If you searched for this book review and landed on this blog, I assume you are a diver or soon to be one. Jill Heinerth, the author, used diving to escape a typical life of 9-5 work for one full of extreme adventure going places where actually nobody has ever gone, with some fantastic curves along her journey. So what am I talking about? That’s Into the Planet, a biography of a cave diver.
I am from southern Ontario, which is lucky enough; it seems to be some sort of dive mecca. As a result, I am surrounded by excellent, influential, and accomplished divers, one of them being the author of this book Jill who I have had the pleasure of meeting. Jill is as down-to-earth and approachable as they get, and the story in this book just helps you understand why.
Jill takes the reader on a chronological adventure from the start of her falling in love with nature and when she first discovered her passion for the mysterious underwaters world that has shaped her life since.
From her certification dives in the cold clear waters of Lake Hurons, Tobermory ( more about Tobermory diving, click here), where she fell in love with diving. The beginning of what many people experience when they fall in love with diving. That overwhelming feeling that diving feels right makes you feel alive. It makes you feel like you are a part of something so much bigger than you. An environment where you will see more wildlife in one dive than most people will see all year on the surface.
Like so many of us, Jill’s indoctrination to the water world started in her own words:
“I had wanted to learn to dive since the first time I saw Jacques Cousteau on TV as a young girl.”
Jill shares some of her most adventurous expeditions: alone woman carving a reputation amongst the best of cave diving explorers. With adventures in Mexican juggles pushing caves that nobody has ever been in or working to beat other teams of explorers trying to connect two cave passages. She describes what diving and exploring inside giant Ice burgers the world has known in Antarctica and how the allure of the passages kept trying to trap Jill and her team when they were on an expedition. Jill doesn’t hold back with the good, the bad and the ugly, from challenging, life-changing business decisions, dive accidents and deaths, and how ever-present this reality can be in the elite dive community. The end of personal relationships and drugs abuse in her community.
Jill Bares it all displaying even while travelling the path less travelled and forging her name to being a competent cave diver explorer and never quitting her passion.
In the second chapter, Jill shared a revealing story of a home invasion she experienced while a young woman in university, and I won’t go into great detail. Still, that single event framed a lot of how Jill handles life and how she confronts challenges with overwhelming uncertainty. So I’ll put it in a short sentence. She is a Survivor.
As a diver reading, this book was pure joy, and it instantly made my top ten dive book list. The words Jill uses describe how the natural environment attracts her. She has the sort of courage not just of living a life of danger and adventure and explorations but a story of courage a woman who wasn’t going to make any excuses in a man’s world and wasn’t going to live a conventional safe existence. A life of her own on her terms with the things she valued all because of her love for diving and her want to dive to escape.
I’ll end this book review with this quote as I feel the life described in the book embodies this sentence.
“ But when we transcend the fear of failure and terror of the unknown, we are all capable of great things personally and as a society.
If you’re not familiar will Jill Hienerath other projects and apparel, check out her website here: intotheplanet.com