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Find a Way: The Inspiring Story of One Woman's Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream - Softcover

Nyad, Diana

 
9780804172912: Find a Way: The Inspiring Story of One Woman's Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0804172919 ISBN 13: 9780804172912
Verlag: Vintage, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

NOW THE NETFLIX FILM NYAD, STARRING ANNETTE BENING AND JODIE FOSTER

Hillary Clinton said that Find a Way would stay with her through the general election:  “When you’re facing big challenges in your life, you can think about Diana Nyad getting attacked by the lethal sting of box jellyfishes. And nearly anything else seems doable in comparison.”

When Diana Nyad arrived on the shore of Key West after fifty-three hours of grueling swimming across an epic ocean, she not only set a world record—becoming the first person to swim the shark-infested waters between Cuba and Florida with no cage for protection—she also succeeded in fulfilling a dream she first chased at age twenty-eight and at long last achieved when she was sixty-four.  

Now, in a riveting memoir, Diana shares a spirited account of what it takes to face one’s fears, engage one’s passions, and never ever give up. For no matter what life may throw at you, or how many times you may have experienced defeat, it is always possible—as long as you commit to living life to the nth degree, no regrets—to “find a way."

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

For her maverick open-water performance of the 1970s, Diana Nyad was known as the world’s greatest long-distance swimmer. For the next thirty years, Nyad was a prominent sports broadcaster and journalist, filing compelling stories for National Public Radio, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and others. She is a national fitness icon, has written three other books, is a talented linguist, and is one of today’s most powerful and engaging public speakers.

www.diananyad.com

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

Crisis

The chanting begins in a gentle chorus and grows to an ­adrenaline-­ fueled frenzy. Our voices emanate from the dock at Marina Hemingway in a resounding boom, sweeping over the cobblestoned streets of Old Havana, wafting across the sea ­toward faraway U.S. shores.

The Xtreme Dream Team is ­thirty-­five strong. We are huddled. Closest to me in the center is Bonnie. And Candace. And Mark. And John. They are my lifeline.

I yell. The cadence falls in:

“Where we swimming FROM?”

They answer:

“CUBA!!”

I pump it up a notch:

“Where we swimming TO?”

They escalate:

“FLORIDA!!!!!!!”

We are giddy with faith. Our secular version of a religious revival, the congregation chanting in a fever. We are as one. This will be Our Time. Our collective passion catapults us into an altered state of zeal. Our voices pump through the humid late afternoon of a sultry day in Havana, September 23, 2011. We are believers.

The crew scatters to their respective boats while I return to the hotel room. They need to be through customs and waiting for me to swim out of the mouth of Marina Hemingway Harbor in two hours.

I go back to the silent rituals. Hydrating. Yoga. Stretches. Deep breathing. A meditation of calm and focus. I am talking to myself, very slowly. I inhale with one syllable, exhale with the next, imbuing my brain with the mandates of this possibly impossible endeavor, this endeavor that drives my life force:

Take every minute, one at a time. Don’t be fooled by a perfect sea at any given moment. Accept and rise to whatever circumstance presents itself. Be in it full tilt, your best self. Summon your courage, your true grit. When the body fades, don’t let negative edges of despair creep in. Allowing flecks of negativity leads to a Pandora’s box syndrome. You can’t stop the doubts once you consent to let them seep into your tired, weakened brain. You must set your will. Set it now. Let nothing penetrate or cripple it.

I visualize pulling on a titanium helmet before the first stroke. This is my will. This strength of mind cannot be diminished. We think, after our two failures, that we know every possible roadblock that can emerge to thwart our journey, yet it is truly a vast, unfathomably powerful wilderness out there. This is a swimmer’s Mount Everest, the great epic ocean endeavor of our blue planet. It’s never been done. Strong swimmers have been questing across this ocean since 1950. No one has made it all the way across unaided.

You can do this. You will do this. The mantra takes on a rhythm with each breath, through the toe touches, the shoulder rotations. The body is warming, loosening. The mind is steeling. The spirit is reaching its necessary, indomitable plateau.

