet was ready to discover some of her own. Her first order of business was to gather information from the archaeologists who had already started working. She visited Knossos where a palace was being uncovered. She visited the head archaeologist, Arthur Evans, to discuss possible sites to explore. While they talked, a throne room was discovered within the palace. Eager to give his full attention to the excavation at hand, Evans suggested that Harriet look for a site in an inaccessible mountain area of eastern Crete called Kavousi. Somewhere far away from his dig, and out of his way.
"I had visited most of the important excavations in Greece, but it is one thing to go after the deed is done, Baedecker or archaeological journal in hand, studying and verifying plans and statements made by others it is quite another thing to start out to find for oneself a place to dig," Harriet wrote in her journal as she left Knossos. She had gathered a team, including an American botanist, Miss Patten; a Greek guide, Aristides; along with his mother and a multeer. They carried a few meager supplies such as linens, notebooks, small digging tools and baskets and a lot of luck. The kind of luck that the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote about, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
As they travelled, the group passed homes left in burned ruins. Deserted two years earlier during the revolution that won Crete its independence from Turkey. Realizing the need to be sensitive and careful in their travels, Aristides devised a plan to pave the way for Harriet's arrival in each village. He began by wearing the national Greek costume. This patriotic garment was worn by the heroes of the revolution of 1821. It had only been seen on Crete in historic plays depicting important men. It was a symbol of Greek pride. Aristides then went ahead of the group to each village and shared coffee and stories with the men. He spoke admiringly of the great archaeologist from America who would be arriving. Harriet confessed that "by the time we arrived, an altogether exaggerated opinion of our importance had spread throughout the village."
The villagers welcomed Harriet and her team with open arms. Harriet conversed with the village women in their own language and earned their respect. The group was invited to stay in the villager's homes and were offered the warmest hospitality. After 200 years of Turkish occupation, these newly independent Cretan citizens were eager for the world to discover that before the rise and fall of Rome, before classical Greece, there existed in Crete an advanced civilization of philosophers, artists, musicians and craftsmen. The people hoped that the arrival of such an important archaeologist would bring new wealth and prosperity to their villages. They also realized with her arrival, that Crete was now a safe and orderly place, where a lady could travel the countryside without fear. They went out into their fields and gathered small artifacts for Harriet to use as clues to find where the treasures of their island might be hidden.

The excavations in Kavousi were not what Harriet had hoped. The site was in the mountains and the wind was fierce. Harriet excavated for three weeks without finding any evidence of the artifacts Evans had told her about. She found pottery shards that held the promise of an ancient wealthy village somewhere nearby, but she was out of time. She took her finds back to America with her where she was awarded funding to return to Crete and continue her exploration.

Gournia  Photo by:  http://www.travel-to-crete.com/page.php?page_id=215

In 1901, Harriet was back in Crete with her clever guide Aristides and a new team. She planned to excavate Kavousi further when torrential rains ruined her plans. She was forced inside where she talked and listened to the stories of the villagers. Word spread that she was looking for a wealthy settlement she believed was along the coastline nearby. A neighboring villager heard the news and led her to a place he knew of that fit the description. The place was named Gournia. Harriet could see some of the walls of the settlement exposed and hoped this was the place she had been searching for. She had three days to excavate. With the help of a team of villagers, she found enough artifacts to send a cablegram back to the American Exploration Society who funded her expedition that read, "Discovered Gournia, Mycenean site, street, houses, pottery, bronzes, stone jars."
She returned the next two summers with Mr. Seager, a pottery expert and Miss Moffat, an artist who would record their findings. Harriet scoured the hillsides and cliffs to search for artifacts that would set the chronology of the city. Even though she detested the dirty, difficult work of crawling into the dark cramped spaces, she insisted on doing the work herself. In the excavations of the city, she uncovered 36 houses, paved streets, and a small palace complete with baths, courtyards and an alter room. Harriet had discovered the first Minoan village ever to be excavated.
In 1904, her classmate Edith Hall, joined Harriet in Gournia. Edith admired Harriet's spirit and revelled in the freedom of their mission. "It was great sport galloping off at 6:00 am with a measuring stick, a bag full of finds and a notebook and to have the responsibility of telling the men where to dig," Edith wrote in her journal that year. The excavation of the site was extensive, requiring 100 men. Harriet would be the first woman ever to direct an excavation of this scale in Greece. The diminutive Miss Boyd oversaw this small army while sharing the work and long travels by mule to the nearest village for food and shelter.
Harriet's discovery was breathtaking. The Bronze Age city of Gournia, overlooking the Bay of Mirabello. Paved streets and foundations with stone stairways indicating two-story dwellings surrounding a central courtyard and a palace at the heart of the city. A city that was the gateway between Egypt and Europe's trade routes. A peaceful place of commerce and artistry. Two of her most exciting finds were a ceremonial bulls head and an octopus stirrup vase. Artifacts similar to these are now common markers of the Minoan civilization in excavations throughout the island. Her discovery contributed a wealth of knowledge which revealed to the world the treasures of this golden age of Crete.

