Our last full day here at Grandview in beautiful St John’s. Yesterday was definitely one for the books. We got up as early as we could and lugged our gear down to the dock at the Westin hotel after picking up a few items, including a gallon of water, our boat was ready and waiting for us. Unfortunately, we would have to wait for it. Although we were uncharacteristically punctual, arriving promptly at 8:30, another party was just a bit earlier and was already getting their briefing from the sole Nauti-Nymph representative, Michelle, of the bad bleach job.
She went on and on, giving our fellow boat renters the low-down on all the good spots to hit — emphasizing good snorkeling spots and cautions about boating hazards, of which there were plenty. She spoke with that prep school sorority clique eastern equivalent of valley girl accent, rapid and curt, and I presumed she was from New England, from that tone of self-importance and thinly veiled but unwarranted condescension.
This is tough for me to take, because not only do I know everything already, but I had that itchy feeling I get whenever I start to hemorrhage money. Our 25′ center console Fountain boat was costing us $275 for the day, and we waited a full half-hour just to get Michelle’s attention.
Anita disappeared with her weak bowels into the bathroom, leaving me alone to stew in my own juices, while the other party of fun seekers was led down to their boat, identical to ours, for their equipment check.
Meanwhile, I was treated to a feast of the local Creole accent as two idle resort workers chatted about one’s recent marriage to another. The fellow, a big round headed black man, called out to me “what do you think, mon?” and was surprised that I had understood some of their cryptic and melodic “lang” — I answered “about what, her marriage?” this got a laugh, easy and ready smiles, I’ve come to expect from anyone lucky enough to live here and also be lucky enough to have a job.
He didn’t wait long before dropping into work mode, though and tried to put the hustle on me for a time share condo “good deal, excellent value, don’t you want to join our club mon?”
I was too grumpy to be very polite, I’m afraid, and the young lady just smiled at my rebuff. I smiled back, and changed the subject back to marriage. The would-be salesman didn’t appreciate being contradicted as he had been advising her that divorce necessarily follows marriage — he with his two years experience was no match for me with my thirteen.
Thirteen years. Wow, the blink of an eye. And I can’t complain. My love and my life’s companion and I have been through so much together, and have withstood so much even from one another like reefs under hurricanes. And she has taught me so much about people, and given me the gift of her good sense.
These were my thoughts as I advised the young black lady about marriage and waited for our rental agent to return from her briefing and Anita to return from her bathroom break.
We finally got our turn, passed through a quick boat check, got our advice about snorkeling locations and were out of Great Cruz Bay by 9:30. A whole hour shot!
This ticked me off a bit, because it was an easily avoidable scheduling error. They knew there would be two groups going out this morning. Why would they schedule us both to arrive at 8:30? Or if it was necessary, why not have two agents to check us out (or divide the work into the paper work and the boat check) and so get us out of there that much sooner, instead of burning up the precious morning. Alternatively, we could have just slept the extra half hour.
Even so, I bit my tongue, but my face gave me away again and Anita pounced on me, as if it were my fault.
That pisses me off even more for several reasons. First, I was irritated at the little preppie witch and the company for which she worked for this costly inefficiency, as I saw it. Secondly, because although I had tried to restrain myself, I could not help but telegraph my feelings, evidently through facial expressions, body language and voice intonation. I dislike being so transparent and not in control. It may come from a weak emotional center, basic immaturity or it may simply be the combination of stronger emotions and a heightened state of awareness.
No one would doubt that if one were completely unaware of a situation or one’s analytical faculties prevented one from appreciating that things could or should be better, at least until later, that it would be easier to avoid being pissed off when people do stupid things. Alternatively, if one’s faculties were so adept that they could apprise such a situation instantly, even anticipate and so avoid them or one’s mastery of communication — verbal, non-verbal, and what I call “neo-verbal” (voice intonations, rhythms, pacing and an affinity for accent and mode of speech either natural or calculated for effect) were so well developed that one could both effectively mask one’s own emotions and manipulate those of others, then one could also tend to avoid or ameliorate such situations. But while I am both too acutely aware to ignore and too socially incompetent to anticipate or master most such situations, I am also prey to strong emotions, and the strongest, most merciless attacks I reserve for myself, particularly for this lack of presence of mind which caused me to fail to anticipate the possibility that such a situation might arise and also for my inability to master either myself or through effective communication, those around me.
