Wetsuit Medium Large

Thailand, 1988

Last night I had a spectacular dream. I was floating in space, far above the Earth. Looking down, I beheld our home planet in all its impossible beauty: the ochre of the deserts, the green of the jungles, the cerulean blue of the seas. But the oceans did not look opaque, as they do in pictures. They were transparent. From my great height I could see clear through them—down to the coral reefs, clouds of fish, and sulfur vents simmering on the ocean floor.

Inspired by the first launch of the SpaceX Dragon to the ISS, it made sense that my dream comingled space flight and scuba. I’d been inspired to take diving lessons by reading Arthur C. Clarke, who’d authored books set in both realms: from The Coast of Coral to The Sands of Mars. But Clarke knew he’d never make it into orbit. “The closest I’ll ever come to weightlessness,” he told me, “is scuba diving.”

My most profound scuba memory is from a night dive, off the Philippine island of Mindoro. Divemaster Alan Nash and I took a motorboat out from the beach, and dropped into the sea at about 5 a.m. We were 60 feet down, surrounded by utter darkness. For the next 45 minutes, we explored a beautiful reef with powerful flashlights. Sharks and moray eels skittered through our beams, and the coral pulsed with living pink polyps.

As the sea began to lighten, Nash signaled that it was time to ascend. I was reluctant; but during our slow progress toward the surface, an astonishing thing happened. The water around us transformed from blue to green to fiery orange—as if the sea itself was aflame. What we were seeing, I realized, was sunrise: from within our prism of ocean.

The very instant our heads emerged into the air, the sun broke over the horizon. For an unforgettable moment, I felt the dizzying sensation of being on a moving planet: a rotating globe, spinning steadily among the stars.

Scuba diving is one of my passions. But with my post-surgery back issues, I may not be able revisit that otherworldly realm, or sense of weightlessness, again.