Grateful Traveler: Whale Song

whale watchingSome people believe we are all interconnected—people, animals, plants, earth, water and sky. I personally do not know. Others, much wiser than me, will have to decide. What I do know is this: When a friend needed healing, it wasn’t a person who touched her heart; it was a 50-foot long, 35-ton whale.

It happened in the gray whale calving ground of Scammon’s Lagoon, just off Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. I had gone there from California with a group of “river rats”—people who spend every available moment shooting the rapids of the West. The whales had come from Alaska’s Bering Strait, traveling 12,500 miles, the longest mammal migration on Earth, to have their babies in the safe, warm waters of the lagoon.

Our plan was to kayak among the whales. So the minute we arrived, we put our boats in the water hoping for a close encounter.

At least the others were hoping. I am not the bravest of souls. I was also the only person not well-versed in handling a kayak. The solution was to put me in the passenger seat of a Klepper, a large, two-person kayak that moves across the water with all the grace and speed of a 10-ton truck.

As we slowly cruised along, bubbles kept surfacing from under the kayak. When I asked what caused them, the reply came, “Whales. Right below us.” I was terrified. So while everyone else was hoping and praying a whale would pull up alongside, I was hoping and praying the whales would stay below. My prayers were answered.

That night we made camp alongside the lagoon. The haunting calls of the gray whales, baritone deep and powerful, became the soundtrack for my dreams.

By morning, I was actually eager to meet a whale up close and personal—but it was not to be. While our friends in their lightweight, hummingbird-fast river kayaks were able to get close enough to pet the babies, another woman and myself were stuck in the Klepper, digging our paddles deep into the water and getting absolutely nowhere. After several failed attempts to get even a photo of a whale, we simply gave up. Instead, we let the Klepper drift, and we talked.

The thing is, I didn’t really know this woman. We had only met four days before as our group gathered to head into Baja. She seemed like a joyful, fun-loving spirit—the kind of beautiful, healthy, radiant person to whom only good things happen.

Whale surfacingBut now—maybe because we were strangers, maybe because we were sitting in a body of water where whales come to have their babies—she opened her heart and told me the story of her 3-year old daughter’s death the year before from cancer.

She talked about her loneliness and despair. She talked about the toll it had taken on her marriage. She talked about the friends who’d pulled away, unable to face the grim diagnosis and a mother’s unrelenting pain.

And as she talked, a curious thing happened. A mother whale and her baby came right up to our boat. Around and around our kayak they went, the baby nursing as they swam.

When the story was over, the whales left. We watched them go in wonder and joy, certain in our hearts they’d been sent as a sign. Or at least that’s the way we took it because I don’t know if we’re all interconnected. I only know that by their presence, this whale and her baby brought hope and peace, seeming to sing out a universal song of “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.

Read more entries from the Grateful Traveler series:

Or read the post that started it all: An “Eskimo” Showed Me the Way.