…
But all this went through my mind in a moment, I presume a flicker crossed my expression, a mere ephemera, and I just smiled and hugged her as my best counselor, ambassador and friend, as we made our way out of Great Cruz Bay.
We stopped at the mouth of the bay and gazed back at Grandview. Halfway up the hill at the back of the bay, facing due southwest at 240 degrees true.
Directly northward lay shoals reaching out to Steven Cay, a shortcut to the harbor and town of Cruz Bay for locals, and even some big boats, but not us. Unfamiliar with the shoals, we made our way all the way around, east and then north through Pillsbury Sound and past the Two Brothers and Lind Point into the Lovango Channel. We made past the Durloe Cays by 10:00 before pausing off Hawksnest Point to get our bearings again.
Ahead lay Johnsons’ Reef, scourge of pleasure boaters, to our starboard, pleasant Hawksnest Bay, overlooked by the ruins of the old sugar mill atop Peace Hill — the stone turret solely surviving, the wood and canvas windmill vanes replaced now by wild saguaro cactus and nettle bushes.
Past Hawksnest, we made on beautiful, still dead calm waters. Few sailors bothered out yet this breathless morning, a dearth of wind allowed them to nurse their hangovers a few more hours before hoisting and pulling before the wind would begin again for them.
They say even the winds here keep “civilized” hours and show good manners, waiting for the sailors to rise and brew a cup of coffee or two before it begins to pluck their lines so that the lines slap their masts like bells calling the faithful to worship.
Following the coast, we continued past idyllic Trunk Bay and Tranquil Maho, favored anchorage, protected from the north swells by wild, uninhabited Mary Point, and from the south and east winds by the big humps of Canelberg Peak and Bordeaux Mountain, rising 1277 feet from mother sea.
Through the pass at Mary Point and Whistling Cay, we made through the narrows slowly, yielding to a lone sailor, the boat Godspeed out of Falmouth, Minnesota. She was fully rigged, but there was little wind, and so she made way slowly through the pass. About halfway in, she changed tack and I was glad I had held back. The V6 200hp Yamaha purred almost inaudibly as I tried to get a savory waft of the sailor’s dreamy way. He tacked back out to port and downwind toward the windward passage and Great Thatch Island.
But I lack the patience for sailing and once we were clear of the Godspeed and the narrows, opened her up and sped into Leinster Bay, past Watermelon Cay and anchored up among the sleepy sailors before preparing for our first dive of the day.
…
We took our time here and failing to find any moorings close in, prepared to drop anchor. The Fountain had two, but the line on the most accessible of them was too short to find bottom. I took care to come up in line with the sailboats which had evidently anchored here for the night.
I pulled out the second anchor and finding the line to be a bit longer, tossed her over. She found bottom, but dragged a bit before biting in. Once we were in the water I found the line our anchor had drawn in the sand at the bottom. It appeared to be about thirty feet long. In the ten or twenty minutes we sat about before going in, we had drifted that far.
But now I was satisfied that we were set and we made for Watermelon Cay with fins and masks.
At times like this Anita can be a child, helpless and needful. I was her lifeguard, as so many times before, and yet not her master. So like a child giving orders to her parents, Anita would in situations like this be very demanding and refuse to take direction. How many other husbands and how many other wives have perspectives to offer on similar situations?
Anita insisted on propelling herself through the water backwards with a ski float under her back, her head in the air, presenting the appearance of some unusual stern wheel river boat or perhaps an enormous duck.
I advised her against this, but she was determined. So once again, as so many times before, I dutifully accompanied her as lifeguard and protector, even as she argued and disputed with me. Her voice carried across the bay and seemed to echo off the cliff walls, and I winced with every word, imagining the sailors mocking us over their morning coffee.
As we made our way slowly through the water toward the cay, I thought of many other times like this where my devotion had been tested. Such as when she had exploded out of her ski lift, flailing and helpless at the halfway station on Purgatory, near Durango Colorado, on another trip when I felt the possibilities of an alternative life drawing me away from the slavish drudgery of money chasing, commuting, computers and the corporate world.
