ANCIENT REMEMBRANCES AND OLD UNDERTONES

This chapter deals with my beginnings as a cave diver and as a caver. It was a long time before I began to make notes in a diary; hence, many details are irreversibly lost. It is only possible to conjure up the old undertones of something that has been very deep and interesting. It has been the turning point of a life. At the same time, it has been a world difficult to understand; and this is why, several years later, I have begun to make the notes on which some later chapters are based. The question to know if the surrounding world can exist without you or if you could exist without the surrounding world is irrelevant. But taking notes is the first step on the way of understanding the interaction between them. Understanding this interaction is the only way to avoid repeating endless the same kind of things, success as well as mistakes. Such a cyclic repetition is regarded by several religions, and especially Buddhism, as the hell. Whatever one’s beliefs, one has to write if one wants to avoid repeating always the same thing. Some writings begin without having a previous written basis, and with few documentary basis, this is the case here.

I encountered cave diving at the same time I encountered my future wife during May 1996. We are still happy, still together and still happy together. Despite or thanks to time’s flow, I’m still alive and still in love with her. Before encountering cave diving, I had already a very special character and was a very special character. This is why I was well fitted for cave diving as well as for my wife! I have had the great chance to meet both. Not being obliged to make a choice between them has been a great chance too.

I subscribed to a training session which was organised in the southwest of France, in the Lot. At that time, it was an unknown place to me. The early remembrances are dim: a sunny morning of May, a pink wild rose slightly perfumed growing on a chalky soil and a landscape with a special relief. The ranges and ridges of ordinary mountains are absent of this kind of relief where the higher parts are the flattest. This was, for the first time, a conscious encounter with the limestone plateaus of Causses and more generally with karstic landscapes. At that time, I had already made some hiking and mountaineering, but I had by far not the specific geographical and geological knowledge needed to understand this magic universe of the karsts.

The session lasted four days during some May’s long holidays. On the contrary of the sessions of scuba diving, there was only one dive per day, and the four dives took place in four different sumps. Each sump has a special profile and is different from the others: the four dives were not the repetition and improvement of a unique thing. The sumps we dove are very classical sumps, not very interesting for experienced cave divers, but at that time they were the first sumps for the trainees we were. We dove in a sump named Le Ressel that opens in the bedrock of the River Célé and where the first problem is to find the entrance of the sump itself. We dove in another sump, deeper, named Saint Sauveur. It requires decompression stops. The deeper you dive, the quicker you breathe the available air, so this dive needed to be very carefully managed. We dove in Cabouy, a resurgence 30 metres deep whose water is not very transparent. It was an initiation to the ambiance one can find in more difficult sumps, whose surroundings are always very different from lacustrine or marine surroundings. Eventually, we dove in Font del Truffe, a shallower but more extended sump. In this last cave, because my tanks had no protection and because of the rubbing, I remember I encountered my first failure. A valve suddenly got closed, and air was no longer available. We were three people, two trainees and an instructor. During the first seconds, the feeling was strange and dreadful: a foreboding of imminent dead. After that, it appeared not serious at all. The instructor just reopened the valve (a horizontal model, vertical models are to prefer), and we continued to dive until we reached the safety limit regarding air consumption.

This limit of air consumption was known as the ‘limit of the thirds’. At that time, we were taught the following thing: if you wear two identical tanks, and if you use a third of each tank during outward, your total consumption is two-thirds. In case of failure of one tank, the inward is possible because it remains also two-thirds in the other tank. So (with the hypothesis your consumption rate will not vary) you are protected, and you are able to come back to the exit. On the contrary, if during outwards you spent more than a third in at least one of the tanks, there is a risk of having not enough of air during inward. Of course, in this case, the risk is to encounter an awful death. From a qualitative point of view, it was something very clever and very important: the notion of redundancy. If something fails—whatever could be this ‘something’ (air, light)—you must have something else that enables you to come back to the entrance of the sump and more widely to avoid the danger. Even if I will explain further why this ‘limit of the thirds’ is not enough from a quantitative point of view, all my caving life is based upon this notion of redundancy. Before this training session, I had scarcely heard something so clear and so important. The risk of an awful death, on the one hand, and the necessity to find clever solutions and to be brilliant, on the other hand, are the essences of the activity. In our century, this cannot be found in the ordinary life, and this is why it is very seducing for some kind of characters like mine.

We ‘learnt’ many other things. I use quotation marks for two reasons. First, I had practised several forms of diving before the session: diving under ice, a lot of scuba diving in several surroundings and with various equipment including home-made re-breathers. I already had some firm knowledge. Second, I have later realised that I’m totally unable to learn like other people used to learn. By a queer irony, my main occupation is to be teacher of chemistry and physics.

