A Martini and A Mesh Bag of Mollusks
Last week was misplaced. Not in the usual “where are my keys” way, but in the more metaphysical sense of having been present but somehow missed. I showed up for work on Saturday—but by midmorning I was aching, hot-headed, and harboring the feverish gloom of someone who absolutely should not be on an oncology unit. I bailed, left my co-workers with my caseload, and called home for a ride up the hill. Cuz riding my bike up the Duluth hill with a pounding head and body chills sounded far from fun.
I spent the next two days mostly horizontal, shifting positions only when gravity made it unbearable to stay put. Even television, that great healer of the mildly ill, felt like too much of a cognitive load. I had no gastrointestinal distress, no coughing or sneezing or mucosal drama—just heat, aches, and the oppressive sense that I’d been lightly steamrolled.
With a fever of 102 , I should’ve been melting. Instead, I was shivering in $800 worth of dive gear like a frozen astronaut with a broken thermostat.
By Thursday, I had rallied. Sort of. And because life has a flair for the absurd, I decided to go diving for snails. I know—when one has barely been vertical for three days, descending into a chilly northern lake to pick tiny mollusks off rocks seems unwise. But when the gig pays twice what I make in healthcare and doesn’t involve sneezing on immunocompromised people, so exceptions were made.
The first two dives were fine—even pleasant, in that mildly surreal way diving can be when you’re picking through a carpet of invasive snails like some kind of aquatic janitor. But every so often, I’d look up from the grim tableau on the lakebed and be struck by the sheer, improbable beauty of it all: shafts of sunlight flickering through the water, schools of fish darting like confetti, the whole scene alive and shimmering. I took a quick selfie with the GoPro—not out of vanity, but in a half-hearted attempt to capture the strange loveliness of the moment. The light. The fish. The stillness. Even snail duty has its charms, now and then.
A school of perch drifts by while I fumble for snails.
Then came the third dive.
It was a slog. I don’t know if I was running a fever again—Kinda hard to tell submerged in 60° water—but I had all the energy of a boiled sponge. My limbs felt like they belonged to someone else. My brain suggested, more than once, that perhaps this was how people die: cold, confused, and holding a mesh bag of mollusks.
I lasted about 90 minutes, then shuffled to shore like a shipwreck survivor, barely able to remove my fins without assistance or a small crowbar. Thankfully, salvation was near: Sandy and Fred’s outdoor shower, which should by all rights be enshrined in the National Register of Therapeutic Structures, and a gas station burrito that tasted, improbably, like salvation.
After that, things improved. Slightly.
By Friday I was functional enough to return to the hospital, where the word “healthcare” continues to be used with baffling optimism. These days, it’s more like “disease management,” defined by inefficiency, acronyms, and an uncanny ability to charge five times more than any other industrialized nation. But that’s a rant for another time.
The weekend brought a visit from Grace and her boyfriend Dom, who arrived bearing Grandma’s Half Marathon race bibs and the easy charm of youth. I missed the race (something about working in our collapsing healthcare dystopia), but caught up with them afterward. Dom is the quiet sort—soft-spoken, unfailingly polite, and the kind of person who does the dishes without being asked, which already puts him in the top one percent of humanity. He treats Grace with a kind of quiet reverence, the way one might handle rare glassware or speak to someone who’s just won a Nobel Prize. It’s endearing. I like him.
Sunday evening found me back in a cherished ritual: a gin martini (one of life’s perfect inventions—simple, civilized, and surprisingly easy to get wrong) and the meditative task of assembling my rebreather for Monday’s dive. There’s something strangely centering about fiddling with o-rings and sensors while mildly tipsy. Not strictly PADI-approved, but deeply satisfying nonetheless.
Monday, astonishingly, was glorious. After a classic Duluth weekend of fog, 50s, and an east wind sharp enough to sand furniture, the sun came out. Temperatures climbed into the 70s. The lake glittered. After a long, lovely day of diving, I sat on the deck, another martini in hand, and started writing this.
We hadn’t planned to circumnavigate the island—but with hours of gas and nowhere to be, we just kept swimming, chasing rocks, rumors of fish, and the quiet thrill of being nowhere in particular.
Earlier today we headed to Split Rock, where Heather proposed exploring Ellingson Island, a rocky dot just offshore. Supposedly, the southern end hosts the remnants of a fishing settlement. More reliably, it has skipping stones that would make Tom Sawyer weep. We hadn’t really discussed circling the island, but after an hour of poking around underwater, I looked at my compass and realized we were halfway around. Heather apparently had the same thought, because neither of us turned back. We just kept swimming.
Superior’s shoreline doesn’t stop at the waterline—it just gets quieter, colder, and vastly more wonderful.
The dive itself was lovely, even if the fish were playing hard to get. Heather claimed she spotted a few lake trout or maybe salmon—she wasn’t specific, which makes me suspect she was just teasing me, knowing full well I’ll chase a fish photo like it’s buried treasure. I choose to believe she made it up. Still, the water was clear, the rocks felt ancient and watchful, and the whole thing had a kind of quiet, accidental grandeur.
It’s strange how being knocked flat by a bug can wipe the slate clean. For a few days, nothing exists beyond your fever and the exact shape of your ceiling fan. But then, slowly, you reenter the world—tea tastes like tea again, your body moves without involuntary noises, and the mundane starts to sparkle just a little. I wouldn’t recommend illness as a mindfulness practice, but I have to admit: it makes a Tuesday feel like a minor miracle.