Near-Death Experience

NOTE: This was written for the online magazine Pick Me Up, which last week asked its readers the question: Have you ever almost died? (along with: What is the best relationship you never had?), but I thought I'd blog it, as well. Enjoy.

There have been three occasions on which I have almost died, all of which (rather suitably) make pretty neat stories, but probably would have made rather unimpressive obituaries.

The last time I went back to New Zealand, in the Christmas of 2002, I spent the majority of my time there in a little beach town called Whiritoa, on the eastern coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. My family owns a batch (beach house) there, in one of the most beautiful locations in the entire world. Around Christmas/New Year, the beach house gets absolutely packed with people, as me and my three siblings invite all of our mates over for beach-time fun (swimming, kayaking, taking the boat out, sunbathing, walking along the coast, visiting the blowhole, barbeques every day).

One day (New Year?s Eve, in fact) I decided to go for a walk with two of my best and oldest mates, Troy and Guzzo. The plan was to do some cliff-jumping. Cliff-jumping is one of my favourite things in the world, ever. It basically (astute readers will have seen this coming) involves climbing to the top of a very tall cliff, and then leaping off it into the ocean below. There?s a fantastic little island just up the coast from our batch which has a really great cliff on it, because the top of the cliff descends at an angle, which means you can choose to jump off from virtually any height you like, ranging from about fifteen feet to well over sixty (I go for the upper register- the more time I spend flying through the air the better, as far as I?m concerned). We usually kayak out to the island (another cool thing to do is to hurl your kayak off the cliff and then leap after it), but all the kayaks were all in use out on the ocean (important plot point!), so I suggested we just swim out to the island, then swim back.

The walk out to the island was uneventful, we rock-jumped (also one of my favourite things) along the coast until we reached the edge of the shoreline that was physically closest to the island, which was about 200 feet offshore. This edge was also a cliff, so we naturally leapt off this and into the ocean. Even as I did this, I knew that we wouldn?t be able to return to the mainland by this route, as the cliff face we were leaping off was sheer, and would have been virtually impossible to climb. However, there was a beach about a kilometre up the shoreline, so I figured we could just swim to this from the island once we were done.

We spent several hours on the island, leaping from the cliffs, wandering along the rocks, dodging seagull attacks (the top of the cliff we leap off had a nest of seagull chicks in it, and momma wasn?t too happy about our proximity). The sun was shining, the weather was sweet, and I did some of my best cliff jumping yet. As potential last-days go, it was a good one. When we?d had our fill of cliff jumping (hitting the water at velocity is actually pretty physically taxing, and it?s not uncommon to have bruises the next day. There?s this one injury you can get when the water shoots up your togs?.youch), we decided to swim for the mainland. The kilometre of land between us and the beach was a bay with sheer walls, and filled with jagged rock- not the sort of thing you?d want to try and climb onto, so we had to swim in a sort of diagonal line across the ocean, towards the beach. The water was so clear that, if you had been watching us from the island, we would have appeared to have been swimming through the air.

My troubles took a while to dawn on me. As I approached the shore, the swell (which was gentle near the island) began to form into waves, and quite big ones, at that. I had been swimming for a while when I realised that the drag on these waves (if you?re unfamiliar with ocean-swimming, a wave creates itself by sucking water from immediately in front of the crest, creating a ?drag? effect) was quite strong, and that I had been making zero forward progress for several minutes- I was just swimming on the spot. I?m a fairly strong swimmer, but I have asthma and tire easily as a result, so I was a little worried about running out of energy. I then did something which you should never, ever do at sea: I began to panic, and, not thinking clearly, decided I should quit with my diagonal course, and head straight for the coast- once on the rocks, I could walk along them to the beach. It?d be tough, but doable. I put all my energy (again: NEVER make a ?throw all your energy into one last ditch attempt? manoeuvre while at sea) into making a beeline for the rocks. It worked: I made it to the rocks.

