suit and slow his ascent. At the same time, he glimpsed the anchor line, a stripe in the ocean from God, and swam over and clutched it as if it were life itself. He survived without injury. The other diver completed his decompression and also survived, terrified but unscathed. Drozd died with a full tank of air on his back.
Not all divers succumb to panic as Drozd did. A great diver learns to stand down his emotions. At the moment he becomes lost or blinded or tangled or trapped, that instant when millions of years of evolution demand fight or flight and narcosis carves order from his brain, he dials down his fear and contracts into the moment until his breathing slows and his narcosis lightens and his reason returns. In this way he overcomes his humanness and becomes something else. In this way, liberated from instincts, he becomes a freak of nature.
To arrive at such a state, the diver must know the creases and folds of dread, so that when it leaps on him inside a wreck he is dealing with an old friend. The process can take years. It often requires study, discussion, practice, mentoring, contemplation, and hard experience. At work, he nods when the boss reveals the latest sales figures, but he is thinking, “Whatever else is wrong inside a shipwreck, if you are breathing you are okay.” Paying bills or setting the VCR at home, he tells himself, “If you find trouble inside a wreck, slow down. Fall back. Talk yourself through it.” As he gains more experience, he will meditate upon what every great diver advises him: “Fix the first problem fully and calmly before you even think about the second problem.”
An ordinary diver will sometimes rush to extricate himself from trouble so that no other diver will witness his predicament. A disciplined diver is willing to risk such embarrassment in exchange for his life. The disciplined diver also is less susceptible to greed. He knows that divers busy grabbing are no longer focused on navigation and survival. He remembers, even under narcosis, that perhaps three-quarters of all divers who have perished on the
Andrea Doria
died with a bag full of prizes. He knows that it is narcosis talking when, after recovering six dishes, he sees a seventh and thinks, “I can’t live with myself if someone else gets that dish.” He pays attention when a charter captain like Danny Crowell passes around a bucketful of broken dishes and bent silverware and tells his customers, “I want you people to see this stuff. This is what a guy died for. We found it in his bag. Look real hard. Touch it. Are these pieces of shit worth your life?”
Once a diver has exited the shipwreck, he begins the journey back to the dive boat. If all has gone well, he feels exhilarated and triumphant; if he is heavily narced, he might be downright giddy. He cannot relax now. The trip to the surface is rife with its own perils, each of them capable of striking down even the best man.
Once the diver finds the anchor line, he begins his ascent. He cannot, however, simply float balloon-style up the line. If he should lose his focus during such an ascent—perhaps from seeing a shark or by daydreaming—he would find himself rising past the critical stops required for proper decompression. A good diver instead seeks a neutral buoyancy for his ascent up the anchor line. In that near-weightless state, he can propel himself upward with the gentlest pull or kick, but will never find himself free-floating past the crucial stops should he become distracted. As he ascends, he will gradually vent air from his suit and wings to retain his neutrality and prevent any sudden ascent.
Presuming that the water is calm, the ascending, decompressing diver will find himself with an hour or more of idle time at his various deco stops. At around 60 feet, the depth of his first hang, the sun likely will have reappeared and the ocean will have warmed around him. The water might be clear or murky, vacant or thick with jellyfish and other
Not all divers succumb to panic as Drozd did. A great diver learns to stand down his emotions. At the moment he becomes lost or blinded or tangled or trapped, that instant when millions of years of evolution demand fight or flight and narcosis carves order from his brain, he dials down his fear and contracts into the moment until his breathing slows and his narcosis lightens and his reason returns. In this way he overcomes his humanness and becomes something else. In this way, liberated from instincts, he becomes a freak of nature.
To arrive at such a state, the diver must know the creases and folds of dread, so that when it leaps on him inside a wreck he is dealing with an old friend. The process can take years. It often requires study, discussion, practice, mentoring, contemplation, and hard experience. At work, he nods when the boss reveals the latest sales figures, but he is thinking, “Whatever else is wrong inside a shipwreck, if you are breathing you are okay.” Paying bills or setting the VCR at home, he tells himself, “If you find trouble inside a wreck, slow down. Fall back. Talk yourself through it.” As he gains more experience, he will meditate upon what every great diver advises him: “Fix the first problem fully and calmly before you even think about the second problem.”
An ordinary diver will sometimes rush to extricate himself from trouble so that no other diver will witness his predicament. A disciplined diver is willing to risk such embarrassment in exchange for his life. The disciplined diver also is less susceptible to greed. He knows that divers busy grabbing are no longer focused on navigation and survival. He remembers, even under narcosis, that perhaps three-quarters of all divers who have perished on the
Andrea Doria
died with a bag full of prizes. He knows that it is narcosis talking when, after recovering six dishes, he sees a seventh and thinks, “I can’t live with myself if someone else gets that dish.” He pays attention when a charter captain like Danny Crowell passes around a bucketful of broken dishes and bent silverware and tells his customers, “I want you people to see this stuff. This is what a guy died for. We found it in his bag. Look real hard. Touch it. Are these pieces of shit worth your life?”
Once a diver has exited the shipwreck, he begins the journey back to the dive boat. If all has gone well, he feels exhilarated and triumphant; if he is heavily narced, he might be downright giddy. He cannot relax now. The trip to the surface is rife with its own perils, each of them capable of striking down even the best man.
Once the diver finds the anchor line, he begins his ascent. He cannot, however, simply float balloon-style up the line. If he should lose his focus during such an ascent—perhaps from seeing a shark or by daydreaming—he would find himself rising past the critical stops required for proper decompression. A good diver instead seeks a neutral buoyancy for his ascent up the anchor line. In that near-weightless state, he can propel himself upward with the gentlest pull or kick, but will never find himself free-floating past the crucial stops should he become distracted. As he ascends, he will gradually vent air from his suit and wings to retain his neutrality and prevent any sudden ascent.
Presuming that the water is calm, the ascending, decompressing diver will find himself with an hour or more of idle time at his various deco stops. At around 60 feet, the depth of his first hang, the sun likely will have reappeared and the ocean will have warmed around him. The water might be clear or murky, vacant or thick with jellyfish and other
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