The Dive Evangelist

Dark.

Darker than a black steer's tukis on a moonless, prairie night.

The only possible reference to where I was on the planet was the thin guideline in my hand which led back to the safety of open water and the atmosphere. The regulator in my mouth was not my own, but the alternate second stage of my buddy, with whom we were simulating “Out of Air.” We had blindly groped our way along perhaps 100 feet of cave that way and were now laying in a passage of unknown depth, size or contour, holding on to one another because, should we become detached without light, one foot of division might as well be a thousand miles.

Waiting there to feel our instructor’s hand reach out of the blackness to signal that we turn our lights back on, all I could think was, “Man, this is relaxing.”

This had not been the reaction I expected to those circumstances. “Sheer terror,” was what I had prepared for, so the impulse to lay my mask against the stone floor and ward off the urge to take a short nap was quite pleasant.

After only a few days of Cave Diver training, the message is driven firmly home that as long as you’re breathing, all is groovy in the world. Cave training focuses with radical intensity on comfort, skill, and safety. It dramatically and rapidly improves one’s diving and, with the right instructor, it’s more fun that a barrel of methed-up monkeys.

Some years ago I reluctantly joined a friend/instructor in North Florida for a Cavern course, Cavern being the first in a series of four courses to train a diver to safely execute a cave dive. I say I was reluctant because I tend towards claustrophobia. The image of cave diving being an extreme sport, up there with BASE jumping and bull-riding on any standard list of dare-devilry didn’t help my decision along either. I’m essentially a sissy and don’t enjoy things that might give me a boo-boo.

“C’mon,” My friend insisted, “So if you bug out of the dives, you bug out of the dives. Just come give it a chance.”

That bastard knew. He knew it would be irresistible. He knew that by giving me just the slightest taste of cave diving it would not only completely change how I dive, but the very direction that my career as a diver was to take. He knew that by sinking that hook of cavern diving I was doomed to start spending every free penny I was ever to come across over the following years on more and more, heavier and heavier dive gear. That jerk.

I was surprised to find that the caves were not the restrictive, tiny, mole-like passages I’d worried about. Instead, the spring systems of Northern Florida are ponderously big; vast scores of miles of labyrinthine, underground rivers. The limestone of the caves is nibbled at over millenniums by the water movement and by the slight acidity leached out of the ground. This results in rock formations so awesomely beautiful that all one can do is hover and stare.

(Note: It is important to here point out that I use the word “awesome” above not in that valley-girl way, but rather in the truest meaning of the word. The souls of the stones are so stunning that they saturate one with awe.)

Then there is the water itself. Warm, sweet-tasting, and as endlessly clear as crystal air.

Several times over the next few years I’d planned to go back for the next in the succession of courses towards being a certified cave diver. Several times events conspired against me, mostly hurricanes.

Cut to the Oceanblue Divers’ October Happy Hour this year.

“We’re going cave diving in December,” Said Pretty Polina, “You should come.”

Having been thwarted so many times in the past, I’d given up on seriously thinking about it, but in just a sentence my purpose was revitalized.

“OK,” I said. I mean, what else do you say to a cute girl who wants to go cave diving? Duh.

Unfortunately, the friend with whom I had done my cavern course could not do any training the week that the Oceanblue Crew had booked a trailer.

“I think my instructor has the room in the class for you too,” Polina relieved me, “I’ll email you both and ask him.”

“Paul, meet Roger,” Said the email, “Roger, meet Paul.” I was dumbstruck. The email address of this “Paul” character had the word “Heinerth” in it. It took me a few minutes to put it together in my head. Paul? Heinerth? Paul Heinerth? No.

Paul Heinerth is one of THOSE guys. He’s one of the divers you read about, not someone you meet. Even when you read about him, you’re reading about diving that is pushing the limits of underwater exploration and development. The pictures you ever see of him are in the company of cats like Sheck Exley and Bill Main. This is the guy who, I learned, certified legend-in-his-own-right Richie Kohler as an OPEN WATER diver.

This one of the dudes who invented cave diving.

What I said before about the right instructor? Paul is definitely the right instructor.

And Polina tried to kill him.


to be continued…