The Neptune Warrior

I’m in Ririe Reservoir in Eastern Idaho. It’s early morning and I am following a Kokanee Salmon in its last days. Slow and sluggish it’s easy to swim along with. After its long jaunt up river to where it is now its exhausted. It’s fulfilled its mission in life. In a few weeks its offspring will hatch, swim down river to the ocean, grow, make its own trip up river to procreate and die.

Like our own lives. We struggle, we thrive, at some points we can duck under the current, catch a quick meal, and continue the journey upstream. It’s natural for salmon to swim upstream just like it is for us to continue to challenge our selves.

We have a special relationship with water. We look into the water, we then wade, then swim, and for many reading this we submerge. We become one with the water. Each movement is intentional. Each stroke, each fin kick has thought, had purpose. Moving on the surface with no wake, finning to not disturb the aquatic life or sediment. Using more legs than arms. I am in flow. More recreation than survival, we learn to flow with water.

Flow is the experience of being completely immersed. For me its like a drum solo. What may look like random banging is really preplanned strikes that trace emotion, rhythm, and thought. At some point however, I am mesmerized and transform into flow and each kick of the bass drum or impact on a floor tom comes natural to the groove. My relation with water is the same. At some point I forget I am on SCUBA and I just become part of the water.

Swimming with hands and feet tied while a skill for building confidence in our rescue course, I often use it for meditation. To the shock and concern of the life guards I lay on my back or prone with face down and with ankles crossed I work myself across the pool. It’s more concerning when I do this in Quinn’s Pond. It engages the whole self. Body and mind together working to propel myself. Fish don’t have hands or feet and they swim fine. But at some point I realized it wasn’t about propulsion. It wasn’t about getting from one point to another, its about being in water.

Lately my adventures have been less about purpose. My days have already been filled with navigation to an objective within a certain time period, dropping to a wreck to find artifacts, providing maintenance for underwater tourist attractions, and of course guiding clients and teaching students. It has now become more about finding flow.

My growth as a diver has gone beyond learning a new skillset. It’s searching for the moment where water and myself cease to exist as separate entities. I am learning more about safely relinquishing control in the water and following the uncertain path my dive is leading me on.

It is the last place in the world I get phone calls, text, and emails. Here, no one can find me. It’s my sanctuary. Its. place where many of us can forget what we look like in our wetsuits (or as we were changing into them). Our blood pressure drops, our body tempter drops, and feel good chemicals release when swaddled in water.

Water encourages ur respect and our reverence. The Greeks and Romans have gods dedicated to it. My diving is a tonic, in the definition of being restorative stimulating, undertaken for the feeling reinvigorating. 

Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen and the rest made up of mystery, magic, and spirituality. We find ourselves looking into it, then wading, then swimming and for most of us here, eventually diving into it.