Minoan Octopus vase.  Photo by: 

(All photos by author unless noted)

Deviation From Standard

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked my eight year old daughter. She was snuggled in my lap being smothered with her bedtime huggies.

She looked up at me with an innocent smile and cooed, "What do you want me to be?"

I wonder if she could see the fear and concern deepening the lines of my face as I struggled to come up with the right response. One that would nudge her toward being a happy independent adult, without melting into the crowd of conformity. "You have to decide what you want," I explained. "Deciding what you want seems simple, but it's much harder than it sounds."

When my daughter was born she knew exactly what she wanted: food, water, someone to hold her, sleep and a diaper change. By the time she was two years old, she was on a mission to discover everything about her world. She asked questions using her senses. "What does this taste like? What happens if I flush this down the toilet? Can cats fly if you throw them?" Anything within her reach was fair game. Whenever I got in the way of this mission of discovery there was trouble. Not surprisingly, like most of us, "no" was one of the first words she learned.

Once language was mastered, she could gather even more information by asking about things that were untouchable. "Why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from?" Now I was really in trouble. By the time she started going to school, she could comprehend what other people wanted. She knew that she had to go to bed at 8:00 pm because Daddy said so. She didn't use her crayons on the wall because Mommy didn't like it. She was starting to do things according to the wishes of other people.

As I think ahead to the rest of her school-age years, I realize that she will spend most of that time learning what other people expect from her. In school we memorize answers to questions and repeat them as fact. Roger Lewin, co-author of the book Origins, sums it up well, "Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve." I see this in the frustration of my friends as they struggle to solve life problems. They just want the answers, they don't want to figure out the questions. The attention paid to SAT tests reinforces this focus on memorizing answers over solving problems and asking questions. Isn't it ironic then, to expect young adults to ask questions and solve problems, when they've spent years just memorizing answers.

When we get to college we are supposed to think critically. To ask questions and question the answers. This is an unsettling situation. Suddenly, all the things we were sure about are questionable. The course we are supposed to follow looks suspicious.

"It's like an obstacle course," my ten year old daughter declared. She was listening to a young missionary explaining the steps to heaven.

The missionary continued without pause, ignoring this brilliant analogy. She explained that there are five steps in all, concluding with "endure to the end." While she talks, my mind wanders away to a sign hanging outside a cubicle in a payroll office that says, "Keep working, billions on welfare depend on you." The woman who spends her days in this cubicle is nearing retirement. She has worked for the same company for over 20 years. She has raised a family, pays her mortgage on time and contributes diligently to her 401K. She's spent a lifetime meeting other people's expectations. Her gray head and age-spotted hands shake rhythmically as she files papers neatly into their designated folders. She will endure to the end, her Parkinson's disease a constant companion in retirement.

When I return from a trip to Greece or an exciting SCUBA diving adventure, people sometimes say "It must be nice." I've learned that this phrase is a code that means I should feel guilty. As if I should feel bad about going off and enjoying myself while they stay home and work. I do feel bad, but not about what I'm doing. I feel bad about them. I'm not wealthy, I have to work very hard to do the things I want to do. I just don't follow the same rules.

There are unwritten rules we learn through media that surround us in our daily lives. Through T.V., radio, magazines, movies, newspapers and even music, we are discouraged from finding what we really want and are sold the answer instead. We are inundated by a constant stream of lifestyle images as an example of what we should desire or aspire to. Softer clothes, brighter teeth and a better sex life. Billboards advertise lakefront condos as lifetime achievement awards. It's easy to follow these rules because we are constantly reminded how we should act and look. We don't have to think about it at all.