Among the things we learnt the compulsory and proper use of a guideline. In a sump, you must always follow or install a guideline; this guideline must be tagged in order to retrieve the entrance and to know how far from it you are. In addition, you must know how to prevent entanglements and to be able to efficiently solve them. You must have a safety reel and a compass: in a situation where you have lost the guideline, the compass gives you some indications to find the direction of the exit. The reel allows you to perform a systematic research of the main guideline or to repair a broken part of it.

All what is explained above is necessary but not sufficient. This is very analogous to the fact that childhood, with its immaturity, precedes adulthood. The most important: as a ‘child’ cave diver, I had no or very few feelings. I had very few perceptions of the surroundings. That cannot be fully taught during a training session, only suggested and underlined. In other words, self-teaching is compulsory regarding this activity.

Feeling, anticipation and a good understanding of the surroundings are by far more important in cave diving than in other types of diving. But at that time, I was totally unaware of this big difference between cave diving and the diving I had already made. Despite this huge importance of surroundings, environment and background, I just felt a kind of continuity of my ‘career’. Very simply, I believed that I had dived in the sea, in lakes, under ice; and now I was diving underground: it flowed logically. Instinct and non-visual perceptions are important not only to prehistoric hunters, knights of the primeval times, airmen of the early twentieth century and sailors but also to cave divers. But this dimension was not included inside the teaching.

I’m not the only who thinks that surroundings are very important. For instance, it is well described by Nan Shepherd in her book The Living Mountain, especially in the chapter entitled ‘The Plateau’. She suggests that there exist different kinds of knowledge and that what matters is to live things. There is a strong similarity with the existentialism of some academics, but she was closer to life and nature than they were.

During the session, we learnt also that in order to explore sumps, we had to look at maps. One taught us that we had to use our eyes to come and see. One taught us to ask for permission if the sump had an owner. It had been made in a too-pedantic fashion even it was at the same time a very good teaching about autonomy. At that time, it was probably the most important thing I had kept in my trainee’s mind: exploration was the most important in cave diving’s realm.

During the summer 1996, with another trainee from the same session, we decided to go back in the Lot in order to dive by ourselves other sumps. At the same time, with another colleague with whom I had dived under ice but not yet underground, we had decided to dive the Goul de la Tannerie. This sump takes place in the south of France, in Ardèche, near the small town of Bourg Saint Andéol. In order to dive with both colleagues, I firstly went at Bourg Saint Andéol to dive with one colleague. After that, I travelled athwart the Causses in order to meet the other colleague in the Lot. August was hot with a blue sky. The remembrances of the Goul de la Tannerie are as dim as they are nice: a small cliff, an ancient wash house and water we saw as very clear, crystalline, in the pond. Once in the cave, due to the poor lights we had, water seemed gloomier than outside and a little a bit oppressive. We carried some clothespins, for one had explained us that it could be used, in case of fork, as a flag in order to be sure of the exit direction! Indeed, it turned to be a bad idea because this kind of plastic is quite fragile and because those objects are not very firmly clutched upon the guideline. However, we encountered no problem in what is, from an objective point of view—quite an easy cave. We dived perhaps at 400 metres from entrance and for us it was something great. I only later have learnt that numbers are not always the right parameters to measure cave diving.

Perhaps there has been additional events, or perhaps those events took place at another time than precisely during August. As explained at the beginning, without writing, only a whole remembrance remains. It is a very partial recollection of punctual events that are important only because of their relationships. At that time, I tried to write a book about diving under ice. This book never came out for many reasons. The first one was a divergence between me and other people of my club, and the second one was the lack of skills to produce good illustrations. There is in my mind a link between this project of book and the Goul de la Tannerie because of the following reason: my mate had forgotten some material, so I waited during a long time near the sump, sitting in the shade provided by a cedar tree and trying to write. However, despite this link, I absolutely don’t remember precisely if it was during the summer 1996 as presumed above or if it was later at the beginning of the autumn or even the following year! Remembrances follow an order, are linked together, with a logic that doesn’t exactly match time’s arrow. The true remembrances that give meaning to your life aren’t marshalled following a one-dimensional order.

After reaching the Lot, I remember quite well what we did with my other colleague, but I absolutely don’t remember where we put our tents or what we ate. We met an instructor from Paris, who, in addition to the role of benevolent instructor, was a professional fireman. We had already met him in May during the training. We decided to dive again Le Ressel, this sump that opens underwater in the bed of the River Célé.

