Deep Water

I was reminded the other night about how we used to go swimming in the gravel pit.

All over our state there are places where heavy machinery was used to dig out the earth for various purposes. I don't know what they all were, but in some cases I expect they were taking clay to mix with aggregate and stuff for patching/making new roads. When the work was completed the pits were abandoned and the earth left to heal its scars on its own.

In some cases, particularly where there was a lot of clay, water would begin to accumulate. For one thing, the pits were deep, and they would take in a lot of ground water. Then there would be heavy rains, winter snows and such, and the pits would begin to fill with water.

I don't know the average depth of these pits, but I do know it wasn't unusual for them to be more than one hundred feet deep. There was one not far from where I grew up that was purported to be at least that deep. And it had mostly filled with water. Rumor was, someone had used some sort of sonar thing and determined the water level was around ninety feet. It had a kind of shelf around the edge. I suppose the old road used by trucks hauling. Anyway, we used this gravel pit as a swimming hole. Well, once.

Chris was the one who brought Stephen and me to the pit. He had been swimming there with friends all summer and wanted Stephen and I to experience it, too. None of us were good swimmers. In fact, I couldn't really swim at all. Stephen wasn't much better. Neither was Chris, but Chris had no fear about most things.

There was about a twenty foot difference between the top edges of the pit and the water surface below. A kind of cutaway ramp was how we reached the water. Someone had created a pontoon raft out of a pair of old empty oil drums and some wooden planks.

After swimming about for a few minutes Chris then told us how they liked to go up to the top, take a running start, and then jump out into the water. "Better than a diving board," he said. He then showed us how it was done.

He explained that one wanted to make as wide a target (without belly flopping) as possible to slow and reduce the rate of descent. But if one were to drop in straight one could go quite deep.

This is where my curiosity and my stupidity combined against me. I decided I wanted to know how deep I could drop. (As if there would be any way for me to measure it.) So I took an extra long running start (for some reason the amount of space one runs before jumping makes a huge psychological difference) and leaped high and out. As I felt myself beginning to drop I pinned my hands at my sides and came down feet first as straight as I could. (Remember, I couldn't swim, so there was no way I was diving in head first.)

Now I had jumped off diving boards into pools before. But those boards were only a few feet above the water line and the deepest pool I had ever jumped in was twelve feet. In those cases I would feel my feet touch bottom and I would immediately push myself back up to the surface where I would flounder to the pool's edge - and ultimate safety.

This time I was jumping from twenty or more feet above the water. And ninety feet isn't twelve. I went down more than twelve feet.

I have no idea how far down I went. How could I measure it? All I know is that I could feel the water sliding past me and I knew I was still dropping. Fun, fun, fun. Until I felt the need to breathe again. The problem was, I was still going down. I waited a bit longer, assuming I would slow down, stop, and begin to rise again, but I kept going down.

Now my brain finally began to catch up to my actions. The thought occurred to me that if I was already running out of breath, and I was still going downward, getting back to the top before I drowned was becoming more and more problematic. I had just placed myself in a very stupid - and dangerous - position.

Now I have been known to be calm in a crisis. When the house burned down I was the one my parents credited with being rationale and calm. At the same time I can panic with the best of them. I was the first one out of the house when unexplained crash happened and I was certain a ghost was out to get me.

So now I'm still getting into deeper and deeper water, and I'm running out air, and I need to get back to the top. My arms and legs spread out and brought me to a quick stop. Now I'm literally crawling my way back up toward the surface, certain that I'm not going to make it.

Now here is where the laws of physics worked in my favor. I had taken a big breath before jumping, and air is lighter than water. So my body was now in a hurry to get to the top even without my will.

Clearly, I made it to the top. But now I saw the poor choice of having jumped so far away from the cliff. Shore wasn't close. And I couldn't swim. I was still in trouble.

Fortunately, Stephen had been sitting on the makeshift pontoon, and with the pontoon were a couple of canoe paddles. He called to me, and between my thrashing and his rowing I got on board. But I was done swimming for the night. And I never returned to that place.