The Passing of Whales (1997)*
I stand at the edge of precipitous cliffs. One hundred
feet straight down, white-capped breakers thunder against
the tidal shelf as they have for a thousand years. Three
bald eagles cruise low over the coiled surf, searching
for a belly-up salmon, a baby seal, anything. Pervading
it all, the pungent smell of the sea. I throw down my
pack and gaze out to where the mid-June sun has started
its slow, pastel slide into the cold waters of the Pacific
Ocean, to where the smooth curvature of the earth draws
sea and sky together.
My aching shoulders remind me that it has been years
since I have borne the weight of a heavy pack, but the
fatigue is welcome, comforting—for the first time
in many months I feel the life coursing outward through
my limbs. I toe the cliff and sway, giddy with the swift
rush of space that confronts me. Looking, I imagine
the Kuril Islands lying hard off the coast of Russia,
the next tract of solid ground more than 5000 miles
further west, across the Pacific.
It is then that I glimpse the whales, 15-ton grays
plying the water like submarines just two hundred yards
from shore. They shoot geysers of mist into the air,
breach, and then roll to the seafloor in search of the
tiny beach hoppers and sand fleas that power their journey
north. As if they know we are watching.
Two old friends and I had just hiked five miles through
venerable stands of Douglas fir and western hemlock,
from the northwest end of the West Coast Trail to an
unnamed vantage point on what felt like the edge of
the world. We watched for more than an hour as the whales
moved north, from their winter calving lagoons off the
coast of Baja California to the fertile waters of the
Bering Sea, one of the longest migrations of any mammal.
Once abundant, these ponderous giants were almost exterminated
in the early years of the twentieth century. Now more
than 20,000 individuals inhabit the waters of the eastern
Pacific. They signify hope, these whales, that even
the most destructive human behavior can be rectified
with a concerted amount of commitment and hard work.
The magnitude of their journey, and their proximity
in such a vast expanse of water, altered my understanding
of time and distance. I had started from my parent’s
home in Canmore three days earlier, driven west, alone
and in one day, along a 500-mile stretch of the Trans-Canada
Highway that traverses four major mountain ranges—the
Rockies, the Monashees, the Cascades, and, finally,
the Coast Range that guards the western edge of the
mainland like a set of ancient granite teeth. But that
journey seemed insignificant, almost foolishly so, in
light of what I saw that day unfolding before me.
What I couldn’t have known then was that, like
the whales, I had entered into an intimate relationship
with a landscape I have returned to again and again.
Now I guide others along the West Coast Trail, introducing
them to a place that has nurtured my spirit ever since
I made that first trip. (More...)
*A shorter version of this essay won third place in
the "Feature" category of the 1998
Associated Collegiate Press Story of the Year Award.
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