Ever since, he had harbored a fear of large sea creatures - a niche phobia, particularly for a young man who lived in the Bronx, but a genuine one still. He could still conjure the feeling of hanging defenselessly in that water while the animals deftly swirled around him, less like solid objects than flashes of reflected light, while he could move only in comparative slow-motion. They were friendly, awe-inspiring creatures, purportedly, but they terrified Dave instead. Once, when he was a kid, his dad took him scuba diving with dolphins. Though I had no idea at the time, he was anxious that Dave and I might feel intimidated about making the trip such a big payoff, so quickly, would get us excited and defuse any apprehensions.įor Dave, the whale-sighting had exactly the opposite effect. It seemed to him as if the animal were putting on a show, swimming playfully in the kelp, diving, resurfacing, then plowing its open mouth across the surface to feed. We were only starting to move around again, packing our gear into the kayaks, when we heard the first huff of a blowhole, not far offshore. We were on earth - finally, really on earth. To me, it felt like those scenes of astronauts who, having finally rattled free of the earth’s atmosphere, slip into the stillness of space. It was a familiar phenomenon for Jon from the start of all his trips: a moment that people instinctually paused to soak in. As the boat that delivered us vanished, the drone of its engine dampening into a murmur and then finally trailing off, it became unthinkably quiet on the beach, and the largeness and strangeness of our surroundings were suddenly apparent.
Jon was working as a sea-kayaking guide that summer in Glacier Bay National Park, and he had invited us up for a seven-day excursion during his week off. Jon, Dave and I had just been dropped off on a remote Alaskan shoreline, an hour and a half by boat from the closest speck of a town. The whale sighting happened right away, minutes into Day 1.
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