But you didnt.

I didnt. First of all the water off the east shore is about sixteen hundred feet deep and agonizingly cold. A number of things are going to happen that you hadnt taken into consideration. Of course if you had you wouldnt be there in the first place. Or the last. As you descend, your lungs will start to shrivel. At a thousand feet they’ll be about the size of tennisballs. You try to clear your ears and that hurts. Your eardrums in all likelihood are going to burst and that is really going to hurt. There is a technique for bringing up air and forcing it through the eustachian tubes into your ears but you arent going to have the air to do it with. So you drift down in your thin chain of bubbles. The mountains draw away. The receding sun and the painted bottom of the boat. The world. Your heart slows to a tick. Dive deep enough and it will stop altogether. The blood is leaving your extremities to pool in your lungs. But the biggest problem is just coming. You’re going to run out of air before you reach the bottom of the lake. Even with a sixty pound anchor—about all I could manage—you’re not going to make very good time. At twelve miles an hour—which is pretty fast—you’re doing a thousand feet a minute. Under the circumstances that you’ve chosen for yourself a breath may not last a minute. Even if you’ve done the fast respirations before you committed. The shock and the stress and the cold and the diminishing air supply are going to take their toll. Anyway, it’s going to be a good two minute trip to the bottom and probably more like four or five. Not sitting comfortably on the bottom of the lake.

Comfortably.

Sure. At least you’d finally be able to put down that bloody anchor.

Did you enjoy working all this out?

Why not? Problems are always fun.

I dont always know when you’re serious.

I know. Anyway, at this juncture you’ll have dropped the anchor and it is going to be towing you by your belt down through water that is freezing your brain. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to keep your wits about you but it really doesnt matter. When you finally give up your rat’s struggle and breath in the water—scaldingly cold—you are going to experience pain beyond the merely agonizing. Maybe it will distract you from the mental anguish at what you have done to yourself, I dont know. See if you can remember the pain in your lungs from being out of breath from running on a cold winter day. You’re breathing in quicker than your lungs can warm the air. It hurts. Now multiply that by God knows what. The heat content of water as compared to that of air. And it’s not going to go away. Because your lungs can never warm the water they’ve inhaled. I think we’re talking about an agony that is simply off the scale. No one’s ever said. And it’s forever. Your forever.