Last week, I had the amazing pleasure of seeing an orca off the coast of Victoria. They aren't as common as the whales or dolphins, so it was quite the sight. When you grow up by the sea, the big blue pulls at you. It roars and crashes at night, mesmerising and ever present in your aural fields. I've spent many hours - thousands - staring out into the vastness of this southern ocean, seeing all kinds of creatures. Diving albatross, salmon, stingrays, even a penguin or two. On my birthday last year a seal scared the bejesus out of me as it popped up next to my board, swirled and spun playfully in the water, a puppy dog of the sea, and disappeared.
Whilst I love too watching winged things dart and flit amongst the trees - from tiny blue wrens, honey eaters, pardelotes to larger kookaburras and magpies, or the great soaring wedgetailed eagles or sea eagles, I have to admit it's ocean bound I would like to go, should I be reincarnated as a anything but this human beast.
It's an odd thing, I suppose, to want to be part of an environment I'm also slightly scared of. There's nothing that scares me more than paddling over dark beds of kelp or swimming at dawn or dusk. Whilst there's more shark attacks in NSW or WA than here in Victoria, they do happen, and every time I see a fin I worry it's a shark, though inevitably it's a dolphin. And by the time I'm die, I worry about how much life is going to be left in these beautiful seas of ours.
But it's in the ocean that I feel the most at peace. Whether free diving or swimming or surfing, I feel weightless, light, my skin alive and sparkling, brand new. The worries of the world dissolve - I kick my mermaid tail and leave it behind.
It's a beautiful imagining, to transmute into feather or scale, into another life.
I can't help thinking of Merlin instructing the boy Arthur:
“My boy, you shall be everything in the world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista, or virus, for all I care-before I have done with you-but you will have to trust my superior backsight. The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk... so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King
We can long to be anything but we are, but living this human experience is where we need to be. And if we live that well, we do well by the creatures of this great blue earth, so that they too can live out their lives - hawk, orca, dolphin, owl, all.
This post was written in response to @ecotrain's QOTW - you can read it here - but I might be just past the due date! Never mind, its an interesting question anyway - the Ecotrain questions always are!
With Love,
https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcGSZxvsXD8YbSCNAo6KWc4a9RjXyRCjWupZdPXJapkXk
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Sounds like a great experience. I’ve seen dolphins before, but never any whales.
A 🐬 for sure. I love to play jokes, be in the ocean, be sexual, and amaze human beings 😝
They are pretty magnificent, as you can imagine. Dolphins are uber cool though - I've surfed with them before and they are such playful, amazing creatures! It makes me sad how we treat our oceans - perhaps a bit of imagination would help, because if we imagine ourselves as the creatures of earth and sky, how could we do what we do? Perhaps something is missing in the education of our children.
Lucky you to go surfing with dolphins. Hopefully I get so swim with them one day.
I agree with you 😢
I hope you do as well!!!!
!ENGAGE 15
ENGAGEtokens.mmm, beautiful.. i feel you.. ive been scuba diving only once.. and ill never forget that moment of coming out and realising we live in totally different world!.. <3
Loved this post and the photos. I like reading about how you feel about water. :))