Windsurfing fifty yards away, something in my chest constricted and my mind froze, my brain vainly refusing to accept what it was witnessing.  Six a.m. and all alone on a large Long Island N.Y. bay, an inlet to the Atlantic Ocean nearby.  It was July 4, and gruesome images of the movie Jaws flashed through my mind.  I had been practicing high-speed turns on that particularly blustery day, choosing that time to avoid collision with boaters.  I had fallen several times, thrashing about to regain the board, and my scraped legs were bleeding.

     Never had there been shark sightings.  Never?  Impossible? Impossibility is usually more likely to be improbability.  Through my panic I heard an approaching motor.   Speeding towards me was a small boat piloted by an elderly figure.  A grizzled weather beaten face with steel grey eyes and a stubble of beard peered at me from beneath a naval officers cap, dark blue and adorned with gold leaf.

     "Son, drop yer gear and git onboard PRONTO," he barked.  "That's a large shark out there, bigger'n my boat."

     I all but snapped to attention involuntarily.  I looked over his shoulder.  The dark fin was more distant and remained on a course paralleling the opposite shore.

     I reconsidered.

     "No thanks captain," I replied with a touch of bravado, regretting the tremor in my voice. "I'd hate to lose board and sail in these winds, I'll go back on my own."

     Shaking his head in disbelief he muttered "damn fool," glancing back uneasily at a now circling fin.  Finally he shrugged, as if to say he understood that special bond between sailor and boat.  I yanked at the huge sail drawing it slightly taut, and swung the board around in a gybe and headed downwind.  It was perfectly executed, drawing a graceful arc as I headed to the opposite shore, my beach.

     Then it happened.

     I felt a series of unusually heavy swells from behind, then under me.  My bladder emptied.  I was being overtaken by the creature, to be torn then crushed and swallowed alive.

     The rolling swells passed by uneventfully, silently, driven by the fury of the wind, and I hurtled to the safety of the beach.

     The fin belonged to a wounded baby whale, eventually captured and brought to safety.

     My odyssey began through uncharted waters, swept away by afflictive thoughts and emotions, to reinvent myself through Buddhism into a more wholesome person.  Water became my path back to sanity.