GERONIMO!

Hello Humans! "I took a trip to the ocean. High emotion filled me with desire. I had to see why I was fighting. It kept inviting me to take it higher. Looking back it didn't hurt me. It did something for my soul. It taught me when you find a love, don't break it, try to make it whole. I took a walk into the fire when I heard you calling me. I took a chance, and what a good thing it turned out to be. It turned out, it turned out. It turned out to be. Well, now it's done and out of nowhere I can go wherever pleases me. If you don't mind some stormy weather, we'll be together in our fantasy. Well looking back it didn't hurt me. It did something for my soul. It taught me when you find a love don't break it, try to make it whole. I took a walk into the fire when I heard you calling me. I took a chance and what a good thing it turned out to be. It turned out, it turned out. It turned out to be, oh to be a good thing."

Today was my last day of scuba diving for my certification. I woke up at 8, got my swim suit on, had a small bite to eat, and then ran over to the front of the college pool to wait for the carpool to gather and get going. Me and my two diving friends were able to ride with the other two people in our dive group. I got to sit in the back of the mini-van. I was trying to not fall asleep when we rounded a bend, and we all were talking about how lucky we are to go to a school in paradise, where we can make awesome friends, and go scuba diving all at the same time.

I had this overwhelming feeling of peace and gratitude come over me as we rounded a bend, and there was the ocean, and we were able to drive right along side as the waves crashed into the beach. I mean, just over a year ago, I was miserable. I pretty much hated myself. I thought that everyone else hated me. Life was awful, and I didn't think it would get any better. It was almost like a feeling of peace such that my Heavenly Father was telling me, "Good job Mary. You made it through one of the hardest things you will endure in your life, and keep trying to do better with the sins and temptations and struggles I have given you. It's all to make you a better person, but look at where you are now because you endured those things." I really would be nowhere near where I am today without the help of my Heavenly Father and Savior. They have given me and my family everything, and I would be nothing without them. If I hadn't followed the Spiritual promptings that I received last year, both from friends and from the spirit, I would have still remained at Southern Utah University. I would never have come to BYU-H, never have made the amazing friends that I have here, and certainly would never have gone Scuba Diving. And without the blessings that my parents have received for being such faithful followers of Christ, I wouldn't have had the means of getting here, or even perhaps a great college education.

After the car ride, we pretty much grabbed our gear, jumped on the boat, and left. Our whole dive group was split into two groups, but the people in my smaller dive group were all together. We were put on the boat with another dive group from a different scuba diving certification company. Apparently there's like 200 scuba dive shops and certification companies on the Island. Makes sense, but it's still a huge number. We also had a different dive instructor, because the one we had been diving with for the past 2 ocean dives, and 1 pool dives was on vacation. I was a little nervous, first because we were diving off a boat, and second because of our new instructor. His name was Scuba Drew. He was super chill and cool. One of those total surfer dudes who uses lingo like, "Nah Dawg," and "Yeah Dude." He explained everything really well, especially our buoyancy, so we knew how to control that better under water. The other group left as he was briefing us on what skills we would be passing off on the first dive. We suited up, and Scuba Drew showed us how to enter the water via "Long Stride." You literally just step off the side of the boat with a long stride, hence the name, while holding your respirator and mask in and your BCD inflated. This is so that you can see and breath when you get into the water, and so that you won't just sink to the bottom of the ocean like a rock. I was really nervous going in, not because I was afraid of the ocean, didn't trust my respirator and BCD, or worried I wouldn't be able to see, but just because it was a new skill that we were learning. I got in, and started freaking out inside. I obviously hadn't had time to adjust to the water temperature, so that came as a bit of a shock, and I started to breath rapidly. I had a little bit of trouble breathing, but I still was breathing, remembering the first rule of Scuba, "ALWAYS breath." I swam to the mooring line, and held onto it, waiting for the others in our dive group to reach it, so that we could descend. Once everyone had made it in, we descended. I put my respirator in, and again, freaked out on the inside. I kept breathing as we descended, but it was more rapid and out of sync than it should have been. I finally was able to calm myself down as we descended, realizing that I was in my element. I trusted my respirator and my BCD, and I had six people around me to help me incase of an accident. So I took a few seconds while descending, and steadied my breath. It was almost like the beginning of my under-water meditation. After that moment, I was totally fine the rest of the day. Once we reached the bottom, me and my diving buddy had our BCD's unhooked from our air tank, and then were supposed to do an emergency controlled ascent, in case of an emergency that couldn't be fixed underwater. My poor buddy apparently had too much weight in her BCD and couldn't ascend very easily. She was kicking with all of her might, while in the mean time, I was singing to the surface. I broke the surface, and then looked back under to see my dive instructor signal me to re-descend. We were supposed to orally inflate our BCDs, again in case of an emergency, but we ended up not doing that skill. It seemed like a pretty easy skill if need be, especially at the surface where you don't have to worry about the surrounding water getting in the way of you breathing properly. As the other pairs were passing off their ECA's, me and my buddy were running around like astronauts do on the moon, except it was on the ocean floor. It was so much fun and really cool. We also took in our surroundings more and saw fish in every direction. The fish kept getting closer to us, becoming familiar with our vibrations. After the other groups had done their emergency control ascents, we worked on becoming neutrally buoyant. We laid on the ocean floor, and slowly put some air into our BCD's, so that when we inhaled, we rose a little bit, and when we exhaled, we sank a little. We got to the point where we were floating in the ocean. We all sat cross-legged in the middle of the ocean, and as we inhaled, we rose a little, and then as we exhaled, we sank a little. It was the coolest feeling ever. Then we swam to the corals. My instructor motioned "Octopus," and grabbed a small purple octopus. It was so adorable and cute and small! My instructor didn't have a good enough grip on him, and so, the octopus swam away, back into the corals. We swam along, looking at the fish for a little longer, and then turned around and headed back to the mooring line. On our way back, I was towards the back of the group, when about five fish came and swam all around me. They swam away from me only when I moved to touch one of them, but other than that, they were totally calm swimming right by me. As we ascended, and during our three minute safety-stop, I paid more attention to what was actually in the water. I could see tiny little things swimming around, and different plant matters floating around. Every layer of the ocean is just so diverse and interesting and amazing. We climbed out of the ocean via ladders on the back of the boat. We got back in, switched our tanks out as we drove to our next location, and then re-suited up. This time, our instructor told us that this dive would be us showing him that we could dive safely without help from an instructor, which meant we could dive in before he did if we wanted to. Me and my buddy were all ready, so I went for it. I was the first one to jump ship, well, I guess it was walk ship, and get in the water.