It took two of us to pick her up and they had to stop the lift. Hundreds of skiers up and down the mountain rolled their eyes and clicked their tongues at this storied faux pas.
Afterward she scolded me for making a face. I had said nothing. She stopped the lift, and I made a face! No apologies, no thanks, just a scowl. God help me, her words sting even now, as I remember her splayed inelegantly in the snow.
…
Once she went out with her friend Mary Ellen to a garage sale. “Don’t buy anything we don’t need” were my parting words. She retuned with a Schwinn exercise bicycle.
“Now this is something that we need,” I thought, but then I recalled the $300 Peugeot bicycle I had bought her years before, buried in cobwebs and dust behind our cardboard box collection in the garage. It was a beautiful bike, much nicer than mine. I loved to bicycle and clung to it as my primary mode of transportation even when I started work in Dallas and could afford a car.
I wanted Anita to accompany me riding around our neighborhood. One of my favorite pastimes had been given a new dimension with the addition of a child seat to the old Raleigh racer.
I remember now with some emotion packing first one and then another of my kids into the seat we had attached to my trusty bike, with which I have shared many happy hours.
I buckled on the Koala Kare Styrofoam helmet and lifting her tiny body into place, threaded the rainbow colored shoulder straps over the top of the seat, never failing to think of Robin Williams’ suspenders on Mork and Mindy. (Even now. Funny how some things just seem to stick in your brain.)
Snapping the clasp into place across her little chest with a satisfying ‘click,’ I would gingerly walk the bicycle from our garage out to the street. We would often go out in the late afternoon when the sun was past his prime, and the handsome old elms which blessed our house on Lonsdale gave their most welcomed shade.
I can hear the crickets chirp and smell the fresh cut lawns in the dry Texas heat. I can see my little girl smile up at me cheerfully, trusting utterly, completely, her eyes so blue in love and admiration (an admiration I knew I did not deserve in my black empty heart, but which she gave nonetheless). The blue sky and white clouds reflected in her eyes as I walked the bike to the street.
And she would sing her little girl songs as we pedaled down Woodthorpe. Past old Ed and June Card’s immaculately kept place, past Kelly’s house, down Broadmeade to Meadowheath, and all around Forest North, our neighborhood, her world slowly growing in ever-expanding circles centered on our home, and more specifically on someone in that home, my little girl’s mother.
Our mother begins not as the center of our world, but as the world itself. All mothers are the world to the children they carry and nurture. It’s a bittersweet journey as they grow and inevitably part from that world, leaving it — her — emptier and longing.
I had wanted Anita to share that experience with me, so that we might even take both kids out at once, and tool around our nice little neighborhood as a family — while we still could, for we knew how quickly we’d lose those little ones — to be replaced by changelings, different people, a little older, similar to these innocents, but not the same, never the same.
But her bike lay unused and dusty despite my repeated pleas. The seat hurt, the handlebars weren’t right, she wanted fatter tires. “For Christ’s sake, I thought, how far will a person go to avoid a little exercise? And besides, she has no idea what she’s missing.” And now here she was before me with a goofy smile and an exercise bike. I never had any use for the things personally, give me the fresh air and real scenery every time — be it hot or cold, day or night.
But I knew then what would happen to the exercise bike as I’m sure you do too.
…
And so now we’re paddling backwards and upside down over to Watermelon Cay. What can you do?
There was not very much to see this time, and we were anxious to get as much out of our day with the Fountain as possible, so we didn’t stay long. Now we had a bit of a swim back to the boat and naturally, Anita insisted on doing her special paddle.
I just shrugged and didn’t give it much thought, but stayed back with her, swimming slowly alongside. She presented a comical picture, raising a little foam behind her to the motion of the fins, riding high in the water, looking backwards out to the cay and the deep water beyond. Her snorkel rose from her head like the smokestack on a tiny tugboat.
Remember, we pretty much had the whole Caribbean to swim in. This bay was several thousand feet across and we were more than 100 yards from anything — except for one buoy.
I looked up to see Anita making straight for it!
She had about 10 feet to go.
“Look out!” I shouted.
She heard me. “Look out for what?” she asked but did not stop paddling. “Look out for that buoy!” I shouted, and I won’t deny that I laughed to see her turn around just as she came upon it, a big white foam rubber cylinder with the words “no boats” on it. It descended perhaps a foot into the water where a hefty chain anchored it to the sea floor. Below the waterline the buoy was covered in green, slippery algae and a few barnacles.
