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Glory be Unto Your House!

Every once in a while we get a guest or guests that you hate. You don't want to say why you hate them, but you do. Because you're jealous.


They're highly trained. Experienced. Practiced. Talented. Really excellent divers. Everything you work hard to be. They've even got an outstanding gas consumption. They're bloody annoying and it frustrates the hell out of you that those motherfuckers don't know how good they have it when here's you trying to get in the water at least once this month to try to keep your skills fresh.


(NOTE: Would it make you feel better to know that those amazing divers that you're super jealous of get major performance anxiety and tend to always say something like, "I'm so sorry I messed up visibility!" when they only just barely stirred a bit of dust as soon as they hit the surface, too? Everyone has imposter syndrome. Everyone. You're a perfectly good diver. Calm down.)


Something unexpected comes up when I'm diving with these folks.


Our swims leads us to places I don't frequent. Places NO ONE frequents. Due to the distance or complexity or technical skills required, we might past a half dozen Ts or strange-looking jumps. Past non-intuitive turns or tangles of lines. The sorts of places that original explorers came through, left a bunch of confusing, bullshit, twisted line, and nowadays maybe a team happens to accidentally wander by every few months.


I don't want to believe they're glory markers.


GLORY MARKER: An arrow/cookie/REM left on a line with no intention of retrieval somewhere remote just to prove you've been there.


I think they're glory markers, though.


I can't imagine that many people forget to pick their markers up. Especially in areas that are so far from home there's a zero percent chance anyone has the way as memorized as the walk from the bed to the bathroom.


No, these are working markers for people doing hard dives. Markers that were being looked for and counted on. (Or, in some cases, were just randomly in the middle of a line no where near any navigational decisions.) Which have then been left in the cave.


Might see two or three questionable markers usually in these areas on such a dive.


Obviously I'm reluctant to pick them up. You don't touch other people's equipment on the line, right? This may actually be critical, life-saving kit! Or maybe someone was planning a circuit four years ago? Or doing some sort of fucked-up survey that requires only a single marker at a T?


So I leave them, thinking, "If they're here next time I pass through I'm taking it."


When the fuck is next time, though? These are places I almost never go... almost no one ever goes... that's why the marker is still sitting there. How many divers have said to themselves, "I wonder if I should remove that marker?"


I know there are at least a few cookies I must swim past once every few years and keep wondering, "Was that there last time or am I remembering things wrong?" So I leave them again.


Yesterday: We were the only divers parked at the only usable entrance to the system for thousands of feet. And entrance that is infrequently used.


I could have filled several pigtails with what were almost certainly glory markers. And I'm going to try to remember some of them so I can pull them if/when I return to that area one day.


No one cares where you went in the cave. No one. Go because it's pretty and full of cool things to look at.


If you think anyone is ever going to give you a medal or a shag or the keys to the city because you left some plastic garbage with your name on it somewhere real deep in a hole in the ground you're a fucking idiot.


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