Then came the usual moment of dread and resolve: sealing oneself inside a drysuit, zipping in tight, and waddling into a body of water that was, to put it bluntly, bloody freezing. At first I thought my suit had sprung a leak, but no — my dive computer later showed the surface water was a crisp 41°F, dropping to a bracing 38° at depth. The sort of cold that encourages you to move slowly and think deep thoughts, mostly about wool socks and warm soup.

Visibility was middling. We’ve had better days. We’ve also had days when it felt like diving through a cappuccino. So we took it.

We descended along the wreck, which obligingly appears at about 45 feet. I tied off the dive flag — a nuisance object I loathe with every fiber of my being. It wraps itself around my valves, limbs, and occasionally my soul. Once that was done, I proceeded to photograph things, mostly Heather. She posed graciously on the shallow bow section, and I clicked dutifully. Not my best work. Moving on.

We continued down to her favorite part of the site: the smokestack. It’s a 50-foot steel cylinder — rusted, semi-crushed, and exactly the sort of tight squeeze she loves. In side-mount, she used to glide through it like a fish in a drainpipe. With the rebreather, though, it’s more of a gentle act of persuasion. Today she wriggled heroically, wedged, and then stuck, just slightly. I floated over, gave her the tiniest of nudges — just enough to guide the unit past the small initial opening — and whoosh, she was in. A minute later she popped out the other side, beaming. I gave her a high five, while privately thinking about how unpleasant it would’ve been to explain to Search and Rescue that my dive buddy was trapped inside a 19th-century exhaust pipe.

Then we turned deeper.

This was new territory for me — 111 feet, deeper than I’ve ever been on either open circuit or my rebreather. My card says I’m certified to 100 feet, so when my computer blinked that 111, I gave a symbolic shrug to no one in particular and ascended slightly to keep a conservative margin above Heather. I’ve had issues before — little mental wobbles at depth. No physiological reason. Just a vague uptick in anxiety, shallow breathing, and a passing certainty that I’ve made a terrible decision and will shortly be out of air and bolting for the surface. But not today.

In fact, I felt fine. Better than fine. Calm. Alert. Present. I’d even practiced some visualization before the dive — the kind they teach in sport psychology manuals — imagining myself gliding along the wreck, relaxed and unbothered. That exercise had been discouragingly tense. But the real dive? Blissfully mellow. Go figure.

We explored unfamiliar wreckage — one massive side panel of hull jutted up at an angle like a broken fin, and I thought it might make for a dramatic diver shot if only I had more time. But NDL was ticking down to five minutes, so we began our slow, wandering swim home.

On the way back, I got the photo I rather like: Heather in front of a triangular shard of wreck that looked like a rusted shark’s tooth. The beam of her dive light cut perfectly across the frame, and I made a mental note to insist she keep it switched on from now on, like a Hollywood key grip in scuba gear.

We passed a small shoal of sleek silver fish — three to four inches long, species unknown, but enthusiastic in their mystery. Life in the Big Lake often feels like an accidental cameo. Brief, surreal, and delightful.

So, another Monday dive. But a good one. I went deeper than I ever had, and didn’t once feel like I was going to implode, panic, or be permanently wedged in a smokestack. Plus, I got a photo I like.

Not a bad way to start the week.