Anita turned and flailed at the buoy and wrestled with it, splashing and yelling. It fought back bravely.
In the tumult, she scraped her arm on a barnacle and shrieked, “why didn’t you warn me?!”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you warn me sooner?”
“Lord, please help me” I prayed silently, but said nothing.
We made it back to the boat and treated her wound with benadryl, as it was beginning to raise up in histamine reaction.
We lifted anchor, cranked the engine and got on our way again. Once out of Leinster Bay, we proceeded on to Norman Island. This was one of the British Virgin Islands and technically, we ought to have gone through customs on Tortola before even entering British waters, but we decided not to mess with that.
We tooled around Norman Island, looking for promising places to dive. We found the harbor and saw something unique — an old galleon converted into a drive-through (or rather float-through) bar and restaurant. But with no sign of reefs or indications from our chart, we moved on.
Michelle had been good for something after all, as I recalled one place she had recommended. “The Indians” she had said, “are not marked on your map. Look for four fingers of rock sticking up out of the water here” and pointing to a blank spot on the map with one hand, she raised the other, palm away from us and wiggled four fingers in the air. She looked at us through her fingers as she did this and paused a moment for effect.
So we made for the Indians and to our surprise, found a mooring free. No sooner had we tied off, than an enormous Sunspree catamaran moored up behind us flying the Union Jack.
A pretty young girl with a charming midlands accent called out to us: “Excuse me, are you planning to scuba?” “No we’re just skin diving” we replied. “Well, the white moorings are for scuba diving only. Would you mind untying?”
Naturally, we were disappointed. We had no knowledge of that rule, but didn’t know what else to do. She went on, “The greens are for snorkeling, and the red, commercial.”
“Did you see any green moorings over there?” I called back, indicating the direction from which they had come.
“I’m afraid not,” she said sympathetically. “But you can tie off to us,” she added brightly after consulting for a moment with one of her mates. We’re not sure what the arrangement was — we speculate now that she was cook and crew and her husband was captain and guide to a family on a diving holiday.
What a life! Some people we had met were willing to toil away in dark cramped storefronts so that in their precious time off they might enjoy the beaches and the water, the diving, sailing and beautiful climate of this Caribbean paradise. But for such a husband and wife team, the sailing and diving would be their day job. If the island lifestyle seems like a dream to us landlocked drones, then such a life must seem like a dream, even to most islanders.
So we tied off to the stern of the Sunspree Cat. Our 25′ boat was about the size of their dinghy. A spacious deck and ample cabin spanned the huge twin hulls. As they made ready their scuba gear, Anita and I sat under our Bimini top and pondered what to do. I didn’t feel extremely comfortable with this situation and I wanted to give it a few minutes to make sure our line was fast and long enough to keep us from bumping into one another.
After sitting and watching for a few minutes, I decided to go in and see what there was to see.
Anita didn’t feel comfortable going in at first and stayed behind as I went off to explore.
It was a short swim, about 30 yards of very deep blue water, and excellent seeing –perhaps 70 or 75 feet clear.
I could not see bottom at first, merely an infinite field of translucent cerulean. My hands and feet were visible more clearly than I can see them now, as if a magic lens magnified and clarified their image. I breathed rhythmically and deeply through the snorkel, keeping my head down, only looking up every now and then to get my bearings.
I kicked briskly from the hips, keeping my knees locked and stroking arm over arm. With my head down, breathing through the snorkel, I was able to streak through the water quite briskly, imagining myself a dolphin with arms.
About half way from the moorings to the fingers of rock I began to be able to make something out through the opalescent sea. It soon became clearer that I was looking at the sheer face of a sea-cliff, which extended down beyond the limits of my ability to see. In my immediate field of view I could see tiny particles. I could not make them out at first, and presumed them to be plankton or some other sort of simple creature. Then I began to see they were actually tiny minnows even smaller than usual, about the size of a pencil point. There must have been millions of them. They swam in a huge school and their collective form rippled in complex shapes and patterns, giving a depth and dynamism to the movement of the sea which inanimate matter must always lack.
