The moment I got out of the car I heard the sound. Like the whoosh of a wave against a sea cave, I thought. But the sea was calm, and I was on a protected rocky beach, not a headland against the open ocean. I heard it again, an urgent whoosh of air. I looked to the sea, and saw a cloud of spray drift with the wind. Whoosh, spray. Whales.
The sea was just past ebb on a minus tide. I scrambled and slipped over seaweed covered rocks to the water’s edge. Kelp floated in the little bay before me, and scores of young harlequin ducks floated among it, or perched on rocks just offshore. I saw a spray of mist, and heard the sudden exhalation. Pause. Then an inbreath. The whale was only a couple hundred feet offshore. Close enough to hear it breathing.
Further out another whale’s back broke the surface, gray and mottled with white. It barely disturbed the water’s surface when it vanished beneath. The ducks it displaced barely noticed. After a while, I discerned that these whales (there were three) were feeding at the edge of the kelp forest, slowly working back and forth just offshore.
The ducks called softly. A winter wren flew up and scolded me for being there. It stood on the seaweed covered rock and stretched, full of outrage, on its little legs. Behind me were whales breaching and breathing, slowly, somberly. Everything felt exactly right. With whales and wrens, this was a place complete and whole.
Comments