My oldest daughter asked me one night at dinner, "Are our clothes wrinkly?" I was a bit confused by this question. My daughter sleeps in her clothes so she doesn't have to bother with dressing in the morning. Wrinkles are a basic component of her wardrobe. Her hair is rarely brushed as she plods to the car every morning with her backpack hanging open. As I paused to consider her question, she followed it up with another one. "What are wrinkles anyway?" then turned her attention back to her fish sticks, dismissing the whole subject without any response from me.

The easy way of life, the default, is achieved without much thought. Facing your fears instead of burying them in material possessions is something you have to realize and do on your own. There will be no commercial to convince you that you need to figure out what will make you happy, there is already a product you can buy for that. "You want to know where your fears are hiding? Tell me what you know about yourself. Tell me what you can't live without." writes Po Bronson in his bestselling book "What Should I Do with My Life?" Curiously, Bronson never answers the question his title asks, he simply tells the story of people who were brave enough to ask the question themselves.

I spent a lot of time in my youth fearing life. I felt cheated and disadvantaged. My father left when I was born and my Mother struggled to support me and my brother on her own. We didn't have a lot of material things. This is a common situation and I began to realize that many young people were struggling like me. As I wandered through life, I met other people that had grown up like me and had wonderful, fulfilling lives. It eventually dawned on me that feeling cheated and disadvantaged didn't really improve my situation. So, I started to pay attention to things that were making my life better. This is what I've discovered so far:
1. Get up early
2. Don't watch TV
3. Know what you want
4. Ask for help
5. Be grateful

These rules didn't come to me all at once. Each one materialized as I studied my reactions and the resulting outcome. Figuring out what I wanted proved to be the most difficult. I realized that I was trying to meet outside expectations. Being a Mom, wife and manager included enough expectations to keep me from ever asking myself what I wanted out of life. It's been an important lesson that I hope I can pass onto my daughters.

Work Cited

Bronson, Po. What should I do with my life?: the true story of people who answered the ultimate question. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.

Leakey, Richard E. and Roger Lewin. Origins: what new discoveries reveal about the emergence of our species and its possible future. Michigan: Dutton, 1977. Print.

(All photos by author unless noted)

Rogue Scholar

"He's having sex with my shoes!" she said in her accent born of a French speaking family in Quebec, tempered on the rails and train station platforms of Chicago and honed to a razor edge serving up sex-on-the-beach along L.A.'s sunset strip. Josee always had a story to tell. They were like the smoke from her cigarettes. They came as easy as exhaling. Like her cigarettes, her stories should have required a warning label. There's a lot you can learn from people like Josee who live on the edge of ordinary. Just be careful if you're going to try this at home.

I stifle a burst of laughter imagining her new pot-bellied pig having orgies in her closet.
"Every day when I get home all my shoes are full of sperm. He must go at it all day long," she explained seriously. "I started hiding my shoes, but then he goes for the rug instead."
"Maybe he just needs a girlfriend?" I suggest.
"What am I going to do with more pigs? I don't live on a farm you know. I live in a studio."
I didn’t have an answer for her, but it didn’t matter, she never had much use for other people's advice.

Katharine Hepburn on men - "The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend."

"I forgot how good sex is in French," she told me when she got back. Josee had been home for the holidays when she was reacquainted with her childhood friend. He was a second cousin to her by marriage. Her entire vacation was spent with him. She had that certain je ne sais quoi with men.
"He's a little hottie. Just wait till you meet him. He's coming out to visit next month."

"Where's he going to stay?" I asked.
"With me and my boyfriend," she said as if that was obvious. Josee never had much concern for people's social hang-ups.
"Does he know you're sleeping together?" I asked.
"Are you kidding? Why would I tell him? They barely speak the same language."
Every day while Josee's cousin was in town, she showed him the island [and a good time]. Every night, she was a gracious host in front of her boyfriend. Out together, the guys got along splendidly. Apparently they had a lot in common.
"I'm glad he's going home tomorrow," she told me at the end of the week. "I'm tired of trying to keep track of these two."

Bill Bryson on fear of wild animals- "Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and bleed to a messy death..."

"I'm going to look at the parasites," she announced. "I'm going to scrape them off the shark and identify them under a microscope."
She was going to South Africa to study sharks for her senior thesis and shoot a documentary. It was hard to imagine this tiny green-eyed girl collecting parasites from live, flesh-eating predators. I could see other problems with her plan too, like money.



