2006-05-20
under the sea
At John Pennekamp in Key Largo, the park is underwater. The first thing I saw when I jumped off the boat--a stingray gliding like a shadow.
No, they don't resemble "giant portabello mushrooms" (according to those stupid Carnival cruise ads). Chips of light speckled the ray's back. He flapped his wings and cruised beneath my fins, making no noise. I snapped a picture with my disposable camera (encased in plastic for deep-sea pix, courtesy of Walgreens).
Most of my shots contained rocks and retreating fins (human or otherwise). Sunlight painted the sandy sea floor like skywriting, bouncing off coral reefs and swaying sea anemones.
I surfaced and gulped warm lungfuls of air (no need for a snorkel, which leaves me breathing too tight). Just a mask which stamped a parentheses on my forehead. Swaying in the choppy waves, I could feel the current yanking me away from the boat. I ducked under and spotted a massive brain coral:
Up close, I could see criss-crossing patterns like those on computer chips. My own atoms must take a similar shape. Looking around the reef, I wondered if the planet Venus might look the same under all those clouds....
I heard the captain blow the horn. As I paddled back to the boat, sunburned with a stomach full of seawater, I knew that we didn't belong. No fins or snorkels could help. Even the parrotfish, with their curvy beaks, seemed to laugh at me. I could hear them crunching the coral and spitting it out--a song that would go on, long after I had pumped to the surface, into air and sunlight.
f-i-n at 11:30 a.m.