I Am Prepared to Make Snorkeling My Entire Personality
Off the coast of Kefalonia, there's an underwater cave where a school of fearsome lionfish holds court. To call on them, you must gulp in enough air to last about 30 seconds, plunge a few feet below the water's surface, and hold yourself down by clutching onto a rocky outcrop. 'Just stick your head in and you'll see them,' a fellow snorkeler shouts at me. What I've yet to mention is that the lionfish's venomous sting is agonizing. I read somewhere that thrusting your hand into a pot of boiling water hurts less than a lionfish sting. And I'm supposed to just 'stick my head' into their lethal sanctum? When I finally work up the courage, three are floating motionless, staring back at me as if to say, don't even think about it. They are a peculiar species with riotous stripes extending out onto a flamboyant mane of fins and spines (hence the 'lion' moniker). Like a fish that swallowed a grenade and is halfway through exploding. I pop back up and spit my breathing tube out. 'Incredible!' This was two years ago, and one of my first real snorkeling experiences.
I more or less grew up in the water. My dad, a surfer from Santa Monica, put me on his board before I could walk. My sisters and I used to choreograph dances and songs to persuade our parents to take us to the p-o-o-l. Summers were spent camping at Refugio Beach along the California coastline. And despite all this, I've only arrived at this love of snorkeling in the last few years. Among the irrational fears I inherited from my mother, an anxiety surrounding not being able to breathe is one of them. But here's the thing about anxieties: usually when you confront them, they chill out. This Kefalonia excursion was part of an 'earlymoon' in Greece that my fiancé and I went on, and in an effort to share his passion for snorkeling, I rearranged outdated assumptions about myself. In this case: That I can't inhale and exhale through a tube while submerged underwater. And reader, I'm glad I did.
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