As I came closer, I began to become aware of the colors of the coral formations: orange, green, purple-blue, in rich hues and tones, complex and shimmering as if emanating light themselves.
These were clearly some of the most dramatic formations I had ever seen. And the fish! Sea life in joyful abundance and variety too stunning even to experience, much less enumerate, classify or describe.
I approached the rock face more slowly now, breathing quietly and trying to minimize my movements in hopes of allowing some of the more timid species to feel confident enough to venture out from their crevices and crannies.
Before me stood a narrow canyon between two large “Indians.” I looked down. Below me the rock walls were covered in blotchy patches to a depth of fifty feet or more. I could see perfectly clearly all the way to the bottom.
The sun was perfect, the water was perfect and although I felt a little bit lonely out there by myself, my excitement at the discovery was enough to overcome my loneliness. I stopped and checked on Anita regularly. She sat there grimacing uncomfortably, and keeping a weather eye on me, waving.
I felt sorry for her but I had to see what else there was to see.
I turned back to the canyon. A huge head of brain coral grew to one side, fissures and nodes like an elaborate hedge maze in a spherical and miniature formal garden. Many varieties of tube coral and fantastic specimens of cactus-like finger coral trembled in exaggerated frenzy to every movement of the sea.
Lavender, pink, orange and brown sea ferns and fields of gold-and-tan variegated tube coral covered the sea cliff from the ocean surface to the sea floor, fifty or sixty feet below. The sun, now high in the clear blue sky, refracted through the infinitely complex surface of the sea and formed ever changing ripple-patterns of white in two dimensions projected onto the complex surface of this massive field of coral.
The cliff wall stretched out before me for several hundred feet, I knew from observation above the sea’s surface. Down below, it seemed more like an eternity.
There is something about this place — otherworldly, and essentially solitary, silent, majestic, restless. With literally no one else anywhere in sight, it seemed like I was as alone down here as if I were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That thought was a little bit scary, and I popped back up again to check on Anita before descending once more, deeper and longer with each dive.
Imagine another world, like a dream world, but more vivid than any dream. Imagine colors that have no name, all of them splashing in your eyes, and imagine ripples such as you see on the surface of blue water, but extending up, down, before and around you in all directions, constantly changing, yet restful and calmingly still in their eternal motion. Imagine clouds of fish, like flocks of birds, weaving and spiraling, in seemingly endless variety — large puffers and tiny angels like you see in an aquarium, but you are in the aquarium, and it is like no aquarium on earth, vast beyond comprehension, humbling and inspiring, awesome and exhilarating.
Imagine that, and feel the words rising unsummoned from your heart: “He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul…Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
…
(1/23)
Below the surface, these rock formations descended almost vertically, perhaps 100 feet or more to the sea floor. We had an excellent day for diving, with calm seas and good sunlight.
Have you ever noticed the patterns sunlight makes on the floor of a pool? When the water’s surface is still or almost still, and the sunlight refracts through it, the light seems to collect in what I call “seams,” constantly shifting and dancing alternately in rows of dots, circles and diamonds of light.
It is a fond fascination of mine to observe and try to comprehend this pattern or pattern of patterns. I have often tried to render them in a variety of ways using paint, pencil and so on, without success. My mathematical training and reductionist mode of thought perhaps leads me to try to formulate equations which might have some hope of describing them. The wind licks up a ripple on the water’s surface, and the sunlight refracts through the ripple in a certain way, ultimately forming foci on the surface of the bottom. It is thought provoking and humbling to happily ponder the enormous complexity of even so simple a phenomenon.
How much more so then is the problem of describing the shifting patterns of light drawn by the bright sun on the surface of the sea, which even when calm is never quite still, rising and falling in crests and troughs fascinating and hypnotic, restless, yet oddly restful.
The two-dimensional surface of the sea when so agitated, even on a windless day, by the motion of the air across it, acts as a complex lens for the sunlight shining through it. Looking up at the sea’s surface from below, one can see that it possesses a mirrorlike quality, something like mercury, perhaps, metallic and bright.
And the sea itself is nowhere empty. Life positively teems at every scale from the most minute microscopic forms to those visible only to the most acute and observant naked eye to small creatures of manifold variety and on up through the ranks of fishes in a ruthless hierarchy of predator and prey, up to the largest creatures of all, the baleen whales, which ironically feed on some of the smallest plankton.