Before the dive, we used my compressor in order to fill our tanks. A tank fell, and the hose was damaged. As many further incidents or events in my life, I believe that I had neither seen this obvious problem nor prevented it because, deeper in my mind, I disagreed with ‘something’. This ‘something’ was perhaps the choice of the sump or the point of view of the two other people. As a consequence, I was deeply taken with that, and I had a weaker grip on the immediate reality.

I must confess that in my present life, I prefer doing serious things alone. Except some dangerous and scarce exceptions I will describe later, it has always been safer to me. Solo cave diving, solo climbing, solo theoretical physics and informatics are the only places of my life where I have a real, deep and strong grip on the reality. I think of what I’m doing, and I do what I’m thinking.

I cannot prevent myself to think of the great mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who describes in one of his books (The Seventh Grade, ‘The Obsession of an Unknown Objective’) the same kind of difficulties: during a solo climbing in a very difficult route, his rope got entangled just when he met a team of Czech climbers. When he asked them to free his rope, the Czechs told him that he had better to stop; obviously, they regarded him as a crazy man. He has been obliged to solve the problem by himself and, in a hurry, to escape upwards. In his book, he explains that he was in trouble and he has been able to recover only when the Czechs were out of sight. Once—this is less glorious—I succeeded to crush my helmet when moving my car because I had discussed with people with whom I disagreed. I am a specialist of this kind of blunders, but I don’t have the weakness to regard them too seriously.

 

The first part of the Ressel is quite shallow, perhaps 20 metres deep, and presents a fork. After what the two branches of the fork reach the same shaft. In its bottom, the depth is almost 50 metres. Farther, it is deeper. With my mate, we dove the shallow part up to the shaft. This was not a lesson, and the instructor left us in order to dive in the deeper part. Except Cuban music in the car, I don’t remember what we made in the evening after the dive. The day after, we decided to dive in Saint Georges, a resurgence near the River Lot. We parleyed with the owner more about the place where we had to park the cars than about the sump, the safety of diving, or anything else really important. This sump has a first part of length about 400 metres and almost 30 metres maximal depth after you reach a bell. After this place, the sumps start again and become deeper, longer, and less known.

Our goal was to dive the first part up to the bell. We used stage tanks for the first time. In order to carry them, I used a solution learnt from the commercial divers with whom I practised diving under ice. They had explained that it was possible to push extra tanks or other extra burden if their weight was well balanced by a buoyancy compensator directly fixed to them. For the non-diver reader, it is a kind of bladder that can be inflated or deflated underwater. The weight was perfectly well balanced, but the drag and the torque were not. As I have learnt further, this was perhaps a very good technique for someone who has a static task to perform, but it was not very fine for travelling hundreds of meters in a sump, especially only with the trust of fins and without propeller. We made long decompression stops using air, which was far from optimum too. But at that time, we didn’t know very well the meaning of the word optimisation. Neither my colleague nor I had realized the huge importance of the adaptation to surroundings. I could agree with the idea that at this time, we were not yet cave divers; we were just divers using some techniques.

I was just a beginner, a newbie. However, I had been fully lured by cave diving, and I subscribed to an improvement training, which took place at the end of the autumn 1996. This has been something very rich, even if not fully pleasant. I believe that it has played a very important part in the construction of a character who has become tough. The organiser of this training session was a very special and very brilliant man. At least, I perceived him in such a fashion because he was very different from more common people. When you feel yourself different from common people, you can only be attracted by people your perceive also as different. After the improvement session, I participated to several of his exploration projects because of that difference we apparently shared. Later, I distanced myself for many reasons, the main being ethical divergences: regarding that facet of things, there were less differences between him and common people than I had believed.

This training session has been full of strong and opposite emotions. Those emotions were by far not related to the beauty of underground and underwater surroundings. They rather had a social origin: there was a kind of breakdown with my ordinary social environment of that time, and it was an immersion in a new environment. It was interesting, appealing, but I couldn’t totally handle it; this is the main reason why my remembrances are not fully pleasant.

At that time, I was not very aware that I had (and still have) a star character, with many hollows and peaks, and also a star fashion of learning. The training sessions have been a developing bath for this very special character. During some moments, I was apparently understanding nothing: I had the feeling to be a dumb and probably appeared like that to other people. During other moments, I was obliged to hide my huge level of knowledge and reflection to the other participants, instructors, as well as trainees in order to avoid remarks or problems. I have the precise remembrance of a very bad lesson about gas mix diving, where I heard a lot of false things. My only shelter was to pretend making notes. Of course, I asked no questions after that lesson! I have instinctively learnt that the more different you are, the less questions you can ask if you want to avoid problems.

