|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stuart Revercomb |
|
|
|
|
{ JAN 20, 2000 Any given momentI am 28. We are in the Bob Shepard and I are the first into the water. We have anchored about 150 yards off the reef as the draft on the boat is about six feet and our charts do not seem to agree with the depth provided by our sonar. It is a longer than usual swim to where the reef rises about 3 feet out of the water -- a hump of craggy gray bone covered in a fine layer of sand. We probably should take the dingy but the open water swim is inviting. We make good progress through the light chop and in a few minutes are just above the main part of the reef looking back at the yacht. Its 50 foot-plus mast sways gently above the lanyards and royal blue "Bimini Top." Travel magazine photographers must search hard for just such a day -- a boat -- a moment . "Ouch," I muffle past the rubber stopper in my mouth. Sinking in the trough of a wave I have banged my knee on part of the reef. Looking through my mask underwater I examine the skin and in the still and quiet my leg somehow does not seem to be my own. Decent cut, but not bad. Certainly no stitches required. I give it a rub and move on, following Bob who has gone deeper looking for a rock lobster to skewer for lunch. Several minutes pass as we repeatedly rise and return to the new discoveries that seem to come every few moments on such a reef. Instantly he is there -- a large Atlantic Barracuda. Not like the 1 to 2 foot variety we are accustom to, but a 4-foot "mother," as we would later describe him. I tap Bob on the shoulder to draw his attention and he puts up his hand without turning his head as he thinks he's on the verge of corralling a lobster. I tap him again and he repeats the "Hold On" signal. I check for the Barracuda, who is now much closer. I tap Bob slower and with the firmness of someone who means it. Bob turns his head looking somewhat annoyed and I point him off to my right where the Barracuda has been hovering. Bob's eyes get VERY, VERY BIG. "Strange," I think to myself, the Barracuda is by far the biggest I've ever seen and those are some mean looking teeth, but Bob's probably the most fearless among us. I look back to where I'm pointing him and my heart stops in mid-beat. The Barracuda is no longer in sight. In its place is a 8-9 foot Blue Shark who very clearly is as interested in us as we are now in him. Up to that point in my life I had never
really thought about swimming with a very large shark. I guess the odds
seemed so remote -- and then somehow, we were thinking about a trip, and then
talking about it, and then making plans, and then on a train, and on a plane
and now in the water. It all now seems so very surreal. I just didn't plan on
it. But "it" apparently has planned on me. For a moment more I
think -- yes, this is a dream, but the blood seeping from my knee indicates
otherwise. He circles us slowly. Bob and I both
immediately give a response that is apparently stored genetically within all
Homo sapiens. Independent of each other we both instantly spread our arms and
legs out and apart in a kind of floating crouch position attempting to look
as large as possible. This seems to work to some degree as the shark as far
as I can tell is not yet ready to eat us. But we have one other fairly
significant problem. We can not breath. I began to
slowly flipper my way to the surface
Bob follows. We are side by side now slowly turning in unison as the
shark steadily circles, rising with us as we go. Our snorkels finally break
the surface and we clear them with a burst of air. We watch the shark for a
moment more and then Bob, his eyes still wide and intense, gives the
universal thumbs up for communication. We lift our heads above the water and
Bob frantically rips out his snorkel and says, voice cracking, breathing as
though he had just sprinted two miles, “Wha...Wha...Whatever you do... da, da don DON’T
PANIC !!” He jams the snorkel back between his lips
and is back beneath the water before I can respond. “Well, that’s some helpful
advise”, I think. Truthfully, if I had attempted any words at that
moment they would have been of the same ilk and probably louder. I
immediately slip back beneath the surface and scan the water intently. The shark is still there, but this time a
little closer. He comes in slow from his orbit to within about 10 feet and
then returns to what I hesitate to describe as a “safer” distance
of perhaps 25. His coal black eyes are prehistoric and cold and he moves so
effortlessly through the warm clear water that there is little doubt about
who owns the moment. He is calculating and precise and every sweep of his
taught grey body seems choreographed by something nameless and dark. It is
the poetry of nature to be sure, but the threat is real and present and
potentially deadly. Yet somehow I begin to feel an unspeakable
calm about me that seems totally beyond my ability to create it. I am
beginning to sense something on a level I never have before. It is a gentle
whisper amidst the adrenaline charged intensity of the moment life is precious and fragile and real and
something, something more... It is 10 years later. I am in my car and
life couldn’t be greater. We are headed to the beach. Beth Anne is in
the back with the children. They are singing to a “sing along”
tape and laughing. We have brought a baby sitter along for the trip Juanetta
is in the passenger seat up front with me. We are on a wide open and well
maintained stretch of We are approaching a car on the side of
the road. A man has run out of gas. He has just come around the back of the
vehicle with a gas can having exited a white pickup truck that is parked in
front of him. Juanetta begins to speak, “Look,
he’s run out of... Watch!!” She can say no more. The truck in
front does not see us and has cut his wheel hard to cross over through the
median. He is blocking both lanes about 12 feet in front of us. We are
traveling at 70 MPH. There is no time to react I do not know what is to the left of
us, but I do know we are going there. My hands seem to turn the wheel before
I can even think and we are off the road and sliding and bouncing across the
V shaped median heading for oncoming traffic. My
best guess is that we have missed the pickup by about 3 inches. As we begin
to cross the grass in the intensity of the moment I hear four words “We can
do this”, they say and they repeat themselves. I feel remarkably calm
and somehow the grass and mud beneath our wheels feels familiar. Perhaps I am
remembering the days of my youth on our farm driving faster than I should
through the fields and pastures. I lobby myself heavily to resist the
temptation of the brakes. Gauging the remaining distance to the oncoming
traffic I slowly begin to coax the wheel back towards the middle of the
median. We slide, we straighten, we slide, we
straighten again and then begin to descend back towards the bottom of the V.
Bam! We cross a drainage grate and begin to decelerate 60, 45, 30. I look in
my rear view mirror and see that traffic on both sides of the highway has
stopped. The car that has nearly taken our lives has just finished crossing
the median and is racing north behind us - the driver not wanting to face our
wrath or his own culpability. I ease the van back up the median while we
still have momentum. We come out onto the black top and coast along in the
right hand lane. The sing along tape continues “Oh, How I Love Jesus, Oh How I Love
Jesus . . . Because He First Loved Me . . .” one of the children begins singing again.
Our 2 month old is still asleep. The morning is seemingly no different than
before. Except we are different. Changed in a
moment of overwhelming terror that has confronted us when we least expected
it. But it has been somehow met with an equally unexpected and life affirming
presence that speaks in such moments abiding and reassuring and mysterious.
Win, lose or draw it is somehow extravagantly and unconditionally for us. As time goes by the things of this world
will have me thinking less and less of the Peace I found in the water that
day or vectoring off that highway in half the apparent distance needed to
miss that car. I will not hear the words of comfort and assurance as clearly -
they will likely continue to fade into the predictable and rational fabric of
things. But not completely, for I know in my heart that the Spirit, while
mostly whispering quietly in the everyday moments of our lives, can and does
move boldly among us as well - alive
and present and real when we need him the most. And thanks be to God for that. |
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
