I’ve been extremely fortunate to have had a run of days spent amid big natural wonders: mountains and rivers, whales and albatross, redwoods and raptors. After a week spent with eight other songwriters alongside Idaho’s Salmon River in the shadow of the Sawtooth Mountain range I flew home on a Thursday evening and got on a boat for a pelagic birding trip the next morning. When an opportunity to go look at the shearwaters, auklets and albatross that spend their lives over the ocean with a group of fellow bird people came up, I couldn’t say no, even though I knew it meant, once again, an overfull schedule.
While it was a slightly jarring trajectory to go from mountains to sea and then out onto the sea, it was also congruent with where I had been. While the Salmon River’s headwaters were close to where I’d been all week, its waters ultimately feed West, and into the Pacific Ocean as well (albeit far north of the Golden Gate), after first joining the Snake River and then the Columbia Rivers. Likewise, the Chinook Salmon which spawn in their namesake river, follow the river to spend several years at sea, before making they’re return to whence they came…provided they aren’t preyed upon by Orcas, sharks and sea lions first.
Speaking of whales and sharks and sea lions: Ostensibly, the excursion in the Gulf of the Farallones to the edge of the Continental Shelf was to see birds, but a couple of marine mammal encounters stole the show. First it was the humpback whales, letting air out in great bursts before diving with a flash of namesake hump and tailfin. Then it was a few amiable looking Common Dolphin swimming by the boat. Then the captain came on the radio: “We’ve caught sight of some very large dorsal fins so we’re going to head in that direction.”
We waited and watched for several moments, and then caught sight of a large black fin: Orcas! The captain turned off the engine and we stood silently watching. Would they come up or disappear? Then suddenly two large dorsal fins came up very close to the boats. The whales looked at us, went below, then surfaced and looked our way again. I could hear their breathing. They weren’t moving fast. Maybe they were hunting? Maybe they were checking us out? Eventually, they moved slowly away. Later, after making a report to the California Killer Whale project, Alvaro, our affable and extremely knowledgeable trip leader, let us know that we’d encountered two related males, an uncle and his nephew. Orcas are matrilineal: sons, daughters and grandchildren stay with the matriarch of their pod their entire lives. We didn’t see them, but mom and grandma and sibling Orcas were likely nearby. Amazing!
It took me until Monday evening, tired out from standing on Hawk Hill all day in a variety of weather conditions to feel homelike. The pace of migration over the headlans has slowed considerably but there was still a steady if spaced out flight of raptors. I had good eyes, or maybe it was just a cast of fall light, but it was easy to pick up a couple kestrels coming through the north quadrant and disappearing over the Gate waters, which were gleaming with sun glare. I thought of the whales and the sharks and the porpoise lurking below.
On the way out of the gate on Friday, Alvaro pointed out a lumbering container ship making its way toward the Bay. "Look," he said to a group of us, "It's the next delivery of inflatable turkeys and Santas. We're all doomed." Unspoken was the more egregious atrocities happening in the middle east, the news of bombs falling relentlessly.
After a beat of silence, we all went back to scanning the skies and waters for birds. And there were plenty: Common Murres and Pacific Loons flew overhead, and Western Grebes dotted the swells, but as we got further out to sea, the true seabirds took over the skies and waters. And the marine mammals.
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
― Gary Snyder
How spoiled I am to be able to revel in such beauty, relative stillness. How much it feeds me, how bereft I can feel even a few days without a view of something natural, unspoiled. If only everyone could have that privilege. The world is vast and amazing and I wish we humans could stop, look around, and quit fucking it up.