I?d just clambered up them, thinking myself safe, when an ENORMOUS wave came crashing over me, tearing me off the cliff and casting me into the razor-sharp-rock-filled bay. I was racing along underwater at wave speed (which is bloody fast), tumbling and turning, thinking: ?If my head smashes into a one of those rocks, at this speed, that?s it. If I don?t die instantly, I?ll be knocked unconscious and I?ll drown.? My life didn?t flash before my eyes, and I can?t tell if time slowed down, because I may genuinely have been under water for a good long while. As it happens, I did smash into a rock, and died right then and there. Just kidding! I did smash into a rock, but it was my leg, not my head, that took the blow. The rock tore my toe and the ball of my foot open to the bone, but I was too adrenaline-filled to notice the pain (yet)- I grabbed onto the rock and scrambled up it for dear life.

My first action, the moment I was at the top of the rock, was to check my teeth. I do this after every life-threatening accident. I am dreadfully afraid of having my teeth knocked out. But they were all there, un-knocked, and I breathed a sigh of relief (I figure, if your teeth aren't knocked out, you're in pretty good shape). So: there I was, stranded on this rock. Troy and Guzzo were nowhere to be seen. The waves were far too big to risk getting back into the ocean, and the amount of blood pouring from my foot quickly ensured that the rock I was clinging too was coloured almost entirely red. I knew I wasn?t going to die, but I really didn?t know what I was going to do, other than sit there and wait for someone to notice my absence.

Fortunately, my sister-in-law, Linda, was out on the ocean in one of the kayaks. She was some distance off, and I struggled to catch her attention by leaping up and down on the rock. When she noticed me and started heading for me, I realized that, if she kayaked into the bay, the waves would knock her off her kayak and send her throttling into the bay, as surely as it had done to me. So I tried very hard to make a ?don?t come too close? gesture which, from a distance, looks remarkably like a ?come over here? gesture. All my fears fulfilled, Linda kayaked into the bay, a wave lifted up her kayak, and rolled them both into the bay. Linda swam over to my rock, and we had a short conversation:

?Okay, you swim to the kayak, kayak out past the waves, and I?ll follow you.?

?There?s no way you?ll swim out past these waves.?

?I?m a professional swimmer Daniel, I?ll make it.?

?My foot?s bleeding. Won?t it attract sharks??

?Sharks couldn?t swim in these waves!?

?...?

So that?s what we did. I swam to the kayak, paddled out past the waves, and Linda swam out through the waves. We rendezvoused on the beach, Linda took the kayak back via the Ocean, and I walked back over several kilometres of hilly farmland. Little note to non-farmies: Walking over farmland with a gaping great hole on your foot is incredibly dangerous, mainly due to hookworm, which lives in pasture and can only enter a human through an open wound. You have NEVER heard such swearing as I screamed (the pain came when the adrenaline wore off) all the way back to the batch. There was no-one about for miles, so I just let rip a torrent of profanity, so loud it echoed around the hills. I kept it up for about two solid hours.

When I eventually limped back to the batch, Troy and Guzzo were sitting on the lawn, playing Risk.

?Oh, we wondered where you?d gotten to.?

My revenge on those two bastards is another story entirely. But I actually, and this is no joke, I actually went through a pretty profound change that day. I?d almost died, and I know it sounds corny, but it really did make me realize how great it is to be alive, and I?ve not had a single regret since that day. I used to be the king of saying: ?I should have?? or ?I wish I had??. I?ve never used those expressions since that day. It?s just a waste of time. It seems to me that at least 90% of all the problems and stresses in this world are artificially created by people, generated, for no reason that I can discern. People just create problems for themselves. I try not to do that. Life?s for the living, and I can find enjoyment in almost any moment, just by thinking to myself: Hey man, you?re alive. You so easily might not have been, and you?d be missing out on all this opportunity for joy. I make mistakes and I get sad and I may not be everything I dreamed of being as a youth- but I don?t regret a thing.

d

click below for a map of the adventure! (not to scale!) My other two NDEs are available on request- they're rippers! Well, one of them is. The other is actually kind of mundane, if you're me! But that has teeth-checking fun, as well, so you know it's suitably violent.