Yesterday I spent a few hours at LURC to tidy up the place, and unpack from the recent journey to Hong Kong. Much as I do after many field excursions, I then headed off on a leisurely local dive in Jamestown for no other purpose than to keep some water flowing over the gills and stay grounded. Not being in the water as much as I’d like to be in recent months, the effort to stay proficient is ever more important, but also comes with difficulty in self-motivating. It’s always hard to get back in the water once you are out – a hard fact of life that needs to be addressed as we explore a more routine life aquatic for everyone.
Anyway, it was Sunday so the dive site was very, very busy. I decided to go light with a single tank and backpack, no BC, and light on the weights…very clean, very agile, and often times the way things should be – as simple as simple can be. I needed to lighten the load for a dive, as the previous work stretch involved setting up a habitat, lugging specialized life support, and so on. As I made my way into waist deep water I quickly realized that a massive collection of jellies was pressed up against the shoreline. They weren’t of the stinging variety (always a good thing), so I made my way through the 4-5 foot thick bowl of jelly to get down into clear[er] water.
From there, a leisurely swim west, and then south, took me to the stretch of vertical cliff face at the point of Ft. Wetherill in about 25 feet of water. I took a few minutes to just stop and relax. For just a brief moment, I was reminded of just how peaceful some parts of the world can be, and the effort to get there is so very worth it in the end. I just kept rethinking how hard it is to break away from the rut and grind of day-to-day traffic, work, stress, and all that comes with it, and that just a few short minutes of hydrotherapy can make it all able to bear.
So, now that I’m back home and planning starts for the next significant field operation, it’s time to get back into the weekly proficiency grind, and will be working back up to some of the shore based extended range runs I was making last winter.
The swim back to shore was equally leisurely, with numerous small seasonal tropical fish scurrying in the rocks as I passed on by. Then came that thick bowl of jelly again. Consider the efficient use of this three-dimensional space by creatures like this…if only we paid enough attention and started to take some notes.