At the end of summer, I was watching the footage she captured of great white sharks. It was amazing. The borrowed submersible camera was safely back at the university, and so was she, with more stories. “When I was filming the sharks, I would forget I was in the water with them. I was concentrating so hard on making sure I got the shot," she explained, "until they bumped the camera."
She said the scariest part of the trip wasn't the sharks, it was the place where she had arranged to stay. "Nobody went out at night. There were guard dogs inside the wall and guns by the door."

Excerpt from internet joke on job recruiting - "...Then Bill Gates asks candidates who do not have management diplomas to leave. 500 people leave the room. [Insert name here] says to himself, 'I left school at 15 but what have I got to lose?' So he stays in the room."

Just before graduation, she showed me the job announcement she had applied for. It was perfect for her. She seemed unconcerned about several gaping chasms in her resume.
"This says you need a PhD and management experience," I said.
"If I was qualified for the job I'd already be doing it. What have I got to lose?"

Two weeks later, she started her new job. In the company's newsletter they introduced her, "Josee is a hot commodity... [and] as anyone who has worked with her will attest, is hard-working, conscientious and a lot of fun to be around." I knew she was going to like working there.

Mario Andretti on life - "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."

A few months later Josee came by to see me. The clothes were new, but she had the same just-out-of-bed hairstyle. She had something to show me. We walked outside and she tossed me her keys.
“Let’s go for a ride,” she said with a smile as she slid into the passenger seat of a brand new convertible Mercedes.
I tried to look casual as I jumped into the driver’s seat. It smelled like leather and a lot of money. I turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred while my heart skipped around in my chest. I carefully steered around the other cars in the lot.
“C'mon, I just picked it up. Let’s see how fast it’ll go,” she said as we pulled on to the street.
I floored it all the way to the coffee shop parking lot like the street was on fire. Heads turned to see two wind-blown blonds stepping out of the sports car.

We laughed and reminisced. I could learn to like this, I thought, living just a little out of control.

End of the Line FD

I had the SCUBA tanks in the back of my car for weeks before I found the spot I was looking for. I sat there alone in the dark looking out past the small waves on the beach. Moonlight illuminated the water and I could see where it got deep. I imagined myself swimming out there and letting myself sink into the empty darkness. Drifting down, into peaceful oblivion. I'd been down there before, but that time I wanted to come back.

Eight years earlier I was spending every day after class in the library digging through Navy dive tables planning the deepest dive I'd ever done. It was tricky business since the conventional dive tables only went to 140 feet and I was going much deeper than that. But going down was not the problem, coming back up from the dive would take meticulous planning. Since the air in my SCUBA tanks contained oxygen and nitrogen, every breath I took my body would use the oxygen and store the nitrogen. The longer I stayed down and the deeper I went, the more nitrogen would be squeezed into my body. If I came up too fast, this nitrogen would form bubbles and shut down my heart and brain. Coming up slow and stopping, or decompressing, would allow the nitrogen to escape from my body without forming bubbles. I decided to use more expensive mixed gas on this dive using helium to replace some of the oxygen and nitrogen in my tanks. This would also help me avoid the other problem of oxygen becoming toxic in deep water.

Once I figured out the schedule of decompression stops and air mixtures I started thinking about gear. I put everything I had together and still had to borrow some breathing regulators and more anchor line. It looked like enough gear for three people piled in the middle of my room. I wrote the schedule on waterproof slates and checked the math again. Once I was in the water there would be no way to recalculate for errors. All the tanks were filled with the percentages of each gas written on the outside. Everything was ready to go. Tomorrow I would dive to 270 feet.

At 7 a.m. I was already soaking wet from hauling all my gear down three flights of stairs in the sultry morning sun. My dive buddy pulls up with half the inventory of a dive shop piled in the boat behind his pick-up truck. He used to do deep dives like this a lot. Today he's after a rare deep-water fish for one of his client's tropical aquariums. He looks as excited as I am with a big jug of coffee and a smile from ear to ear. I squeeze into the passenger seat next to fish buckets and all sorts of fishing gear and we head for the boat dock. Conditions are perfect as we launch and drive out through the channel. A school of flying fish burst from the water and glide on the wind across the surface for so long I begin to think they will abandon the water for good. As we leave the shallows of the bay, the bottom drops away into inky darkness. The sea is calm when we arrive at the dive site. We lower the anchor line attaching the decompression tanks as we feed it out. The boat rocks gently while we shrug on our gear and heavy tanks. We look like Jacque Cousteau divers ready for an expedition. Sitting on the edge of the boat I smile as I pop my regulator into my mouth and fall backwards into the sea.

