The Neptune Warrior

Birth of a Scuba Monk

“The mind is like water. When it’s turbulent, it’s difficult to see. When it’s calm, everything becomes clear.” – Unknown

Water. It’s been my safe haven. It’s been my identity. It’s been where I go to retreat. It’s been a place of healing. Growing up in an unlikely world of water of Tempe, Arizona and then Fort Worth, Texas. The locations are as unlikely as the experiences that lead me to a place where the aquatic realm would be a place for healing.

As a kid I had a love of the water combined with what could have been traumatic experiences. My folks introduced me to the water at a young age in the 1970’s. Our first house my dad put up a small pool. I would swim and try to comprehend how a snorkel was used. I watched classic shows like Jaques Cousteau’s and Sea Hunt weekly series, movies like The Frogmen, Creature From Lost Lagoon, Beneath 12-Mile Reef, and Under Sea Girl. I would spend time holding my breath as long as I could to explore my 3-foot universe.

Later I enjoyed time at the swimming pool at McClintock high. Within walking or riding distance, I would ride my Scwhwinn 5-speed there everyday, pay my fifteen cents and spend the day. Our baseball coaches would warn us to not swim on game days, but I was a horrible ball player so I didn’t care. Later I would be old enough for the swim team. I wasn’t the fastest but I never kept swimming.

This is the time where trauma, anxiety, and bad experiences could have derailed me. First, in 1976 Peter Benchley who was also from Arizona scared everyone out of the water with his book and then the movie Jaws. I’m not sure why I snuck into the movie theater off Country Club Avenue, I think it was to see the glimpse of perky breasts in the opening scene. But the image of mammary bliss was interrupted by her getting eaten by the nemesis of the movie, a Great White Shark. 

I also remember this was the same time of year I really became aware of a true danger. Arizona’s agriculture depends on the miracle of the canals. The Hohokam created the first canal system bringing water from the mountains to the dry desert. The canals are tempting for a bunch of desert rats needing to cool off. The coolness of the flowing water was like a siren of the deep calling to its next victim, usually some kid wanting to just take a dip to get relief from the stifling summer heat. 

The shape of a canal is a death trap alone. With steep sides that one in you can’t find anything to grip or pull yourself out. Oftentimes the water is far below anyplace to get a solid hand or foothold. Then there is the flow. It looks smooth and like a gentle river, but it’s actually flowing at a rate of 3-10 knots, far too swift for even an experienced swimmer. The flow causes panic as soon as you enter and are quickly pushed downstream away from your entry point. Try to reach out for those steep banks and your hands are ripped away from anything you might try to grab to self-arrest. Even if you get hold of a stray piece of rebar exposed in the concrete the flow is too powerful to maintain a grip.

If you manage to tread water as you travel, the debris on the bottom can quickly entangle you. Weeds that grow when the canal is dry, trash, palo verde tree trunks, and anything else that finds its way into the canal is there to trap your legs as flow pivots your upper body and pulls you under. 

Last, if you survive that, there is the grates. Placed at bridged to help trap debris, can trap the swimmer and pin them under, at this point exhausted and unwilling to fight for life even if they could.

I remember reading and even being on the scene of when somebody drowned in a canal. Usually some kid that “fell in”. As a fellow member of the kid tribe who had also been tempted by the siren of the canal (but resisted) I knew he didn’t fall in. I used to imagine that there was a siren or spirit that would tempt young white boys to the canal. In my mind she was a Hohokam girl who was upset that we had disturbed the land that she had lived on. Even though white settlers had never crossed paths with the ancient civilization, in my head it made sense how a beautiful girl would call to us for a swim with her. Dipping into the blissfulness of cooling water and escaping the heat from working the fields.

My experiences though not with a beautiful Indian maiden were equally terrifying. My “best friend” Greg had a pool. Among other meanness Greg would routinely hold me under water. I think Greg had some serious issues. While he would protect me from others, include me on his escapades, and let me be part of his circle, somehow that gave him permission to beat the hell out of me, be the scapegoat, and all the other rights and privileges to be his “toadie”.

