How I Nearly Got Myself Killed: a tale of misguided adventure, fortunate rescue and lazy sealions

There are very few activities where I abandon myself completely--drawing sometimes, certain types of sex, and snorkeling. I breathe at a different speed and lose all concept of time and space underwater. Today I floated around in a refracted sunbeam for an indefinite amount of time, over a blue, gradually darkening oceanfloor drop, with a column of sunlight splitting itself into thin beams around me. Then a playful sealion poked me and I swam after it to get a good photograph. The lion dove, I dove after it, then I saw more sealions playing further towards the shoreline and swam towards them. I saw the large boulders but I thought they were further away than they actually were. Water completely screws up your sense how far things are. By the time I realized that the boulders were, in fact, much closer than I had judged them to be, it was because I scraped one with my knees and stomach. I quickly tried to turn around and swim back but the current there was strong and coming in at an angle, like a vector aimed both at the shore and over to the right where there were more boulders with plenty of sealions that apparently don't come to your aid like dolphins do but instead lazy about and sun their fat glistening bodies on the slippery volcanic boulders. The tide kept throwing me on the rocks and then dragging me across them. Suddenly out of nowhere a young man with a snorkeling mask appeared, swam up to me and pushed and dragged me until I was out of the current and was able to swim back to the boat. It was totally out of a book! Sadly, I didn't even get a good look at his face; he waved to me once I was back near the boat, and swam away with the sea lions. I think he was a photographer since he seemed to have a nice underwater camera. By the time I grabbed onto the side of the boat I felt physically drained like I had just swam twenty miles instead of one and once I climbed back onboard I realized that my right leg and hip were bleeding from, like, ten different cuts. I hope that at least I got some good photos of the damned Susanin^* sealion.


^*Ivan Susanin was a 17th century Russian peasant who tricked the invading Polish forces but pretending to sell out and offering to guide them through the woods to Moscow. He led them to unpassable swamps so that they could never find their way out. When they realized he had tricked them they killed him, but later when Susanin's village neighbours came looking for him they found bodies of the Polish invaders frozen in the swamps. His name is used proverbially in Russian speech now, invoked if you need to accuse someone of leading you the wrong way.