With the last week of research at hand, things are busier than ever. Nevertheless, I find calm and focus daily as I leave the world I was born into, and descend into the depths that the vision and nerve of past pioneers let me now explore.
Like most divers, I think, I am enchanted by the indescribable beauty of water and light, by the ubiquitous shadows that shift below the reflective illusion of the surface.
I remember, from somewhere long ago, someone mentioning the phrase “silent as a stone” (now that I think on it again I believe it was Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’). On the surface the stones are indeed quiet; the granite of the mountains, the gravel of un-walked-on beaches bear a silent gravity. But in the world beneath the waves it is not so, the stones speak; the energy of the water loosens their dry tongues. The pebbles chatter quietly together, the larger boulders shift and murmur. The click and nibble of Parrotfish add to the continuous, nearly subsonic thrum of water on stone.
I wonder, if I could only understand their murmurs, what stories the stones of the Bay of Novy Svet could tell us. I wonder what the great boulders would say of the ship they saw sink down more than seven hundred years ago. I wonder what the pebbles think of the ceramic cargo they roll over and around. But tonight, I especially wonder what this massive stone anchor that I laid eyes on for the first time yesterday would say…