Through this society the bent light rays shine, and to my eyes seemed like the rays of heaven illuminating the heavenly hosts — as represented by the brightly colored and innumerably variegated tropical fish which day and night lived in this fantastic world to which I was a mere day visitor. It is a happy thought to consider them, or rather in many cases their descendants, swimming there today.
The light rays collected into beams projecting through the water, suggesting the presence of God to me.
(1/24)
Floating there amid the brilliant colors of the coral and the teeming swarms in endless variety of fish in the timeless depths, with fingers of light playing in the clear water before me, I prayed.
I thanked God that I was alive and able to come to this place. I pondered for how many thousands or millions of years had it stood here, under His watchful eye, and for how many more years would fish dart in and out of these crevices, would these blotches of coral — tiny animals, building their homes on the skeletons of their ancestors, through the eons and on into the nameless future — long after we are gone, after even our memories or the hint of a memory of anything like us is gone — days would come when the sunlight would flicker on the sea rods, illuminating the bright yellow tapers of the pillar coral, the red and purple candy dishes of the rose coral and the stately splayed fingers of the Elkhorn.
Before me two of the rock formations crossed 15 or 20 feed below the surface, forming a dark and mysterious cave. As I had done on previous days, I filled my lungs and dove down, the pressure of the deeper water imposing itself on my ears.
The fungus coral reminded me of a time, not so long ago, when I had suffered an ear infection so ferocious, it felt like knives piercing my eardrums. I literally could not sleep at all. I went to the doctor as soon as I could, and if you know me you know that that means this was serious. Dr. David Tobey had removed a mass from my ears, declaring dryly: “that is fungus.” When I looked blankly at him and at the clump of goo he had just removed and back to him, he went on, “Fungus is very slow growing. This might have been working in there for up to a year.”
Up to a year! What a thought. I immediately thanked God once again to be living in an age where I can be treated so simply and effectively. There was a time, not so long ago when this would have gone on for some time, torturing me with excruciating pain such as I had experienced, not for one night, but for weeks or months — ultimately spreading and leading perhaps to deafness or even madness! Thus sayeth Dr. Tobey.
Ponder that. It is not inconceivable that I might have gone mad from a fungus spread from my ear canal to the brain. Yuch.
The brain is an amazing thing. All these thoughts and more crossed my conscious mind there in that moment, a few seconds only, as the sunlight flickered through the blue Caribbean waters against the fungus and brain corals, bright and blotchy.
Simultaneously, I was sensing and observing the animal life all around me, thinking about Anita, hot and uncomfortable back in the boat, for reasons that don’t matter.
I periodically popped my head back up to get my bearings and to check up on her. I waved. She waved back wanly.
I returned to my explorations of the cave, and diving deeper with each breath, felt the pressure of the deeper water.
…
But fortunately, my ears were relatively clear at this time, so I was able to dive deep, though not for long. Up to a minute perhaps, by my watch.
Even on good days, seeing underwater is not very good. While you may be able to make out shapes — particularly those in motion, through the contrast of light and dark, at fifty or even seventy five feet, you cannot make out colors very well beyond five or ten feet. In fact, to really appreciate the complex textures, patterns and variety of life these colonies of coral present, you must get close. Very close. To within a foot or two. Any closer and you introduce some risk that you might damage something by accidentally touching it.
But at depths of ten or fifteen feet, the entire character of the colony seemed to change — different species of fish and larger specimens of soft coral — both Gorgonians (sea fans) and plexaura (sea rods).
These truly remarkable creatures form in colonies resembling plants — leaves and stems — but actually consist of millions of tiny and simple animals, standing on one anothers’ shoulders, so to speak, in order to feast on even tinier organisms brought to them on the ocean currents.
When I descended to these depths ( a mere puddle splash by some standards), I felt the massive weight of the ocean press down on me.
Waiting stilly as long as I could, for the air in my lungs made me buoyant, and I swam head down, fins toward the surface, paddling slowly to counteract this tendency.
I watched as tiny juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish darted in and out from crevices in the rock, their metallic blue spots strikingly brilliant against their dark blue bodies.
