to help drag himself along. This is absolutely as dangerous as it
sounds. Jason has found himself trapped inside an underwater
cave, wondering how he got there and how he would escape.
He’s come face-to-face with 7-foot long crocodiles (for the
record, he prefers to approach them from behind instead of
head on). He’s been physically bumped by bull sharksandhe
regularly gets tangled in debris like fishing line, nets, tree roots,
and more, while weighted down under water.
Oh, and this is in the middle of hurricanes and other
extreme weather raging around him. He dives during such tumult
on purpose apparently because that’s the best way to find things: “If
we get really extreme conditions in rivers that are cutting through
ancient formations, they start ripping out new material. You have
to put yourself, put your body into that position in order to be
successful [i.e. to find new things]. You want to be there right at
the time that that happens. Most of the time I’m diving during
storms or if there’s flood conditions and black water and there’s
logs and everything else flowing down the rivers. I’m at the bottom
of the river. I have to weight myself, make sure I stick to the bottom,
so I don’t get washed away. I crawl on the bottom and pull up new
species or whale bones or fossils.”
You wouldn’t think it would be possible to have the poise to
figure out what’s old and what’s new while under water in the
middle of a raging storm, but Jason says he’s calm during these
dives. “There is a Zen factor of really putting your body into this
situation. You’re in a zone. It’s unparalleled. Your whole world is 8
inches in front of your face. You’re not thinking about anything
else, because you can’t. You have to think about that world. There
could be bull sharks swimming around you, you won’t see them.
There could be alligators above you. You just don’t know. You’re
just pushing yourself along with the anticipation that you’re going
to run into something, discover something that no one has seen
before. It’s really interesting.”
Interesting seems like an understatement.
“After a while it becomes a comfort zone. It doesn’t feel
risky. It seems absolutely natural. It’s kind of crazy.” Yes, it does
seem a bit crazy to us low sensation-seekers, but what I find fasci-
nating is that Jason not only remains calm, even intensely focused,
in the most extreme of circumstances, but he also actually craves it.
It’s almost like heneedsto dive or it starts impacting his life in
damaging ways.115 / All in a Day’s WorkDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:48, subject to the Cambridge