It wasn't his lungs that got him out alive -- it was his confidence and his experience. He had taken on too much risk, and when the risk went bad, the only way to survive was to prioritize, problem-solve, and tamp down the Big Fear.

Recalls Skiles: "Can I say that I wasn't afraid -- that I kept endorphins and adrenaline from dumping into my blood stream? No, I can't tell you that. Did I squelch them so that they didn't control my mental process? Yes, absolutely. If you let that alarm go off, it will absorb your ability to work the problem.

"I knew as clearly as a human being can know that I was facing the ultimate challenge of my life," he continues. "I had dug myself into a mud tomb, I had zero visibility, and I was losing air -- but I had to cancel out those problems. If I had let anything distract me from getting control of my breathing, I would have died."

"We're Freaking Out Of Our Minds"

Before I made the trip to Florida, I had asked Skiles's partner, Peter Butt, a naive question: "Will you guys be going on a 'dangerous dive' while I'm down there?" The question had unnerved him.

Cave diving is their work. Nothing more, nothing less. After logging hundreds of hours each in underwater caves, they have learned how to prepare for every kind of risk and have dealt with just about every type of emergency. They possess the most advanced equipment. So for them, cave diving is one of the safest forms of diving. It is almost a routine part of their day. Butt thought that I'd be disappointed. Skiles had to remind him just how dangerous cave diving can be for others. Now Skiles put the question to me -- and came up with his own answer.

"Danger is inherent to cave diving, but we've learned to harness the danger and to manage it," he said. "We're comfortable living inside of a bubble that would scare the hell out of most people. So when you ask, 'Are you going to do anything dangerous?' what do you want to hear? From us, the answer is no. We're not doing anything dangerous. But evaluated by you, we're freaking out of our minds."

And with that, Skiles said good-bye and headed for his truck. He had heard about a new hole, some-where back in the woods. He wanted to dive.

Bill Breen (bbreen@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. contact Wes Skiles (wskiles@aol.com) by email, or visit him on the Web (www.wesskiles.com).

Sidebar: Risk for Beginners

"A lot of us in business throw around the word 'risk,' without really knowing what it means," says Michael Bane, 50, a frequent speaker on risk taking in the new economy. "The definition that I use comes from white-water rafting: The level of risk corresponds directly to the increased consequence of failure. Fall out of a raft in a class I river, and you get wet. Fall out of a raft in class V water, and you die."

In his book Over the Edge: A Regular Guy's Odyssey in Extreme Sports (Indigo, 1997), Bane gives a firsthand account of learning how to cave-dive. He describes two critical lessons for up-and-coming risk takers in any field.

First, know the difference between perceived risk and actual risk. "I've seen companies spend millions of dollars on mitigating risks that are beyond their control," Bane says. "In fact, this may be the single biggest mistake that companies make -- wasting critical resources on perceived risks. Cave divers have a saying: 'Control what you can control.' They identify the actual risks, and they figure out what they need to do 100% right, 100% of the time, in order to survive."

The second lesson, says Bane, is to understand that risk takers can't always depend on the certainty of cause and effect. In business or in cave diving, cause and effect break down when people push into the unknown. "Cave divers are arguably the most superstitious people I've ever met," says Bane. "I have seen major cave dives canceled in the parking lot of the dive site, simply because someone had a hunch that something wasn't right. When you journey to the edge of human experience, you don't know what keeps you alive. So, as a corollary, you can't rule anything out."

Contact Michael Bane (mbane666@aol.com) by email.

Sidebar: My Deep Dive

The water at Florida's Ginnie Springs is so clear that the dozen or so people swimming in it appear to be floating on air. But my eyes are drawn to the floor of the springs. Twenty feet down is the oyster-shaped maw of a cave. Accompanied by master diver Peter Butt, I've agreed to dive into that black hole. Since the early '60s, some 25 divers have perished here.

We descend and hover 10 feet above the cave's entrance. My adrenaline kicks in. A voice in my head says, "Don't go in." Peter fins into the cave and beckons for me to follow. I take a last look up at the sun-splashed surface, click on my dive light, and go in. The sunlight quickly ebbs and gives way to utter darkness. But the beams of our high-powered lights cut through the black, spotlighting the sides of the cavern.