Something especially disturbing and particularly able to generate conflicts appeared during this training. It was the difference between ‘caver’ and ‘scuba diver’. I had learnt scuba diving before starting to learn cave diving, and I was already instructor of scuba diving. But I had subscribed to the training session after a firm and definitive reflection. I was sure that I wanted to practise this activity in the most serious possible fashion. I have suffered a lot to be regarded as a scuba diver at the precise moment when I did no longer want to practise something that turned to be a mass activity.

People were not regarded according to their personality but according to several prejudices. From the most common point of view of that time, the only right fashion of entering in the milieu of cave diving was to be firstly a caver and (for exploration purposes) to need to dive a sump. Risking one’s life, trying alone or without any official teaching before subscribing to a training session was implicitly regarded as a must. One of the prejudices was that scuba divers could by no means become true cave divers and that they were only interested in the aesthetic and tourist side of cave diving. Regarding this ideal canvas, I was totally wrong. At that time, I was absolutely not a caver. I precisely had subscribed to a training in order to learn cave diving and to escape from mass and tourist activities I regarded as very boring.

This was the first time I encountered what I call ‘internal compartmentalisation’. It is difficult to describe. Very roughly, it is something like a crack between style and content, form and substance, inside and outside. You become aware that there is a deep crack between you view and fashion of living the world and the ones of other people. At a given time, something can be very important for other people but fully irrelevant and uninteresting for you. You understand (or not) that what other people expect and what you have to say or serve them is very different from what you expect. You become to be aware of the difference between reality and majority opinions: even if something is said by a large number of people, it can be false and not relevant for yourself. It demands an effort to deal with this concept, for you mustn’t forget that your inside feeling may also not match the reality. This is why I’m awkward during some moments of ordinary life. I find it very uneasy: I have always to think in order to adapt myself to things that are designed for other people. Truth and reality are as uneasy to find as a needle in a haystack; it’s a long and desert way to find them. But this way is worth to be followed, and mine develops along cave diving.

After this improvement session, I tried to catch up the schema described above as the only ‘right’ one. I subscribed for the first time a licence of the French Federation of Speleology (abbreviated to FFS). In order to balance the fact of being a scuba diver, I began to learn alone the techniques of vertical caving. Few months later, I participated to several projects led by the organiser of this improvement session, where vertical caving skills were needed: my self-learning had been correct. I later distanced myself from him for ethical reasons but also for another reason. When, regarding some facets of your character, you resemble too closely someone else, it can create tensions. This is particularly true when you have common aims and when you become rivals. Only later, I have succeeded to found the kind of relationship I needed; looking for complementarity is more important than looking for models. It is very natural to be attracted by people with whom you share some features and to be repelled by people with whom you have nothing to share. However, difference is a greater wealth.

I think that this ancient relationship has been a misunderstanding. I implicitly refused and still refuse some concepts that prevailed and still prevail in the milieu of caving. For instance, in order to manage their projects, people regard often other people as a resource among other resources. This can be done consciously or, more often, unconsciously. It is the dark facet of team caving as well as the prototype of our modern society. But here, I just want to point out that I do not regard people as a resource. When caving with other people, I am not interested in the management of human resources as if it were a business. I am neither interested in sheep-like behaviours. Realization of oneself as well as the others at the highest possible level is the most important to me even if it is a narrow and difficult way. This is easier to write than to do; only deep reflection and large-enough knowledge allow the detachment needed.

In France, the milieu of caving is mainly populated by left-wing people, I mean people who have a certain ‘social’ outlook whereas I have other beliefs. This was a reason to participate to projects led by a person who seemed less politicised. He did not widely spread left wing and social ideas on the contrary of other people from the same milieu. I believed we shared right-wing opinions. Since—and this is an element of ‘internal compartmentalisation’—I have refined my political thoughts. I enjoy political philosophy, which is a very important part of philosophy and can help to understand the world; but at the same time, I hate politics as a debate for commons. This is a reason to distance oneself from clubs where debates are unavoidable.

In addition and very likely far from caving, I discovered that it can exist many fashions, often opposite, to be at right-wing. And it exists many fashions to be at left wing too. The problem is not to be at right or left wing; it is a problem in an intellectual level. As a right-wing man, I would prefer to discuss or work with brilliant left-wing people than with stubborn right-wing people. Anyway, all those problems related to maladjustment to caving clubs have had at least a very positive effect: I began to read other books than purely scientific ones. I discovered or rediscovered Rimbaud, Mishima, Machiavelli, Marx, Dogen, Alexandra David-Néel and many authors of different countries, literary fields and epochs. For the first time, I succeeded to have a minimal literary life.

