As someone who was spent her entire life within reach of the scent of the sea, the opportunity to take an Outsider, a Flatlander, out on the water is especially sweet. This is a tale of one such outing.
It was a fine, clear autumn afternoon, the sea reflecting a deep blue sky and the cottonwoods just beginning to show a bit of silver tracings on the edges of their leaves as they rustled in the lightest of breezes. Moses borrowed the skiff from his skipper and we brought it around from the dock to pick up my friend. Jeannie was standing on the rock pile across the road from the church, perched rather precariously on the wet rocks as Moses maneuvered the skiff in close enough for her to jump in. She did a good job of it, and her husband hurried back across the road as we tried to lure him into coming along. However, Mr. Workaholic declined our pleas with a laugh, and we pushed off.
The air was like velvet as it brushed by our cheeks, with a texture, scent, and taste that is uniquely Kodiak’s. We skimmed the tops of gentle swells, and soon found ourselves in the midst of a huge flotilla of seabirds. As the skiff nosed forward, the raft of birds split, as if a veil rent, which then magically repaired itself as we looked back and saw them settle in again as if we had never disturbed their evening social.
I had a hand jig set up and was trying to tickle up a halibut, while Moses and my friend tried to tempt a sockeye. After a while of catching nothing but Irish Lords, Moses noticed some whales feeding close to our location, so we hauled in our lines and headed out toward the blows.
As we neared the whales we recognized them as humpbacks, one adult and two juveniles, probably two year olds. They were feeding in the gentle groundswell under the waning daylight, so we killed the kicker several yards away from them and watched. They lazed onto their sides, slapping a flipper down every now and then. They moved closer and one blew next to us. Jeannie accused one of us of having “had a bit of flatulence” but no, it was the whale’s breath! It truly does smell nasty, but how cool to be this close to a humpback.
We noticed that they had stopped feeding and were moving in closer. The largest of the three raised the side of her head out of the water and viewed us with an amazingly intelligent brown eye. Feeling honored by their inquisitiveness and the uniqueness of this situation, we were also extremely aware of their incredible bulk sliding through the sea around us. We were in real danger of being flipped, intentionally or not, into the frigid water of the Shelikof Strait. Moses fired up the kicker and we moved cautiously out of range of whale tails and flippers. As we retreated we enthused over the special time just spent with the humpbacks. We returned and re-commenced trying to hook up some fresh fish for supper.
We drifted with the tide as the sun lowered to rest on the tops of the mountains, only half our minds paying any attention to our fishing, the other half consumed with the intoxicating twilight on the sea.
Suddenly I noticed three gray swells to our stern, and realized that they were the whales we had earlier observed, submerging about 100 yards away, and due to come up again pretty much where we were sitting. Quickly we hauled in our fishing lines so as not to hook a whale, Moses got the kicker running and gave it the gas!
We moved off to the side of their path while they circled back around, and for several minutes three humpbacks took long looks at us, strange creatures sitting in a floating bowl. It was an emotionally charged moment in time, and even though the thought of hitting that icy water tinged the encounter with fear, the aura of benevolent intelligent inquisitiveness was calming.
The whales glided past us several times before moving off a ways, no more than the length of a football field, where they began to roll and slap the water with tails and flippers, breaching occasionally and then slipping silently beneath the surface of the silvered water. They continued this playful behavior for several minutes before sliding below the surface and away.
We returned that night under the dusky twilit skies, watching the phosphorescence trailing from our fingertips, empty handed but with hearts full of the memories of this time spent with each other as we shared an uncommon moment with the giants of the deep.
