Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

“He didn't know whether we'd found a new cave, but was celebrating because the most successful dive we could have given him was one that brought us home safe.”

I'm such a wuss. I hate bugs, I hate spiders, I'm not particularly a fan of the outdoors, and love air conditioning. I can swim passably, can't really dive all that well, and get seasick. I'd make a poor explorer, and an even poorer cave diver. This woman is a badass.

Destined for water at a young age, Jill here is a thrill-seeker unlike any I've read about. I've seen cool underwater photos of nice, safe, reefs and things, but she dials it up to 50 and dives in caves. Dark caves, dangerous caves, caves you need special equipment and a healthy disregard for your safety to experience. But she does it multiple times, mapping out unexplored caves, exploring the underwater caves of a glacier, and bringing back stunning photos and footage. It's incredibly dangerous too, if the list of friends and colleagues she's had to bury is any indication. I could never, ever, in a hundred million years, do what she does.

There's a lot of soul searching from a woman cave diver here as well. Her relationships outside of the water are tenuous at best, and I appreciate in hindsight how her entire story out of the water is necessary to tell her story in the water. I'm not sure the people leaving bad reviews because she talks about her love life really understand how much it matters here.

I really enjoyed this book and the glimpses she gave us into her world underwater. It's a dangerous world down there, and after her brushes with death in this book, I'm glad she was here to tell it.

Honestly would've been a 5 star book until we got to the 7R chapter. Nothing bothers me more than that type of thinking "no one who doesn't have this could EVER understand why I do the things I do, people like me are just so DIFFERENT" Really put me off her as a person, not to mention the section where she talks about being willing to abandon a friend struggling with addiction due to the personal risk. But unwilling to abandon a friend panicking in a cave, guess personal risk isn't a huge problem after all 🙄 just the kind that she thinks is inconvenient and messy. I think the book would have been much better if the last two chapters were dropped off entirely. I quite liked it until then, and now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.