I wrote I hate politics as a debate for commons: politics as a debate arises when some people do not agree with an idea or something to do or something forbidden. Even if it doesn’t correspond to the most current definitions, it is always possible to find a left wing and a right one. I have been shattered by many political debates inside the caving and cave diving institutions: those who debate have very often a partial and shallow view. During debates, step by step, I realised that I was able to develop deeper opinions systematically opposed to the ones of my interlocutor. I could as well write that I have lost my political opinions. I became aware that the most dangerous happens when everybody has the same belief or the same opinion. So I have learnt to be afraid by the notion of consensus despite the central notion for the holy Western democracy.

Politics has particularly shattered me because one had explained us (former trainees of the improvement session of cave diving) that we had to participate to the life of federal institutions, especially the life of a certain ‘cave diving commission’. If we didn’t participate, it was a kind of sin with the same consequences in terms of dooming. I have been twice too naïve. Firstly, I was persuaded that what was expected was a real democratic involvement and not only a simple vote to maintain the current boarding. Secondly, I tried also to participate to the life of pure caving institutions where I was despised by people who didn’t exactly knew what was cave diving. Here rises the difference between cave diving and caving; the former activity is not practised by every caver but only by a few number. The result is that I have been doomed because I have participated too much! As a consequence, at that time, I had already understood that I had to split my underground life into two parts: the public, ordinary or disappointing part, and the private one, already rich. This is the practical facet of that internal compartmentalisation. I owe to very boring moments wasted in boardings and other commissions the understanding of the solution of a tough problem of theoretical physics known as the two-dimensional Ising model. I also owe them a suitable new decompression theory and the corresponding software. For non-divers: decompression theory deals with decompression stops one has to make after a deep dive. Participating to the public life of caving and cave diving has had a huge cost. It has built me a very bad public image. This is why, in turn, I perceived and still perceive this milieu as a drag. It is one of the reasons why I failed to obtain high-level diplomas in cave diving as well as in ‘dry’ caving. To obtain some of these diplomas, before curriculum and other firm knowledge, you have to be ‘well-known’ and to have a good reputation, which is not my case.

I succeeded at least to obtain the diplomas of cave diving initiator and of caving initiator. As an explanation of this success, the diploma of caving or cave diving initiator was easy to obtain. Not only because it was a first grade but mainly because it fuels the whole pyramid of diplomas. Without initiator diplomas to confer, the highest grades of monitor (translation for the French moniteur) and instructor (translation for the French instructeur) would be irrelevant. I obtained the diploma of cave diving initiator around 2000 and resigned during the autumn 2003. I obtained the diploma of caving initiator in 2003 and resigned in a public fashion during the autumn 2009 in order to protest against moral decay. I must precise that I have been an active initiator and that I have organised many training sessions. I have also participated as a teacher to training sessions organized by other people. Some of those training sessions were shallow and pedantic, very difficult to bear. By far, I have spent more interesting moments in cave rescue trainings even if this activity is now subjected, from my point of view, to the same kind of moral decay. ‘Technical rules’ prevail more and more over the intelligence of surroundings one taught me a long time ago.

I have always made more than my part of the job, and I have been very disappointed to be refused as monitor. This was also because politics. On the one hand, I was elitist; on the other hand, the level became lower and lower because the democratisation of the practice was regarded as a priority. The keyword was caving for everybody, but can an activity that takes place in a tough environment be ‘for everybody’? Monitors and instructors of caving and cave diving appeared to the beginner I was as chivalric characters, some kind of valiant explorers and warriors. But I’m not sure this is the profile expected nowadays. I resigned from all the system, and resignation is probably a shortcut that allowed me a quicker and better fulfilment. If I had been fully accepted in that milieu, I probably never had performed all the integral solo, which is the centre of my life. I probably had been engaged in a different fashion, more conservative, less interesting and less diversified.

Before entering in the realm of cave, I had obtained high graduations in scuba diving. It was a fashion for a young man, still a child, to gain self-confidence. With a high diploma, you are more easily allowed to do what you want or to dive where you want. When you have diplomas, even if you are regarded as ‘special’, it asserts that you are not foolish. Conversely, the same kind of reason led the man I am to be no longer interested in caving and cave diving diploma. Once self-confidence is acquired, trying to obtain diplomas that cannot longer be regarded as high-level certifications is a waste of time. If you want to do something or to be somewhere, you just have to do it! The next chapter deals with more ancient remembrances, which enable to understand the origins or the absence of self-confidence; what follows is mainly a story of strong self-confidence.