I Dream of Sea Anemone

DAY: 17
LOCATION: Cairns, Great Barrier Reef

If you’ve ever been slammed into on the freeway, you know how awful it feels afterwards. Even if you walk away without any major injuries like broken bones or gaping wounds, you still feel like shit for the coming days and weeks. Beyond sore, completely drained of energy, emotionally distraught, depressed – it’s no joke.

Amazingly, I felt none of those things the morning after my Oz accident. My body felt so okay I wondered if I’d actually woken up. Was this a dream? My neck felt fine, my back didn’t hurt, I didn’t even have a headache. A travel miracle. And while I knew I’d suffered some pretty serious trauma, and would likely be experiencing PTSD, right then I felt fairly stable. Definitely stable enough to go to the Great Barrier Reef.

I rode one of Carrie’s beach cruisers to the pier. It was grey and drizzly, definitely not optimal reef conditions, but I didn’t care one iota. I just felt so lucky to be going at all, to even be alive.

As we checked in on the boat, the implausibility of it all began to sink in. I watched my fellow reef goers munching on danishes and chatting casually.

“I’m by myself in a foreign country and I got hit by another fucking car on the freeway yesterday! My rental car was completely totaled, and now I’m going snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef!! What the fuck is going on people?!” I wanted to yell but instead sat silently sipping tea.

A woman with some serious underwater camera equipment sat down next to me.

“How’s it going?” She asked with a friendly smile.

“You wanna know the truth?”

“Always!”

I told her the story and showed her photos. It was a relief to get to share with someone on the excursion. Not that I thought something would happen, but just in case. Amy Anxiety Attacks were known to happen.

She looked at me amazed. “Well you just listen to your body and let me know if you need anything. I bet floating in the ocean will be good for you.” Carrie and Kyle had said the same thing.

We talked about more pleasant topics as we sailed towards our first location at Hastings Reef, one of 16 dive spots. Her name was Angela, and she’d been a nature photographer for 25 years, specializing in reefs. She spent most of her life on the road – or rather, the water - and she adored it.

“Hopefully we see some good stuff today! Looks like it’s starting to clear up for us,” she remarked. Indeed, the clouds had burned off and the water turned that magnificent shade of aqua.

The boat dropped anchor and the guides instructed us to get our gear ready. I wiggled into my full wet suit, a necessity with the dangerous stingers, and tried on my mask. I’d only been snorkeling maybe once or twice, but they’d briefed us on how to do it.

I was one of the very first snorkelers off the boat – I’d been dreaming about the Great Barrier Reef since kindergarten! Of the seven natural wonders, I’d seen just one other, the Grand Canyon when I was 12. I kicked my flippers excitedly towards the west, looking down towards the murky depths. In a minute I’d hit the reef…

Something hit my head – a jellyfish! I turned my gaze up towards the surface and saw dozens of them floating about. I reached out and gently moved one out of my path. It had a firm but soft slippery feel. I couldn’t help but giggle – I felt like a kid in a petting zoo.

And then the reef came into view. An expansive underwater world, unlike anything I’d ever seen in real life. I felt a bizarre combination of thrill beyond measure and disappointed heartbreak. Privileged to be a witness to this incredible creation, and guilty to be a polluting intruder. My mind swirled like the rainbow-colored parrot fish, in and out of the living and dead corals. What did it look like before? What’s that fish called? Am I doing this right? I wanted to see everything, know everything.

Stop thinking. Just be. I couldn’t see the bracelet I’d been wearing for over a year on my right wrist, daily reminding me “here I am,” but I felt it. How many past experiences had I cheated myself of by letting my monkey mind control the ride? Not this time. This time I was right here. I dropped in, letting the visceral consume me. I became a fish, a vessel by which the ocean reflects on itself.

A single mantra repeated itself as I swam above the various coral, the staghorn and brain and plate and pillar and fire. Above the butterfly fish and sweetlips and damsels and Nemos. The giant clams and billowing anemones. Life is a miracle. Life is a miracle. Life is a miracle.

The whistle blew and we got called back to the boat. Most people had already returned – I was one of the last back on. Two hours had gone by in the blink of an eye. Thank god we had one more dive after lunch, I wasn’t ready to leave this other world just yet. I peeled off my suit, and suddenly burst into tears.

“Hey hey, what’s wrong?” One of the handsome guides came over to me. “You’re at the Great Barrier Reef, everything’s okay.”

I felt embarrassed and vulnerable. How could I explain why I was crying? Why was I crying? The beauty of the reef, the tragedy of its decay, the power of presence, alienation and oneness, the claws of the ego, the fear of death, the crash. The crash. The crash. The crash of civilization, of everything we thought we knew, of what I thought I knew. What did I even know? How could I possibly explain?

“No I know, it’s so amazing. It’s just — I’ll be okay,” I managed. “Thank you.”

I recovered and joined the lunch line, where I found a couple of vegan options and a new friend from England - Beau. We ate out on the bow. He’d quit his finance job in London five months before, and didn’t know what he was doing next. “Maybe Indonesia?” He seemed just fine with not knowing. If the universe was trying to tell me something, it was working.

We got to our next dive spot, and I hurried back into the water. If nothing else, yesterday had elevated my sense of last timeness to new levels. Somehow, I enjoyed this section of the reef even more than the first. Maybe it was because the corals were a little nearer to the surface, so I could get more up close and personal. Or maybe it was because I spotted a reef shark and followed it along the ridge for hundreds of meters. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because the mantra kept ringing stronger and truer, working its way deep into my bones, my being. Life is a miracle. Life is a miracle. Life is a miracle.

“Did you have a good time?” The handsome guide asked me back at the pier.

“It was like a dream,” I smiled. “Surreal.”

There was no other way to describe it. The last two days had been exactly that - surreal. So surreal. So so real. So. Fucking. Real.