Another Life

A bit of a cheat, this is. It's a shot taken of me about to dive a sump (a flooded cave passage) back in 2005-ish. It is at the bottom of a 350m deep cave that has only ever been explored by two teams since it was discovered in the 80's for an excellent reason: it's bloody hard work. The sump is at the very bottom and has only been dived once, by me. So I'm the only person on the planet to have ever seen what's on the other side.

Seeing that photo now, pinned to my average, grey-covered desk divider in my nice safe office environment is such a huge bite out of the psychological apple of life that sometimes I can't swallow it.

Did I really do that? I'm pretty sure that was me.

In 2007 I was diving another cave. A combination of medical, equipment and environmental factors (ie. I screwed up) almost killed me. If another guy on the team hadn't been at exactly the right place at exactly the right time, I'd be very dead. While it was happening, I even had time to write a farewell note to my partner, for God's sake.

It was only last week I realised that not only did that incident make me question just how much I wanted to keep diving in caves, it has also changed how I feel about caving at all. Which goes some way to explaining my absence from the caving scene since then. I used to love going caving but now they frighten me. Or at least I'm afraid that they will and what has been a huge part of my life for the last twenty years will be gone.

Standing room only in my head, let me tell you.