At six Hans Reiter was taller than all the other six-year-olds, taller than all the seven-year-olds, taller than all the eight-year-olds, taller than all the nine-year-olds, and taller than half the ten-year-olds. At age six, too, he stole his first book. The book was called Animals and Plants of the European Coastal Region. He hid it under his bed although no one at school ever noticed it was missing. Around the same time he began to dive. This was in 1926. He had been swimming since he was four and he would put his head underwater and open his eyes and then his mother scolded him because his eyes were red all day and she was afraid that when people saw him they would think he was always crying. But until he was six, he didn’t learn to dive. He would duck underwater, swim down a few feet, and open his eyes and look around. That much he did. But he didn’t dive. At six he decided that a few feet wasn’t enough and he plunged toward the bottom of the sea.

The book Animals and Plants of the European Coastal Region was stamped on his brain, and while he dove he would slowly page through it. This was how he discovered Laminaria digitata, a giant seaweed with a sturdy stem and broad leaves, as the book said, shaped like a fan with numerous sections of strands that really did look like fingers. Laminaria digitata is native to cold waters like the Baltic, the North Sea, and the Atlantic. It’s found in large masses, at low tide, and off rocky shores. The tide often uncovers forests of this seaweed. When Hans Reiter saw a seaweed forest for the first time he was so moved that he began to cry underwater. It may be hard to believe that a human being could cry while diving with his eyes open, but let us not forget that Hans was only six at the time and in a sense he was a singular child.

Laminaria digitata is light brown and resembles Laminaria hyperborea, which has a rougher stalk, and Saccorhiza polyschides, which has a stem with bulbous protuberances. The latter two, however, live in deep waters, and although sometimes, on summer afternoons, Hans Reiter would swim far from the beach or the rocks where he had left his clothes and then dive down, he could never spot them, only fantasize that he’d seen them there in the depths, a still and silent forest. (2666)