Return to Blue Springs

This story is just the truth. Some may think that unnecessary risks were taken. That may be true also. Like it or hate it, this is just the truth.





It has been a few months since I became licensed to scuba dive. In that time I have completed 14 successful dives. Successful meaning that I'm still here to write about them. On everyone of those dives, I felt that I had explored all that I could have. In other words, I did a proper job and had no regrets...Save one. Blue springs. The first dive at blue springs was a very fun trip. I was thrilled to get to see my favorite freedive hole from a new angle and finally see what I had been trying to see while freediving, the sign. The sign is a marker at 60ft, warning divers that are not cave certified to go no further. I have been trying to freedive to this sign for about six months with little success. I usually make it to around thirty feet, and have to turn back.

On my first dive trip to Blue Springs, there was a learning curve to contend with. A day of a lot of firsts. Scott and I's first time diving as a team and my first dive after scuba class. My skills were brand new and I was still a little shaky. We got down to the sign and looked around, checked out a few other things and that was that.

Below the sign is where the "cave" begins. It was dark. Large dark hole. At that time I was honestly afraid of this dark menacing hole in the water. On the other hand I was overwhelmingly drawn to it. I know that Scott really wanted to go further but stopped out of courtesy for me. Weeks after the dive, I thought about that hole, and knew that one day I would go back.


Over the next month, I got in some great cavern type dives at places like Ginnie and Paradise Springs and Blue grotto. During these dives I honed my skill and became more and more comfortable underwater. So it was less terrifying to me when Scott said one day, " I want to go back to blue springs and go all the way down." I just smiled and said" sounds good." The cold sweats would come later. By then I all ready bought a decent dive light, which I have to say is a wonderful thing. Men can stack fears on top of one another. Being underwater, being in a cave underwater. But being in a cave underwater without light is my limit. So the next day I called Scott and told him that I was up for the dive, I just wanted to be really well prepared for it. " I don't want to slap this together and become a cautionary tale to new divers." He put up with my bitching with great patients and we began to plan.

I had found a topographic map of the spring taken by a cave diver years ago. I gave the layout of the whole cave with landmarks, depths and flow charts. Really great info about the cave.
The spring descends straight down till you get to the sign at 60ft , the levels out and continues a 40ish degree angle to 120ft. That's is were the springhead is. Scott got some history
of past dive accidents and fatalities at the site. After we looked over them, we found the majority of deaths were caused by the strong currents at the springhead. One death happened because the diver didn't know about the power of the current and swan directly over the spring head. It blew her mask off her face, the regulator out of her mouth and slammed her into a ledge above the boil. She apparently panicked and just bolted to the surface swimming as fast as possible. She died soon after, I imagine from either a blown lung or a embolism. So after much forethought and brainstorming on how not to get ourselves killed, we met up at the park.


Scott brought a dive reel. It's basically a long cord on a small reel that you tie the end to something at the cave entrance. You carry the reel and the line just unwinds, that way when you're ready to turn around, you can find you way back out. We knew we wouldn't need it, but I would be good training, so what the hell. We don our gear and make our way to the spring. After a quick equipment recheck we begin our decent.


Wasting no time, we arrive at the sign. Scott brought out the dive reel and began to tie off the cord to the sign. He pulled off about two feet from the reel and it exploded in a massive birdsnest. I just wanted to laugh. Scott looked at me with such a forlorn expression, a mix of the hatred that he bares all of life and the pathetic acceptance that he must go on on living it. He looked back to the tangled mess in his hands and made a vein attempt to unfuck it. I watch this for about three seconds and then take the reel from his hands and place it on the sign. I put a large rock on top of it and wave it off. It would have taken all day to clear that mess on dry land, and we didn't have the gas to waste.

I signal to move on and we descend into the darkness. I pull out my dive light and switch it on. The beam cuts through the inky blackness. It reminds me of a lightsaber from starwars. We proceed forward slowly. Scott and I decided not to get more than about three feet apart for this dive. So he took up position on my left as we advanced forward. Scott swam with two hands out in front of him, hoping this would give him some warning of changing current ahead. I had one hand in front of me and in the other was my depth gauge.

I was diving nitrox, EAN 33 , a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen with the o2 higher than room air. This was good because it causes less nitrogen build up in the blood stream, bad because at certain depths, oxygen can become toxic in large amounts. It can cause CNS Oxygen toxcity, which will cause the dive to go into convulsions. Not a fun way to end a dive. So I had a max depth on this dive, which was 109ft. Much further than that and I was pushing for a bad day. So after 90ft I began to watch my gauge closely and slow my decent. We had moved though a large limestone cavern which had wide ledges on the walls. The further we went the darker it became. As we entered the boiler room the carvern wall expanded some and most of the ambient light was gone. We past over the long dead palm tree and found the large oak log that marked we were here, this was it. I got to 105ft and began to inch forward. 107ft..108..108.5... 109ft. Stop. I was at my limit. I signaled Scott and he signaled back that he was going to go five more feet then stop. I gave him the ok and slowly he moved forward. He still had his hands out in front of him when he suddenly came to a halt. His right arm came up with a closed fist in a classic "STOP! Motion and he shined his light against himself , to make sure that I could see it. I could see his mask fluttering....He found the current. Backing up he leveled out and I began to pan my light around the cave floor. There was the spring head. It was small, maybe 3-4ft wide. We looked around the cave at some of the wild rock formations and at the spring head its self. 10,400 gallons per min where flowing out of that thing. Thats about 173 gallons per second. 173 galons of water weighs abot 1,390 lbs. So if you swam over the spring, thats what would push you
up into the celing, every second. In one min you would have felt the weight of 83,200 lbs. just not all at once. We stayed put!





I looked over to Scott and gave him the ok signal and then shut off my light. He killed his too.
Darkness. Complete and utter darkness. Then...Slowly... The darkness faded. It receded from my eyes like the falling of the tide. Too little to notice but too much to ignore. I turned to the opening and hovered, the lurid gossamer sunlight filtered by millions of gallons, robbed of all its color but one, cast a faint green hue across me, the rock, the cave.

It was not the kind of light to do long division by. Not even to organize a shopping list by. It was the kind of light by which secret treaties are reached, that assassination orders are signed and delivered. It was in this kind of light that fingers wrestle with bra straps and tongues wrestle each other. The kind of light in which anything can happen and does.
I hovered there. Not smiling or frowning. Not happy or sad. I just was. Some where between joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, laughter and tears. The world above me ceasist to exist. There was no world. Just me.

It could have been years or decades when Scott came over to me. If he told me later that it had been three centuries, I wouldn't have argued. He motioned me to begin our accent. I gave a light kick and began our return to the surface. We poked around on the bottom of the cave on the way up. Looking for sourviners, I fould a shark tooth. We stopped at the sign and got the death reel. We rose thought the water slowly, letting the nitrogen leave our bodies. As I rose the light began to change, reclaiming all the colors it lost. We gradually make our way back into the light of the world. I smile and float, drifting down the river to the exit. I have made my return to Blue Springs. And this time, I have no regrets.



sungod357