A few nights ago I watched a documentary on Netflix called My Octopus Teacher. It’s a very simply put together film about a South African photographer and filmmaker, Craig Foster, who, upon reaching a level of burn out, decides to go back to where he spent most of his time as a child; diving in kelp forests off the coast of South Africa. While diving he comes across an octopus in the water and the entire documentary is about his connection with the octopus and what he learns or observes from it.
Now, I don’t want to write about a movie I watched - I think this basic synopsis is more than enough - but I do want to make a few comments on the feelings it stirred in me. I’m sure many people will watch this documentary and come away thinking about how interesting the common octopus is, or maybe learn things they didn’t know about aquatic life, but for me it was something different. It wasn’t the character that affected me as much as the setting.
Back in 2014, when I lived in Hawaii, I developed a connection with water that I am still trying to understand. There was something about the sheer power of the waves at the surface, combined with the calmness underneath that completely enraptured me. Being able to sink under the chaotic surface and be completely engulfed in the life below was an escape for me. Unfortunately, due to my severe lack of gills, it was an escape that I could only experience for short periods of time which only made me crave it even more.
After leaving Hawaii in 2015 I didn’t live close by to another body of water until moving to the shores of Lake Ohrid in August 2018, and over the course of those three years I had forgotten the pull that the underwater world had for me. So that brings me back to My Octopus Teacher…
When Craig opens the film he talks about going out into the water and exploring the underwater world. He talks about the kelp being like a three dimensional forest that he can approach from any angle, almost like he is flying. He was “walk” along the forest floor, or “fly” above the treetops. These descriptions, and the visuals that accompanied them, were what brought all my memories of diving in Hawaii flooding back. And now, I live next to the deepest lakes in the Balkans and have another opportunity to chase this escape.