Deep Water

The “misadventure” refers to the harrowing incident that occurred when ten-or-eleven-year-old William Douglas went to the YMCA swimming pool in Yakima. While sitting alone on the edge waiting for other boys to arrive, an eighteen-year-old muscular bully (“a big bruiser of a boy”) picked him up playfully and tossed him straight into the nine-foot deep end. Unable to swim, Douglas landed in a sitting posture, swallowed water, and nearly drowned after three agonizing, unsuccessful underwater attempts to spring to the surface, leaving him deeply traumatized for years.

Emotions & Fears:

1. Initial shock and fear, yet he was not yet frightened out of his wits.
2. As he descended, suffocation, dizziness, and lung-bursting panic set in.
3. Upon failing his first jump, stark, paralyzing terror seized him like an electric charge, rendering his legs and vocal cords completely frozen.
4. During the third descent, panic gave way to an uncanny, tranquil numbness—all effort ceased, the blackness closed in, and he experienced the peaceful sensation of dying.

Survival Plan: On his way down, Douglas rationally planned that when his feet struck the tiled floor, he would summon all his energy to make a great spring upward, pop to the surface like a buoyant cork, lie flat on the water, and paddle safely to the pool edge.

The YMCA misadventure inflicted severe, long-term psychological and physical damage:

1. Immediate Physical Trauma: For days after being rescued, he was haunted by a lingering weakness, unable to eat, and wept uncontrollably in bed; the slightest physical exertion made his knees tremble and upset his stomach.
2. Persistent Hydrophobia: A crippling dread of water gripped his mind, preventing him from enjoying water-based sports—fishing for salmon and trout, canoeing on lakes, and swimming.
3. Emotional Deprivation: It cast a suffocating shadow over his youth, rendering him a prisoner to an irrational fear.

Douglas was determined to conquer his hydrophobia because it systematically ruined his life and leisure. An avid lover of the wilderness, he found that whenever he visited scenic waters—such as the Cascades, the Metolius, or Bumping Lake—the icy grip of terror returned to paralyze his limbs. It robbed him of the pure joy of canoeing, boating, swimming, and fishing for salmon and bass. Refusing to live as a lifelong hostage to fear, he resolved to eradicate it completely.

The instructor built a swimmer “piece by piece” over seven months through a systematic, scientific training program:

1. Pulley & Cable Apparatus: Fitted Douglas with a waist belt connected to a rope running through an overhead pulley on a steel cable, allowing him to swim back and forth across the pool with safety assurance.
2. Breathing Mechanics: Taught him to put his face underwater to exhale and raise his nose above water to inhale, repeating this fundamental rhythm hundreds of times.
3. Leg Conditioning: Made him hold the edge of the pool and kick his legs continuously for weeks until his stiff, paralyzed muscles relaxed.
4. Integration: Once each component skill was perfected, the instructor integrated them into a seamless swimming stroke.

Douglas did not rely solely on the instructor’s clearance; he subjected himself to rigorous independent trials:

1. He swam alone across the full length of the empty YMCA pool, confronting tiny vestiges of returning fear with defiant laughter.
2. In July, he went to New Hampshire and dived into Lake Wentworth, swimming two miles across from Stamp Act Island to Triggs Island using various strokes (crawl, breaststroke, backstroke).
3. Finally, he camped at High Meadows, dived into Warm Lake, and swam across to the opposite shore and back. When he emerged triumphant and Gilbert Peak echoed his celebratory shout, he knew with absolute certainty that his fear was conquered.

Douglas creates an unforgettable portrait of panic through visceral sensory imagery and psychological realism:

1. Distortion of Time and Depth: Describing nine feet as feeling like “ninety feet,” evoking suffocating depth.
2. Visual Imagery: The recurring nightmare of “dirty water with a yellowish tinge” that obscured all light.
3. Somatic Paralysis: Physical descriptions of lungs aching, head throbbing with dizziness, and limbs hanging as “dead weights, paralyzed and rigid.”
4. Auditory Helplessness: Screaming under water where “only the water heard me” and discovering that screams froze in his throat.
5. The Shift to Peaceful Numbness: The chilling transition from wild panic to tranquil unconsciousness (“the curtain of life fell”) brings the reader directly into the experience of near-death.

Douglas recounts this childhood ordeal because it carries a universal philosophical epiphany beyond a mere swimming lesson:

1. The Nature of Fear vs Death: Having hovered on the precipice of death, Douglas discovered that in death there is absolute peace; the terror resides entirely in the fear of death.
2. Roosevelt’s Wisdom: He validates President Roosevelt’s famous statement, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear is an internal illusion that can be completely dismantled by willpower and disciplined action.
3. Intensified Will to Live: Surviving the trauma caused his will to live to grow exponentially in strength and vibrancy, empowering him to live an intrepid, fearless life in public service and mountaineering.