In Greg’s pool he could get away with things that he couldn’t at the highschool swimming pool. He could hit and punch me. He could hold me underwater. I could bully me, pull me under, push me around. One afternoon I learned that if I stopped fighting and resisting he would leave me alone. Each time he would hold me under I would calm myself, go limp, and wait to be freed. That is the first day I entered the monastic grounds of water.

When things got rough on the surface I would retreat to the deep end. When he became violent, the only action I would take as he began to harass me was to  calmly work my way to the deep end of the pool where I could hold my breath longer. If he grabbed me I would take us both for a ride to the limited abyss where I would passively hold him there with me a little longer than he was comfortable with. 

In 1979 We relocated to Texas. Gone was the bike ride to the local swimming pool but I didn’t care because north Texas had amazing lakes! Places to swim, boat, fish, and water ski. There were private ponds to swim and fish. There were beaches where high school kids would gather in the summer. We hadn’t lived there long when my dad purchased a 15’ tri-hull ski and fish boat. The “Tango 2” was our family’s away. We spent hours skiing and fishing from that boat. 

Some of my best family memories were on the water. My mom taught me how to water ski, my dad and I would fish. I loved being on the water. I loved that feeling in the morning of off loading the boat into the lake. Speeding out with my dad to that first spot we would drop a lure in. The feeling of cutting through that fog that covers the lake as the sun breaks the horizon.  The first splash of that huge lunker (a really big game fish) breaking the water. The cool feeling as you fall over the side of the boat with ski in hand, all of these great memories. 

I can still feel the rush of the water over my hand and we would speed along and I would reach out to the water over the side to feel the spray as it cut past the gunnel. I would picture myself on the next ski run. I was quickly becoming one with the water.

On trips with high school classmates we would go to Burgers’ Lake, a good sized swim area supplied by an artesian well. I’m sure by now it’s been updated but when I swam there in the 1980’s it was pretty rustic. I wasn’t a jock so I didn’t hang out with the cheerleaders and I wasn’t popular and I wasn’t confident. But I was known for finding wallets, class rings, and sunglasses. By the time I was 16 I could hold my breath a solid three minutes, helping me as I would throw on a thrift store Healthways scuba mask and find lost booty (while trying to impress local booty). 

I made several unsuccessful attempts to go to scuba lessons but it always seemed like the local scuba shop wasn’t very inviting and really never provided an avenue to get started.

Terry Tapp introduced me to scuba. I was on leave from the Air Force and had recently applied for dive school. My career field would occasionally get slots and in addition I had been training with the Combat Control Team at my duty station. Combat Controllers are required to go to dive school and I had paperwork in to cross train and was waiting for approval to go to the course after passing all my AFPT fitness and swim test. Terry had a scuba rig and had taught diving in Florida. In a family friends pool I drained the tank Terry brought. Those first breaths on scuba were amazing and I felt an immediate peace. 

It was a few months later I was approached at becoming a ground combat instructor and if I accepted I would need to leave immediately. As the world of the military goes, I accepted, found myself loading fishing gear and “Sit on Top Kayak” in my Suzuki Samurai and driving from Abilene Texas to Fort Dix New Jersey, only to find I signed in too early. The commander at Fort Dix needed a place to “hide me” for a few weeks. After some back and forth of what school to send me to,  I found out there was a “Tactical Diver” course being offered in Cape May. I had only a few hours to be there and check in. 

The Scuba Monk was on a path to learn the discipline of diving that would forever change his life. One of the toughest courses I have ever been to, like warrior monks, I became a person who would later combine aspects of being a monk, such as deep religious devotion to the water and an ascetic lifestyle, with being a warrior, trained to engage in violent conflict. The peaceful Scuba Monk would have to wait.