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7 years ago, I was 23, living in Oregon with my boyfriend of five years. He was a starving painter working in retail, and he was sliding into depression. I was a low-ranking ad designer, preparing for medical illustration grad school. We loved each other very much, but were very poor, hated our jobs, didn't know anyone in our city, and were thousands of miles from our families. The relationship was coming apart under all the strain, and this unspoken knowledge hung over us every day like a dark cloud.
His parents came to visit us in the beautiful Oregon summer, and together the four of us went up to British Columbia. They thought everything was O.K., and we let them think so, because neither of us could bear to fail them again.
One day they took us out on a small boat to watch whales off Victoria Island. The boat driver gave us large yellow rubber suits to wear, because the cold spray would've soaked us to the skin. The driver told us that people usually see about 3 or 4 whales on a good day. (These are killer whales, orca.)
We got out to the middle of the bay and we began to see the whales jumping into the air, four or five of them, soon many more, and they were amazing. I couldn't believe the power and speed it took to get all that bulk up in the air. It was like an explosion. The noise and splash of it drove everything else out of my head. First you would see the fin cruising along at top speed, and a hint of long, dark body under the water. Then they would come crashing up into the air, so hard and so close to us. It was so obvious that they were aware of us and were playing, hoping to be seen. My mouth hung open. I didn't blink. My throat was raw from yelling something like "holy shit!" every time I saw one.
Some of the whales came up to the side of the boat, effortlessly cruising at the speed of our boat. They turned their bodies to the side so that their enormous eyes could see us. They looked directly into my eyes, and I was overwhelmed by all the inhuman intelligence I saw there.
The whales hung out with us for about 3 hours, maybe 50 of them. It was unbelievable. When I got off the boat and stepped back into my world, I realized that my problems and my self awareness had been completely blasted out of my head while I was out there. The cloud that I was living under just didn't exist. That experience made me feel like an ant in an anthill, utterly insignificant, and it was BLISS. |
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