The Triangle

I flew through the Bermuda Triangle twice last summer. Obviously, I lived to tell about it.

Did anything strange happen?

No.

However, the day before we were to fly out from Puerto Rico back home the island was hit with a relatively minor hurricane. Our bungalow had been constructed into the side of a cliff facing eastward out into the Atlantic, about a hundred feet up off the surf. The groundskeeper came and slid metal plating over the glass doors and windows to protect us, I assume, from implosion should they break in the strong winds. Despite the nervousness of the women, my friend and I braved a good portion of the storm out in the pool, tossing a football, drinking a few cervezas, enjoying the excitement and the low heat and humidity that the hurricane brought.

The Bermuda Triangle first attained worldwide notoriety 1950 when a reporter for the Associated Press claimed an excess number of disappearances of ships and planes between the Florida coastline and Bermuda. Sporadic magazine articles and books came out mentioning the losses, with explanations ranging from strange physical phenomena to UFO involvement. It wasn't until February 1964 that the "Bermuda Triangle" name came to be, in an article in Argosy magazine.

For the first five days of our vacation Puerto Rico was hot, humid, and absolutely beautiful. The sky was an incredible shade of blue and the sunsets were amazing. Outside of an artist's pallette I have never seen such vivid and dancing colors. The smell of salt in the air, the tidal rhythms playing in the background of our conversations - sights, smells, sounds - all served to relax me as the warmth of the sun caressed my face and the earth slowly turned in its neverending spin with me hitching a ride on its surface.

There were some quite famous disappearances. The most notable was perhaps Flight 19, a squadron of five Avenger torpedo bombers on a training mission a few months after the end of World War II, inexplicably vanished without a trace. Theories quickly surfaced: methane bubbles capable of overturning ships, rogue waves, magnetic variations interfering with compass readings, piracy, just plain human error. One biologist-investigator, Ivan T. Sanderson, believed the source of the problem to be an intelligent, technologically advanced underwater civilization.

But let me tell you ... when that hurricane rolled in, the whole character of the island changed. It felt different, and I don't mean just the dropping temperature and humidity. It affected us all; everyone seemed to be on edge. We were assured we were in no danger, and probably 80 percent of me believed that. But one look over that railing, high above the cove where people swam and surfed the gentle waves only a day earlier, and now all I saw was white foam and opaque waves, larger and stronger, smashing upon the empty beach. When I stared straight out, the mottled sky and the turbulent water merged together a few miles out at the horizon.

Most of the early books on the Triangle, up until the mid-70s or so, seemed to be the same book rewritten over and over again by different authors with a similiar motivation: to get rich selling a mystery. However, by this time more rigorously-researched books were being offered to the public. And you know what? A lot of these disappearances in "calm seas" actually occurred during storms. Lloyd's of London, the famous insurance house, was quoted as stating that 428 vessels have been lost since 1955 (this was 1975), and there's absolutely nothing to indicate that the "Bermuda Triangle" has more losses than elsewhere.

Early in the morning of our last day, around 4 am, I awoke, and just could not get back to sleep. Tip-toeing out of our room to avoid waking my wife and daughter, I made my way past the other rooms, outside, up some stairs to the pool, which lay inground overlooking the Atlantic. The wind was still present, strong, but there was no rain. And it was right outside my door I first heard it; it grew louder as I made my way up towards the pool. The ocean. Vast, dark, mysterious ... powerful. I stood at the edge of the balcony and glanced down upon the black sea, afraid to stare too long. I watched the waves hammer against the rocks which supported our bungalow. I felt the roar of untold tonnes of ocean and fought against the wind pushing me back, as if in warning. The blackness of the ocean at night: How much potential energy lay within the deeps of that great beast? That unfathomable presence, the source of our life and all life on this planet, and the source of so much death and disappearance.