"Can you feel it? Now it's coming back. I can see it. If we bridge this gap. I can see you, through the curtains of the waterfall. When I lost it, yeah you held my hand. But I tossed it, didn't understand you were waiting as I dove into the waterfall. So say GERONIMO! Say GERONIMO! Say GERONIMO! Can you feel my love? Bombs away. Bombs away, bombs away. Can you feel my love?" I walked up to the area where we walk off, held my mask and regulator in, said GERONIMO! quietly to myself, and walked off. I quickly swam to the mooring line, where I waited for my buddy and the rest of my group. Once we were all assembled and in the water, my dive instructor signaled us to descend, and so we all descended. This time, the mooring line was tied to a giant pipe that ran as far as the eye could see in both directions. It was really terrifying to me at first, because it came as a big surprise, but later on, I realized it was an amazing addition to the ocean. We swam through the ocean, this time I easily established myself as neutrally buoyant, floating above the ocean floor. We got to a giant coral reef and swam over it. There were fish everywhere, all in different shapes, sizes, and colors. We got to the edge of the coral, and swam down to the sandy ocean floor. There was a small cave-like thing on the edge of the coral, and I swam down to peer inside. There was a school of fish of a beautiful red-orange color inside. I looked up to swim back to the group, and as doing so, a different school of fish came and swam all around me, We then swam back over a different part of the reef, then found the pipe, and started to swim back towards the mooring line. We really took our time, swimming to the side of, on top of, and all around the giant pipe. That sounds pretty lame, until you realize that a coral reef has developed on top of and on the sides of the giant pipe. As we swam on, we found many schools of fish that swam along with us, and a few eels. One I found and pointed out, then my instructor poked at it, and it swam around the coral. It was a beauty with it's yellow face, and black and white spotted body slithering around throughout the corals. We stopped a little while after the eel, and my instructor stuck his hand under a giant slab of rock on the ocean floor. We were all wondering what he was doing when we saw black ink diffusing in to the water, and tentacles reaching around the edges of the rock. After a while, he pulled out a giant, but beautiful deep purple-red octopus. It spewed ink for a minute, and then realized we weren't going to eat him. Our instructor held Mr. Octopus, as the suction-cupped arms were wrapped around his arm. He let us all touch him, and even feel his suction-cupped arms. It's crazy how strong they can hold onto things. Octopus are such beautiful creatures. Our instructor then put Mr. Octopus on top of his head, just like a hat, and swam around with Mr. Octopus up there for a long time up there. Eventually, Mr. Octopus left us, and found a new crevice to hide in. We got back to the mooring line, and as me and my buddy were waiting for the other pairs to start their ascent, she pointed out this really cool fish that was flat, but not an eel. It had a skinny head. It kind of looked like a fish eating another fish, but that they were both extremely flat and elongated. Then we ascended, made our safety stop while fish swam among us, and finally reached the surface. It was raining really hard as we surfaced. It was so cool to see the rain hit the water as we swam up underneath it, to then feel it on our heads as we became positively buoyant. We swam to the back of the boat, and climbed the ladder into the boat. After we had disassembled our gear, we got to talk with Scuba Drew about all of his super cool adventures as a Master Diver. He got to go diving out in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is somewhere I want to go and help clean up one day. It was really cool to hear his tales of diving. Then we got back to the harbor, unloaded our gear, and took the oral diving test as a group. We all passed. Then we all got back into the car and drove back to our beloved North Shore while trying to not pass out from tiredness.

The first thing I said when I got back into my Apartment was, "I want to go back." I want to go back to the bottom of the ocean and live there. If someone asked me if I would live in the ocean, I wouldn't need to even think about it. I would go there in a heartbeat. "I never came to the beach or stood by the ocean. I never sat by the shore under the sun with my feet in the sand, but you brought the here. And i'm happy that you did. Because now I'm as free as birds catching the wind. I always thought I would sink, so I never swam. I never went boating nor out there floating, and sometimes I get so scared of what I can't understand. But here I am, next to you. The sky's more blue in Honolulu. Next to you. In Honolulu. Next to you. We watched the sun go down as we're walking. I'd spend the rest of my life standing here talking. You explain the current as I just smile. Hoping that you'll stay the same and nothing will change and it will be us just for a while. Do we even exist? Thats when I make a wish to swim with the fish. Because it's supposed to be this hot all summer long. I never would have believed you if three years ago, I'd be here writing this song. But here I am, next to you. The sky's so blue in Honolulu. Next to you in Honolulu. Next to you.We are just like the waves that flow back and forth. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning, and you're there to save me, and I want to thank you with all of my heart. It's a brand new start. A dream come true, in Honolulu."

I'm so sad that my Scuba Diving Certification is over, but I can't wait to see where this adventure and next step in my life gets me. Stay wild, flower child.