Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [92]
More rocks were sliding down the ridge; it was becoming increasingly unstable. Rocks the size of oranges were bouncing off the bow. Koshman reversed the boat’s engines and started pulling offshore. Matkin turned the rowboat around and told me she would stay right beside me.
The avalanche happened at the best time. It pushed me offshore quickly. I had to move fast without thinking. Quickly I tugged my yellow cap onto my head, stuffed my long hair into it, pulled my goggles over my head, licked them so they wouldn’t fog, licked them again just to make sure, adjusted the straps on my swimsuit, took a deep breath, and slid my feet into the Muir Inlet of Glacier Bay. Immediately the frigid water dulled my feet and then my hands. My arms turned bright red and ached with a deep pain. I had asked the crew not to tell me what the temperature was.
At first, I swam freestyle with my head up; an inefficient way of swimming, but it allowed me to conserve body heat a little longer. More than that, I was afraid of the pan ice. I was afraid that I would slice my face with it. As I chopped it with my hands I felt it crack, and I felt the sharpness of the edges. It was like swimming through shards of glass. I didn’t want to get cut. I was scared.
The crew was shouting at me. Icebergs were being pushed toward me by the current from the left and directly head-on. There were five or six icebergs, in different shapes and sizes, from six feet wide to one foot wide, and up to three feet high. They were flowing from the left, down the bay, and swimming near them was like running a gauntlet, but this gauntlet was moving toward us, and it was hard to judge the speed of the current. Could I get past them before they reached me, or did I have to slow down and let them slide by?
Dena Matkin was rowing ten yards ahead of me, her petite body working hard. Moving through the ice fields was difficult work. She had to get us through the ice patches and around the ice blocks without getting the rowboat caught up on the ice. At the same time, she was keeping an eye on me, making sure I wouldn’t ram into the back of the boat. Dena used her oars like a sledgehammer, slamming them down against the pan ice with all her might, repeating the action rapidly until the pan ice cracked.
Her boat became a mini ice breaker. She parted the ice and I followed her through the break, feeling the sharp ice sticking into my chest and forearms.
“Watch out for that berg!” Dena shouted a warning. “Head right. No—more. More. It’s wider than you think.”
Turning hard right, I followed Dena around a large iceberg six feet high and eight feet wide. We were within a foot of the iceberg, and as I swam, I stared at it. This was the first time I had ever been so close to an iceberg, and it was magnificent, a piece off the Riggs Glacier. At the bottom, the iceberg was bright glacial blue. In the middle, it was deeper blue and marbled with snow. The top of the iceberg had been sculpted by wind and rain into a thin, wavering, and silvery edge.
I swam as fast as my arms would turn over, trying to beat the cold and create heat. With my head up, I was able to see the bay ahead and to my right and left sides. The sun emerged from behind a cloud, and I looked across the Tiffany blue water, where a dozen icebergs shimmered like diamonds, bobbing slightly as they slowly slid downstream toward us.
“Look out, pan ice!” Matkin shouted. She broke a wedge through it with her bow so I could follow. It was a wide piece, and the unbroken part shifted around in front of me. I thought, Maybe I should wait and let it flow past me; then I won’t have to swim through it. That won’t work. It’s too cold. Dena was yelling for me to swim around it, but that would take too much time. I had to swim through it. Using my right arm I made my hand flat, as if I were going to do karate. Then I chopped it down onto the ice. It hurt;