Guy James Tennessee
The water was cold and clear, the color of an empty glass cocoa-cola bottle. I could see the bottom at 15 feet as if it were only a foot deep. Sandy patches broke up the algae patches, as long skinny stripped fish schooled all around, more curious, more suspecting than fishermen believe. You want a fish to come and look? Give them something shiny to look at. They will come. As I kneeled in the cold hole and attached my sidemount 95's and the AL40, I smiled to myself. The rains have all but eliminated cave diving in Tennessee this year. And to get to do this one is like icing on cake, gravy on biscuits, and a six pack of beer in front of the television. Life just doesn't get any better.
But then again….. I'd read on the forums that a cave diver had died in Ginnie down in Florida and maybe it gave me the unconscious willies, but when I woke up this morning I was not so sure about cave diving today. Maybe a nice quarry dive would be the thing. I loaded the truck and despite misgivings drove out to Guy James spring. Along the way a thought struck me so hard I pulled over and stopped and thought I did not really want to cave dive today. I was just going because it was the one chance in a long time and the one chance in a long time to come. But then, I thought, the one chance? How can I not? Besides, I can always call the dive anytime for any reason.
As I geared up I discovered I left my computer and rock boots at home. A sign. The dive today was not to be. But I don't believe in signs or omens or any such hogwash. The DUI drysuit has thick socks attached to go inside of rock boots, but I can get by without the boots for this one relaxing dive just to look around. I did have my backup computer and in the left pocket was my bottom timer/depth meter.
So here I was on my knees in the cold hole, gearing up the sidemount LP 95's and an AL40 stage/backup. It was a solo cave dive, so I've taken to carrying the AL40 with 50% as a precaution. I figure if I have to breath from my back up tank (after losing two sidemounted tanks) it will be nice to have 50% oxygen at depths of 20-40 feet; get a bit of extra boost in the no-flow, low-viz, searching for the way up, and out, and home.
As I geared up I thought of Delta; I'd left the dog at home, and felt guilty. But today was a dive to honor a fallen comrade, the unknown diver in Florida whose body had been recovered, but no name released. He was close to my age and at my age you begin to wonder at all the ones your age who are dying around you. Not just cave diving, but just plain old dying. I've always said that when it's my time I hope I'm active, doing something, and wide awake with full knowledge. You only get to die once in this life and I want to be there to see it. I've read the condolences and prayers for the family of the unknown dead cave diver posted on the various forums. I hope he too wanted to die active and aware; to see just how death takes life, to witness. And I hope his family understands that and it eases their loss.
As I attached the left tank, then the right, and the stage tank, added fins and descended from the sandy patch down into the rock below the algae all thought of surface concerns faded as the dive took over all attention. I left the world of air and entered the dark world of subterranean waters, waters underground, same as it ever was, waters flowing underground.
The groove came early and all my attention was on the incredible viz. I could see for miles and miles and miles…, well I could see from one side to the other and that's incredible around here. The yellowed rock walls, the sticky clay banks, and the coarse sand bedding plain, with hard and soft rock, yellow and black, protruding in sharp edges or rounded blackened knobs and plates, the cave was a million years in the making. And I was there today a witness to the past epochs, to the undulations and patterns of erosion and the evolution of species. The blind southern cavefish, no more than an inch or three, darted here and there, and young cave crayfish flitted by like streaks of slow-motion lightening, and then settled on the bottom as if hiding from my gaze. But the schools of blue-gill, the small-mouth striped bass, and the visiting catfish, were no where to be found. Only the small inhabited today.
Up and over and duck down along the line. I swam with my floppy fins so slowly that it seemed to take forever to reach the end of the goldline and pick up the knotted yellowed survey line. Up and down and around the sharp edges of limestone to settle to the bottom and just stop, look around, and enjoy the view.
The ceiling was 20 feet overhead as I settled into the sandy bottomed slit. Close walls on each side stopped just above the bottom which spread out horizontally in undulating dunes of clay and sand and pebble. To the left and to the right, the scene spread over 100 feet as a vast underground lake filled the spaces among the jagged vertical rock and the flat horizontal rock. I stopped and looked around, switched regulators, and let the moment, in Zen-like fashion, sweep over me.
I then swam home. Kicking as my loose sloppy fins would allow I made my way back, back along the line, back to the drop down and duck under, back to the bones piled under the line at the base of the catfish breakdown (where catfish roam as if the breakdown brings them food), and the last 100 feet to the cavern zone where daylight is like a magnet and the ascent is like being born again. From the darkness I issue forth and am made whole. We all die. We all live. Today I live.
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