If you’ve never attempted snorkeling, you are missing out on one of the most sublime outdoor activities imaginable. First of all, if you are in the right location—and the right location usually means somewhere fairly remote—you have a virtual underwater universe of weird, exotic, brilliantly colored coral to explore and examine. If coral doesn’t sound all that fascinating to you, then you are either soul-dead or you haven’t ever really gone snorkeling. Real coral dances and simmers in the light, moving with the tide like an agile ballerina. Nothing on earth is quite so sublime.
Then there’s the virtually unlimited variety of marine life that you are likely to encounter, if you just hang tight for a while and keep your eyes wide open. You can’t help but be impressed by the gracefulness of the regal stingray as it glides through the water or small schools of clownfish so brightly colored that your ocular senses feel bombarded by the spectacle. I could be extremely happy, though, just swimming in the midst of the huge schools of silver minnows that congregate in the shallow waters of just about every beach in the Caribbean. Minnows are underappreciated by many otherwise intelligent snorkelers because they lack the pizzazz that more exotic tropical fish possess. But if you ever had several thousand swimming around you, their silver scales sparkling in the sunlight, you wouldn’t be quite so quick to dismiss the charms of these little fellows.
The thing I love most about snorkeling, though, is the zen-like tranquility I experience whenever I don the masks and fins. It’s just me and the water. Nothing to achieve, nothing to accomplish, no goals at all except gently moving around the surface of some serene Caribbean inlet, being one with everything that I encounter. I could literally spend an entire day just floating, letting the current take me where it will, relinquishing all my preoccupations and anxieties. Forget valium or therapy. When you are stressed out or anxious, a few hours of snorkeling in a place like the Virgin Islands are all that you need to reestablish your sense of purpose in an otherwise chaotic universe.
I have heard some immature people suggest that snorkeling is for boring old fogies (in other words, people just like me). These folks seem to think that scuba diving is where it’s really at. I did try diving once in Mexico, but to be perfectly honest, I found it to be a terribly busy activity. You’re always forced to think about what you are doing when you’re scuba diving. Now, I have nothing at all against cognitive activity, but if I am going to spend several hundred dollars to get away from my job—a job which, by the way, involves having to think ALL the time—the last thing I want to do is have to think some more on my vacation. No, just give me the damned tube and let me drift, far, far away from all annoying thoughts and preoccupations.
On my last snorkeling expedition to the Caribbean, I actually learned an important lesson about life. I kept hearing other snorkelers brag about seeing large stingrays at the tip of Francis Bay on St. John’s. I was determined to see one of the majestic creatures myself and, if possible, photograph it with the $19 disposable underwater camera that I purchased just for that purpose. I spent considerable time swimming the length of the bay, moving from one place to another in the hope of seeing a stingray. By the time I got to end of Francis Bay, though, I hadn’t seen anything more than exactly the same kind of fish I had been looking at for the past three days. In frustration, I decided to swim back and forget all thoughts about stingrays…..After all, I really didn’t want to spend my last few hours of snorkeling on some kind of silly Ahab quest. It was at that moment—when I had jettisoned all thoughts of accomplishing anything other than simply enjoying myself—that a huge, magnificent stingray suddenly appeared right beneath me. For all I knew, he could have been there all the time, but I was so busy looking that I had forgotten to take the time to see.
That’s why activities like snorkeling—and, to a certain extent hiking—are so damned important in this silly, miserable, action-packed world of ours. They force you to slow down and take time to actually begin to NOTICE the world around you. It’s during those quiet moments that you begin to realize that all the big troubles that usually preoccupy your mind are not really much at all and that the truly important things in life can be had with very little effort and minimal cost. A pair of fins, a breathing tube, and an underwater mask…that’s really all you need to make sense of this crazy, chaotic cosmos that we inhabit.
A few cold beers don’t hurt either…
Then there’s the virtually unlimited variety of marine life that you are likely to encounter, if you just hang tight for a while and keep your eyes wide open. You can’t help but be impressed by the gracefulness of the regal stingray as it glides through the water or small schools of clownfish so brightly colored that your ocular senses feel bombarded by the spectacle. I could be extremely happy, though, just swimming in the midst of the huge schools of silver minnows that congregate in the shallow waters of just about every beach in the Caribbean. Minnows are underappreciated by many otherwise intelligent snorkelers because they lack the pizzazz that more exotic tropical fish possess. But if you ever had several thousand swimming around you, their silver scales sparkling in the sunlight, you wouldn’t be quite so quick to dismiss the charms of these little fellows.
The thing I love most about snorkeling, though, is the zen-like tranquility I experience whenever I don the masks and fins. It’s just me and the water. Nothing to achieve, nothing to accomplish, no goals at all except gently moving around the surface of some serene Caribbean inlet, being one with everything that I encounter. I could literally spend an entire day just floating, letting the current take me where it will, relinquishing all my preoccupations and anxieties. Forget valium or therapy. When you are stressed out or anxious, a few hours of snorkeling in a place like the Virgin Islands are all that you need to reestablish your sense of purpose in an otherwise chaotic universe.
I have heard some immature people suggest that snorkeling is for boring old fogies (in other words, people just like me). These folks seem to think that scuba diving is where it’s really at. I did try diving once in Mexico, but to be perfectly honest, I found it to be a terribly busy activity. You’re always forced to think about what you are doing when you’re scuba diving. Now, I have nothing at all against cognitive activity, but if I am going to spend several hundred dollars to get away from my job—a job which, by the way, involves having to think ALL the time—the last thing I want to do is have to think some more on my vacation. No, just give me the damned tube and let me drift, far, far away from all annoying thoughts and preoccupations.
On my last snorkeling expedition to the Caribbean, I actually learned an important lesson about life. I kept hearing other snorkelers brag about seeing large stingrays at the tip of Francis Bay on St. John’s. I was determined to see one of the majestic creatures myself and, if possible, photograph it with the $19 disposable underwater camera that I purchased just for that purpose. I spent considerable time swimming the length of the bay, moving from one place to another in the hope of seeing a stingray. By the time I got to end of Francis Bay, though, I hadn’t seen anything more than exactly the same kind of fish I had been looking at for the past three days. In frustration, I decided to swim back and forget all thoughts about stingrays…..After all, I really didn’t want to spend my last few hours of snorkeling on some kind of silly Ahab quest. It was at that moment—when I had jettisoned all thoughts of accomplishing anything other than simply enjoying myself—that a huge, magnificent stingray suddenly appeared right beneath me. For all I knew, he could have been there all the time, but I was so busy looking that I had forgotten to take the time to see.
That’s why activities like snorkeling—and, to a certain extent hiking—are so damned important in this silly, miserable, action-packed world of ours. They force you to slow down and take time to actually begin to NOTICE the world around you. It’s during those quiet moments that you begin to realize that all the big troubles that usually preoccupy your mind are not really much at all and that the truly important things in life can be had with very little effort and minimal cost. A pair of fins, a breathing tube, and an underwater mask…that’s really all you need to make sense of this crazy, chaotic cosmos that we inhabit.
A few cold beers don’t hurt either…
If I were your professor I would give you +3 for this post haha. I have scuba dived before and the way you described it made me feel like I was actually doing it haha
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