Cool, crystal blue water surrounds me as far as I can see. Everything is quiet and still. I slide down the anchor line gaining speed as my body and wetsuit start to compress under the pressure of the water. As I go deeper my eyes adjust to dimming light. Suddenly, my brain starts spinning around in my head. I stop, close my eyes and take a deep breath. When my brain stops twirling around I open my eyes again. It's the first time I've experienced nitrogen narcosis, an intoxicating side affect of breathing nitrogen at deep depths. The deeper I go the more intoxicating it will become. I gather my wits and look at my depth gauge, it reads 150 feet. I signal to my buddy that I'm OK and begin to descend again. I still feel fuzzy and disconnected. Two hundred feet now, the light's even dimmer, as if the sun is setting but I know it's still morning. The anchor is just below me now. Looking up, the boat floats above me like a tiny balloon out in space. I concentrate on breathing slow and easy to conserve air. At the bottom I relax and let go of the anchor line. In the distance a huge pinnacle stands in the stillness nearly reaching the surface of the water. There are no fish or coral or algae. Sand stretches into the distance becoming part of the water - just blue. Bubbles rush past my face when I exhale and echo above me, the sound makes me laugh. I'm on another planet.

I grab my dive computer and slate. Every LED on my dive computer display is flashing "warning". I'm at 270 feet. My brain struggles to remember what I'm supposed to do. I look at my slate. It looks like heiroglyphics, I can't decipher any of it. My computer is still having a fit. "You're going to die if you don't get your shit together right now", I scream at myself. The part of my brain that can read struggles out of a stupor to comprehend the first line of the slate. I have nine minutes at the bottom. How long has it been already? How much time did it take for me to figure out how to read again? I look at my computer - it flashes 5:40...5:41...5:42...



A slithery ball of flesh glides across the dreamy landscape of sand. An octopus looking for food kicks up sand, effortlessly floating along as if on a cloud. My dive buddy swims after it, looking like a clumsy cartoon character after the graceful animal. The octopus vanishes instantly and my buddy goes in search of something easier to catch that will reward him with handsome profits. I watch him swim around and wonder how he's going to catch anything. Now that my eyes have adjusted I can see farther. There are small rocks and ledges with tiny fish floating above them in little groups. Shadows of bigger fish drift by in the distance like ghosts. My bubbles echo away rising above me like a siren's song.

I jolt from my dreamy state. How much air do I have? My gauge reads half empty. I have to focus for a while before I understand my frantic computer - 8 minutes 23 seconds. Where is my buddy? I look around and the sudden movement of my head sends my brain spinning again. I see the anchor and the fish bucket, but not him. My heart is pounding. I steady my thoughts. "Don't be stupid, follow the schedule, don't die", I chant to myself as I swim to the anchor line and grab on. I look around for my buddy again. Nothing. I have to leave. The decompression tanks hang on the line above me, they look so close. I start going up the line, nice and slow with heart racing and brain swirling.

I reach the first mark on the rope where I need to stop. Looking down I see my buddy grab the fish bucket. I decide to strangle him when we get to the surface. Time to focus on my computer and slate again. This is the critical part, I have to stay at each depth marked on the line for a specific amount of time. If I mess it up there is no way to correct it. I concentrate on my instruments not acknowledging my buddy when he joins me. Time to move. I give my buddy stink-eye and then laugh because he looks so serious. My brain wanders off so easily down here.

At the next stop there are tanks waiting. I turn mine on and push the button on the regulator to check it. Bubbles blast out and jolt my brain back into reality. I check the schedule and start timing. The tanks strapped to my back are just useless weight now, I have to breath off the tanks on the line. Each one has a different mixture of gas that will help my body adjust as I ascend. There are three more stops, each one longer than the last.

The last stop is thirty minutes. We're so close to the surface I can see the algae growing on the bottom of the boat. I'm numb with cold from breathing the helium mixture and from being down so long. It's been over an hour and a half since we hit the water. I watch plankton drift by like snowflakes. I'm just as vulnerable as the weightless fluff around me.

Time's up. I break the surface and the brilliant sunlight, salty waves and sound of the wind all hit me at once. I made it! I look back down into the water and can't see the bottom. I look at my buddy and he's smiling again, clutching his fish bucket like a kid with a prize. I decide to kill him later. I'm too happy to be alive right now.

Happiness can be hard to see sometimes. Like moonlight in deep water.