of getting caught in a rip, is a survivor's tale.
has her own kind of religion, and her
lieve that the ocean is one of her pulpits. In the
Hamptons, we are fortunate to have the ocean
at our fi ngertips, but we are only guests in it. I
am no Olympic swimmer. I am just an average
guy who heads to the water for a cool down and
a little exercise and to wash all the pressures of
daily life away. The occasional summer drown-
ing tragedy was not my problem.
mystery of how it steals you away in a fl ash
without your even knowing it, the dreadful
feeling as the water takes control of your body,
the tightening of the water's invisible grip as it
begins to manhandle you. I laugh when people
dismiss the danger, "Oh, you just have to go
with it and let it take you, then swim your way
out of it." I am willing to bet that these same
people would sing a very different song if they
actually found themselves within one.
and I decided to body surf the waves in an at-
tempt to bring back our days of youth. We rode
the waves and laughed while admiring the
lovely young ladies in bikinis who walked the
beach. Maybe our inattention was our undoing.
Suddenly--in the mere blink of an eye--the
water changed and became deeper and darker
than I had ever imagined. Shock hit fi rst. The
water pulled me far from the beach and I had
no idea where I was. I had lost Dave. My head
was spinning, and I was swimming in aimless
circles. Completely disoriented I tried, rather
desperately, to fi nd my friend.
terribly wrong. Even though we swam harder
we were swept farther out to sea. We tried
swimming parallel to the beach, as we had been
taught, but still the current pulled us farther
away. Silent, confused and scared, I desperate-
ly began to tread water while trying to wrap my
mind around what was truly happening.
lentless. It would not let go. For the fi rst time
in my life, I felt as if I were really inside the
ocean. We treaded water and even fl oated on
our backs, as the tide would not let us escape in
any direction. Still, it pulled, and my body tired.
Dave's face stared at mine as we both waited for
the other to show some kind of panic or ulti-
mate surrender. I was afraid this deep darkness
would be my end. I tried to be calm for Dave,
while on the inside I was preparing myself for
my last gasp of air before being sucked into the
ocean's depths. I am certain that my friend was
doing the same. We spoke with only brief words
of encouragement as we tried to keep the water
out of our mouths. It was when I heard him say,
"I can't believe this is happening," that my fear
became a certainty--I was going to drown. Let
me tell you--that is an ugly certainty.
a body that had little left to give? At no other
time in my life had I felt at such risk. The crush-
ing nearness of drowning had me desperately
hoping for some help, for some guardian of this
sea to keep me afl oat. My thoughts raced. No
one knew where we were; they wouldn't know
we were missing. I imagined the search begin-
ning for two souls who were long swallowed up
into the ocean.
we knew it was time. It was time to survive.
cue someone. He was, he was trying to rescue
himself. I followed his cue. We swam hard and
fast. Still, we did not break the riptide's grip.
We continued to swim parallel to the beach,
over and over our arms lunged out of and back
into the water. I was pleading with this current
to let me go. At the point of utter exhaustion,
when I stopped to tread water for a moment, I
realized I was no longer being sucked out to the
abyss. Mother Nature had let go of her grip. We
were out of the rip.
shore, keeping your head above water, with an