Bonnie and I, silent together in the austere, Communist Hotel Acuario room, go about our business. I have a blanket spread out on the floor. Neck circles, hamstring reaches, trunk twists. I drink a few ounces of water in between each exercise. My robe is ready, goggles in one pocket, cap in the other. Yet I still check to see they’re there, neurotically, over and over. My suit is hanging on a hook next to the robe. The surreal feeling is coming on. I am ­ultra-­aware of the molecules of oxygen traveling with each long sip of air to the bottom of the solar plexus, then the carbon dioxide inching back up ­toward my lips. The folds of the robe, revealing the words “Fearless Nyad” across the back, appear as a million puffs of fleece and cotton I’ve never noticed before. The cool water streams down my throat as if drop following individual drop. Bonnie’s voice every few minutes is a steady, ­low-­register, checking in. Monosyllables. We don’t need to talk. It’s all been said. We’re ready.

Candace pays me a soulful last visit. I’m the lucky one. Two lifelong best friends. Candace’s touch imparts a wave of calm as she lays her hands on my shoulders, my neck. She is breathing slowly, deeply and that makes me take on her rhythm. She settles my nerves. She heads off to her boat, assures me she’ll be there every stroke of the way.

The golf cart shows up at four ­forty-­five p.m., right on time to take us to the start. Bonnie and I sit close. Silent. We know our friendly driver, Jorge. He ­doesn’t say a word. He understands. The significance of the moment is palpable. When we come around the corner and see the ocean, we share the surge of hope simultaneously and dare to exchange a knowing glance. It’s flat as glass. The reflection of clouds stands still on the surface, all the way to the horizon. We know better than to imagine we will have sixty hours of this perfection. Or thirty. Or ten. Or two, for that matter. But for this moment, the vision of this calm washes over us like fairy-dust magic, perhaps an omen for many hours of smooth swimming ahead.

My “big bear,” my dear friend El Comodoro José Miguel Escrich of Havana, and my cherished friend from Mexico, Kathy Loretta, our Xtreme Dream Cuba Ops Chief, are waiting for me at the rocks. The start will be a plunge off the boulders that line the mouth of famous Marina Hemingway, where Ernest Hemingway himself fished, drank, and told bon vivant tales, where the Kennedy clan and Sinatra’s Rat Pack and Mafia dons partied many nights away on luxury yachts before the Revolution of 1959. The place shimmers with textured fables, which is of course a big part of the allure of this crossing. The natural rock wall, first buttressed to protect this island country from pirates and invasion, has by now kept Cubans in as much as it has kept others out. To swim all the way from one nation to another, from this particular forbidden land to my home country, to fully comprehend the lives of so many Cubans who left this very shore, in makeshift rafts in the middle of the night, speaks a compelling drama. Apolitical as I am, it’s a drama written by impactful events that has always gripped me.

This passage, considering the powerful Gulf Stream, with its attendant eddies and countercurrents, the particular dangerous animals lurking beneath, is unlike any other ­hundred-­mile ocean crossing on Earth. Were you to spread out the nautical charts of all the globe’s equatorial waters, those warm enough for a swim of this length, you simply ­couldn’t find a more challenging hundred miles for a swimmer. This stretch, Cuba to Florida, is where Mother Nature rages. We all, the Cubans and our Team alike, grasp the gravitas of the occasion. History extends across the sea before us.

The Cuban press corps is lined up in full force, their cameras set up in a sweep along the rocks. The beautiful ­royal-­blue stripes of an oversized Cuban flag stretch strong and proud across the start area. Our five boats stand sentry off the rocks, along with a number of Cuban boats that will escort us out to international waters, twelve miles off the coast.

As I step down onto the flat rock area, the Team roars: “Onward! Onward! Onward!” Bonnie and I pump our fists ­toward them.

Bonnie begins the smearing of grease as I get the cap and goggles ready. I answer a few polite questions from the press, the lengthy questions having been handled at the press conference earlier. These are simply a few of the “How do you feel?” “Are you heartened, to see the calm sea in front of you?” “Will this be the last time?”

Fair enough. This is my third attempt. Will this be the last time? Of course this is the last time. But I did say that twice before.

The overwhelming scope of the quest tugs me away from all this...

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Verlag
Vintage
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0804172919
ISBN 13 
9780804172912
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
GPSR Kontakt
gpsr@libri.de

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