I could see a sleepy and shy neon Goby resting or hiding in the troughs between fronds of a yellow-green ribbon coral.
And I could see thousands more tiny lives pass before me in this vibrant underwater city.
After briefly examining the entrance of the cave (I was not prepared to venture in, especially by myself), I passed through the shallow crevice between two of the “Indians.” I made my way around the leeward side of the rock, carefully keeping my body flat and my fins pointed back as the water was rather shallow here. The proximity to the surface made for the exceptionally brilliant colors to make themselves apparent without the exertion of diving on my part.
I let the sloshing waves whisk me back and forth, relaxed and at home in this warm, welcoming sea. I feel so strongly that I belong there, that I need to be there, it fills my dreams for days or weeks after a visit. I am resigned to being here, hundreds of miles even from the lousy gulf and a thousand miles from the real thing, but resolve to return to her some day.
Around again to the windward and then the shear southern face of the rock, with the most dramatic sights of all.
“Anita must see this, ” I thought and swam back as quickly as I could.
Even with the canvas Bimini top above her, I could see she was fairly baking and bored.
It is one thing to be moored off an island in one’s boat — alone with the sea, and quite another to be tied off astern of a much larger one, averting one’s eyes from their luxurious comforts, trying not to think of the clink of silverware and the aromas of a fine lunch.
And Anita was not feeling well either.
Her mournful grimace told her tale as I told mine.
She desired to go, but protested that she dare not. But then a resolve crossed her — a resolve to do something that even I had never done. Something that very few alive today have done. To overcome her fear and boldly go where she had not dared go before.
After what seemed like an eternity treading water, she finally joined me as we made again for the Indians.
We retraced my tour of the preceding hour, she as amazed as I had been. We passed by the colonies of Elkhorn, the cave and through the crevice. We passed through a channel slightly deeper than the surrounding shallows on the leeward side. I turned back to watch her as she passed over what seemed to be a very shallow passage. To my surprise, she had two or three feet of clearance!
I suppose the water was not as shallow as I had thought — perhaps five or even six feet of water separated the tops of the coral colonies from the surface. I looked ahead once more, and carefully reached out to a rock outcropping I had thought was right below me, to my surprise I could not reach it at all. This water was indeed clear!
The stillness of the surface provided by the sheltering rocks, blocking even the slight wind out of the west made this pool extremely clear and still. Resting there, Anita drifted slowly back and forth with the slowly rolling sea.
To these fish, this was the world, to endlessly rock back and forth, day and night in calm weather and hurricanes. For them, there is no place to stand, no stillness, no rest even, for there are always hungry predators — but that is surely part of what attracts them to the coral beds in the first place — a predator large enough to eat one of these rainbow parrot fish, for example, could certainly not also pass through these narrow passages.
Once more I swam around the choppy, windy eastern face. This time carefully guiding Anita behind me. Turning around to the south, I finally presented her with the dramatic cliff faces, purple, green, brown and lavender colonies stretching off into the murky distance as far as we could see.
Stretching down to the sea bed below us where giant brain coral grew, who knows how far down? The charts put this water at 12-15 fathoms or 70-90 feet. The “Little Indian” rises fifty feet from the level of the sea, the “Big Indian,” 180′.
It gave me great pleasure to share this experience with Anita, as I had shared so many others. We used to mark each new experience together with a bright: “another first for Andy and Anita.” Often, these would be the first time either of us had done something — gone to Mexico, to Europe, diving, skiing, boating, making love in beautiful and unusual places, how many new experiences had we opened up for one another?
How many “impossible” things had we made possible for one another?
Here I was, once more displaying these coral as if I were an experienced guide, when in a way, it was she who had brought me here.
For what am I by myself? What might I be or have been? But through her, I have become myself, this person I am.
…
There in the water, Anita and I gazed in wonder and amazement at the formations and I dove again and again into clouds of blue Chromies — a school of hand-sized fish itself as big as a house.
I dove and parted them like Moses parting the blue sea, with the dancing sunlight rays — the fingers of God playing his mighty rainbow organ coral reef, this is where my love for Anita has taken me, fool that I am.
And when I rose for a breath of air, there she was — my wife, my love, my life companion, beaming, and as charged as I was — and she kissed me and she said, “thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for everything!”