prosaic interlude #9

Two Atmospheres to Silence

I see my dept gauge move as though it is possessed. I am getting deeper by the beat of my heart, to the time of luminous apparitions of my bubbles ascending. A vertiginous sixth sense apprises me. It consumes me until I make sense of where I am, what is happening, and what the potential for danger is. I realize then that I am exponentially shrinking to it.

It was my third dive. As three log books attest, the experience was not enough to sway me from the sport. In June of 1980 my dad and I were in the area of open-pit mines, many of which had been allowed to fill filled with water, stocked, and opened for SCUBA diving. Some had names, some were simply Pits left for the diver to name. This was on the Cyuna Iron Range in Ironton, Minnesota. It was called Pit #6 and remained at and undetermined depth. Our objective was to have fun, not to fathom the mine for the DNR.

We arrive, coming in down a long red road hidden in tall grass. The growth, the weed and ferns, make a smacking and then surreptitiously squeaking sound as they hit the windows. They are open cracks and I see mosquitoes fly in and out. I think of suiting up on the tailgate in the 87º heat, getting stained red and continuously getting bit. I flash on the preponderance of doubt, whether the dive justifies the prep-time. It always is a somewhat humbled yes. It is what divers do. They are adventurers, explorers of bodies of water. He parks the car on the only access to the pit. There I see foot prints from past diver booties buried in growing grass. The conditions are good for diving. The sun is high and glints off the brimming water of the pit at 1 p.m.

After surveying the lay of the land, the flow of the water, my dad begins the dive ritual. He goes back to the suburban and returns with a “little playmate” cooler. He takes out an 8 oz. Can of tomato juice and a tablet of sudafed. He swallows it and I watch murky orange drops on his mustache move as he speaks.

“Want some, helps clear your ears. I have no idea how deep we could get today.”

I rarely take sudafed, relying on simple squeezing of the nose, on the dive masks rubber sheath like on Batman's head gear, to equalize pressure as I descend. It it not fool proof. I challenge everything, even physiology. I feel that clammy moist sweaty feel peppering with feasting mosquitoes. It sticks like wax paper to the bulge of fat in the small of my back. It is that last trickle of insecure sweat, of discomfort to be justified, equalized by the dive. I feel it no more after I pull the hanging farmer-john wet-suit up over my torso.

We submerge at 2:35 into a labyrinthine coffin. Descending quickly, crossing the low thresholds of the thermocline, I feel a rush of stinging cold. My mind fleets past the impulses to ascend and get my wetsiut top. I am tough, and enduring cold and the security of the pressure around me builds character. Hovering at 30' we fin through 30' visibility. When we're free fro the mine's periphery, out past the steep grades and shallow ledges, out from the swaying trees and hanging carpets of curtain-like hedges, there is an abyss. We flutter weightless, vertical, pressing our power inflators on our BC vests to “compensate” for lost buoyancy due to physical laws. We exchange an “OK” sign. My dad has wisely worn mittens, and I return the sign slowly making a circle with my shriveled, pasty thumb and forefinger. In the atmospheres of silence the articulation of the smallest joints are audible. The dive began with a tank full to 2,900 PSI and now we expel that air we just added to our vests in order to descend. It is a concerted effort. I hold one hand on y BC's power inflator, the other on the Batman-like nose of my mask, gently squeezing at intermittent levels. The pops are heard and felt. They are like dulling, interminably numbing ear aches rigidly timed, hopefully rationed to the maximum depth.

I find my way through a labyrinth. Through a peripheral window of my mask, trickling with water at the pressure of 65', I see my dad's fins flutter above me. I guess. I am disoriented, and fear the worst. A subtle rip current has weaned us away from the abyss, from the free and clear void of up and down recognition. My mind flashes on the present, past and future. I think of my situation and my training. The power inflator. In the past, in a emergency, a CO2 cartridge was tucked in the folds of a horse-collar BC to be pulled and punctured to jettison the diver to the surface. I press the power inflator, a button on the end of a hose connected to my tank. I press for moments and don't rise an inch. I press more. Nothing. Alright, stay calm I tell myself. I know the 2,900 PSI is being sucked fast and panic will only incline me to need more compressed air. The for-bearers of this mine, the ones who worked it back in the 30s and 40s, I'm sure sometimes did not walk out. I imagine the equipment they abandoned, the cars and trucks and mining tools.

I consider a remote possibility that I will be found someday, like they were, only intact and petrified in an image of a fifteen-year-old diver. A novice who, well within sport diving depths succumbed to the natural elements of pit #6. It would be alright. I had a feeling deep as the abyss.

I had hung weightless before the cracks. I had drifted to the ledged side tracks of the mine. Something pulls at my legs and I power air into my BC to no end. The ambient pressure is to great I deduce. The vest is finite. There is no fight left, no sink or swim response, no buoyancy to compensate for. I reach my right arm up in the path of my bubbles, they are mushroom shapes bursting in compressed air, silent pockets, benchmarks. And then I feel a mitted hand tickle my burning winkled hand. I knew I was OK.

We surface at 3:15 p.m. I have 1,200 PSI remaining. I'm thinking of the positive, what I can take away from this brush with fate at 65'. It was only my third dive. I consumed 1,700 PSI during a 40 minute dive on which I had reason to suck air like it was my last breath. My dad, like any diver buddy, very well saved my life. However, in three log books, Pit #6 is never mentioned again.