Watching whales

This is the face of a seven-year-old boy who has fulfilled a dream.

We went on a whale watch off the coast of California this week. The day was glorious, the weather amazing, and off we went, 40 miles out to sea, with a group of people who had, apparently, lived in caves their entire lives.

They had never heard of being seasick. They had no idea that perhaps, before you spent more than seven hours out on the open water, you should, just maybe, stock up on Dramamine. That if you get a little queasy on a roller coaster, maybe a whale watch isn't where you want to be.

That taking little girls who vomit at the idea of vomit out onto a boat where every third person is heaving over the side might not be a picnic. And that if you're actually eating a picnic and there are people barfing onto the table next to you and it splashes onto your lunch, you might lose your lunch, so to speak.

So, despite the trauma of being on a boat surrounded by people who threw up, copiously, conspicuously, loudly and profusely, as well as, shall we say, closely, violently and often, the lucky few of us who were NOT part of the "barf boat brigade" managed to have a very good time.

Sander was a little green, but some Dramamine helped. Sawyer has my stomach, apparently made of steel wool and impervious to any movement. And Scout was rocked to sleep the entire time by the motion of the waves and so missed the entire technicolor experience.

When we could look away from the human drama inside the boat, what we saw outside was astounding.

The whales are migrating this time of year, and we were hoping we'd get lucky enough to see a humpback or two.

We saw 35 or 40. Plus a blue whale, 1,500 saddleback dolphins, six or eight bottlenose dolphins and enough sea lions to start our own Sea World show.

For a boy whose dream was to "see a whale in the wild," this was the trip of his life.

He still wants to see an Orca, and they weren't in this part of the world, and of course the platypus is still highest on his list.

The whales were amazing, and though I know that's an overused word, it's still a good description of it. To think that people went out in tiny rowboats to go and try to kill one, and that they succeeded! I was scared at the size of them while on a huge boat made of steel, with a motor to take me safely away. The thought of being on a wooden ship, with sails, or in a rowboat armed with harpoons is beyond my grasp. And how desperate you would have to be to even attempt it!

Plus, of course, the seasickness. We were able to laugh about it, but spending months and months like that, in the hold of a ship coming from England, or worse, from Africa?

And yet people survived it, and worse.

That's why we go on whale watches, I think. Because it reminds us of how we got here, how small we really are, and how little we know about the world around us.

And because the human dramas played out on the barf boat were every bit as interesting as the dramas played out in the water. 

Comments

[Keri]

This post gave me a very good laugh! I'm glad your son was able to experience that and the barf boat didn't stop him!