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Jun 2008 Issue
by Kenneth Long
Although I am a child of this desert, I belong to the sea. I was born in this valley, as was my father and his father. Yet despite deep roots in this desert soil, the lure of the ocean has kept me diving regularly for the past 25 years. One dive in particular taught me a gospel principle that I had learned many times before and have learned many times since.
Yet only when my own life was about to end did I truly understand what it means to dwell in a probationary state, to be ready to depart this life.
In 2003 I was given the opportunity to dive a newly discovered wreck in Lake Huron, a wooden schooner that claimed 16 lives in 1897 when she floundered in the ice. I was sworn to secrecy as to its location and discovery, so I would dive it alone.
Open water divers are told to never go below 100 feet. Below 100 feet the body absorbs too much nitrogen, leading to disorientation, panic, auditory hallucinations, and un-coordinated movements. As a diver stays longer at depth, more nitrogen is absorbed.
Should the diver surface without decompression, billions of nitrogen bubbles invade the brain, heart, and lungs, causing a fatal condition called “the bends.”
The only way to avoid being bent on long, deep dives is to follow a meticulous decompression schedule, staying in the water for lengthy periods of time while the nitrogen slowly evaporates. The crushing weight of the water keeps the bubbles small, and by slowly ascending, they evaporate harmlessly. This dive would require 93 minutes of decompression.
I placed 210 pounds of gear on my body, consisting of a drysuit, polar undergarments, four tanks, eight regulators, a reel, two cabled lights, a computer, wrist slate, and compass. I splashed in and felt the water growing colder as I descended for five minutes into the pitch- black void. I was relieved to see something man-made after those eerie minutes of sinking into blackness, feeling my drysuit squeeze against my skin. For a moment I forgot about the precarious situation I was —in the middle of Lake Huron, totally alone, 190 feet below the surface, well below the depth where retreat was an option. Any problem underwater now had to be solved underwater.
I set my decompression tanks at the main hatch near the cabin. I crawled through the hatch very carefully so as to not disturb the precious ship. Below deck I saw bottles, clothes, silverware, and other artifacts abandoned that fateful night when 16 men lost their lives. I swam through the wreck silently, peacefully, staring at maritime history.
Without warning my head shook so violently my regulator was ejected from my mouth. I was seizing, I could not stop shaking and crashed into the floor, stirring up huge billows of silt and losing all visibility. The ship appeared to be moving as I groped in the darkness for my regulator, sticking it back in my mouth and purging of water. As I purged my regulator and vomited from the silt, I heard voices. I would later find out that I had a seizure due to oxygen toxicity. I was using rented tanks that contained Heliox, an oxygen enriched mixture used to speed up decompression, but was deadly below 100 feet.
In my panicked state, brought on by excessive nitrogen, I found a secondary hatch near where I had the seizure. It was a way out, and I swam upward into the pitch- black water.
I had no idea where I had set my decompression tanks, my penetration reel lay behind
me, a useless tangled web after the seizure. Heliox is lighter than air; I had 600 pounds of breathing gas left; I had anticipated having over 3,000.
I did not have enough air to look for my decompression bottles. I had enough to possibly get to the surface. Rather than stay and drown, I elected to ascend, knowing full well that missing over 90 minutes of decompression was a death sentence. Divers die when they omit half an hour of decompression, I had missed over three times that.
Two of my friends had been severely bent, they described it as triple vision, severe pain in the head and joints, difficulty breathing. I breached the surface and the back of my throat began to tingle. “Here it comes” I gurgled to myself, expecting the excruciating pain my friends had described.
I would feel none of it. The captain, also a diver, jumped into the water with an oxygen bottle and forced the regulator into my mouth while he furiously deflated my buoyancy compensator and drysuit, yelling at the top of his lungs “go to 30, go to 30!” Soon I was sinking back into the void with a bright yellow oxygen bottle.
I stopped at thirty feet, the depth where the body no longer absorbs nitrogen. This was an outdated method of stopping the bends, using the weight of the water to ward off decompression sickness. Soon another tank was lowered with a slate outlining my decompression schedules.
I would remain in the water for hours to make up for my rapid ascent and missed decompression. I would live. Three hours and twenty-eight minutes later I broke the surface of Lake Huron for the second time, this time I was safely out of harm’s way.
During my hours of decompression I contemplated what I had learned. This life was my time to prepare to meet God. I had one life and would not get another one. Like spending time at depth, my time on earth caused an unhealthy accumulation. In Gospel terms, this is an accumulation of sin. Although I was a counselor in the bishopric, I was amazed at the wrongs I remembered while decompressing from my near fatal ascent to the surface.
Just like I had to rid myself of nitrogen before leaving Lake Huron, I had to rid myself of sins before leaving this life, and that had to happen through the atonement of Jesus Christ.
It was a simple principle, taught to me as a boy and re-taught every week in one form or another. Yet never was the application so apparent, never was there a comparison so clear. I knew, there in the midst of Lake Huron what it is like to die unprepared, to have a lamp lacking the precious oil necessary to see our Savior. I felt that when I broke the surface for the first time.
I wish I could say that since Lake Huron I have been perfect, but I have not been.
However, at times when I am alone and tempted to become apathetic towards spirituality, I remember that fateful day in Michigan, taking my first breath of cool air at the surface as I waited for the nitrogen to foam up inside my body and kill me.
I remember wondering if I was ready to meet the Lord, and the sick empty feeling that said I was not. I was not ready then and I am not ready now. But because of what happened at Lake Huron, I clearly understand the importance of my decisions, and I am doing my best to get ready to meet the Lord.
Ken Long is a member of the Arroyo Grande Ward, Henderson Anthem Stake.
