Of Humpbacks and Sharks, madness and grace

For a month I have been working for the Charles Darwin Foundation, a large non-profit dedicated to scientific and social research throughout the Galapagos. Aside from designing curriculum on history, I get to travel. Here are reflections on a sailing trip.

Four days ago a group of ten of us were exploring the eastern isles. We were on board the Beagle, a two-masted sailboat owned by our captain, Augusto Cruz. Each day, the Naional Park guide, Daniel Sanchez, encouraged us to snorkel, hike and kayak. As it turned out, Alan Hesse, a British cartoonist, and I were kayaking near the island of Bartolomeo. We were being watched by crew members on the inflatable speedboat. After a few minutes paddling near penguins and boobies, we saw Daniel standing in his 'panga,' wildly motioning us to turn around.

"WHALE AHEAD!!" he and our crewmates yelled.

Alan and I paddled like maniacs the length of the bay, out into the ocean. We leaned into each stroke, desperately trying to outrace the 40-horsepower engine. How many times in a lifetime do we get to see a whale up close? Was a killer whale, blue or what?

We caught the motorboat. Even better, since we had a tiny turn radius, we could easily follow the whales' regular surfacing. Soon we were glued to the rhythms of mama humpback and baby. Compared to us, both were megasized, the baby weighing unknown numbers of tons. Mom was bigger than a tractor trailer, gliding with grace, showing a black smoothness that was massive and sinuous. Behind the hump was our tiny sailboat, a speck getting ever smaller.

Every 3-4 minutes, madonna and child surfaced with geysers announcing their presence. They undulated, rose in curving vastness, side by side, knobbly faces touching each other -- and almost touching us.

I wondered where they were headed, only to realize they might be directly below our flimsy yellow plastic. It was then that I recalled a lecture by my hero and professor of American Literaure, Leo Marx. He told many semesters of rapt Amherst students about the madman on the whale, attempting to cross to the other side, past the wall of unknowing. Ahab knew there was something more to life than his mechanistic existence, killing the whale might yield his clue, maybe in death he truth would be known. Leo Marx made us all feel that we were Ahabs, ready to harpoon our white darkness, to suffer for truth. I remember being unable to breathe when I realized Leo was Ahab, and this insane tension was in our red hall. Leo was on the whale, in public view, for us to witness.

We students were madmen, too, we were Ahabs, incensed at the stupidity of the mundane, bewitched by the fog of ultimate truth, outraged by just about anything. When the lecture was over, the silence was deafening. Then the whole class erupted in applause, standing up for our own Ahab..

Next to the humpback whale, I didn't care if I died. He was truth incarnate. "Humpback" What a silly moniker for the most graceful giant I had ever seen. Like Quasimodo, these humpbacks were reviled by many, feared and hunted. But my humpbacked Madonna was sublimely wise, transcendentally good. Too awful to contemplate that they will be hunted by Japanese whalers.

Are these not two of earth's most gentle and lovely creatures, at home on our blue earth? It was one of those moments. Here was birth and motherhood, sea and sky, black giants and puny humans. Ahab and Gregory Peck were alive. Quasimodo was a saint. The lectures of 1969 were alive. Alan and I were hanging between life and death, on the back of grand mammals, carried forward in life by a subtle coaxing.

We saw the waters flatten when they rose. Flukes climbed to the sky and slapped the green sea. We sat, gaping, too mesmerized to move away. Mother and child had no fear in their vast home.

Someone yelled to me that I was in danger of being smashed. Or tossed tossed like a matchstick. Life in that moment seemed too extraordinary. Why worry about death?

. . .

The next day, at a neighboring island, we made a wet landing and walked on one of the Park trails. We detoured around red land iguanas and boobies standing right in the middle of "our" path. We crossed a spit of land, and at the sea's edge, we spotted fins of some white-tipped sharks. They were sliding in the water, just yards from the water´s edge. Not thinking about Jaws, we stepped into the wavelets.

You need to realize that we tourists had become domesticated, due to the utter fearlessness of all island creatures, whether they be hawks or iguanas. Boobies and albatrosses had wandered up to us every day. Sea lions slept on our feet. So, we stood in 2 feet of water, naively snapping photos of fins and shadows. We did not notice their muscular gray bodies getting closer. Then, in a moment I won't forget, the sharks turned right into our little forest of pale legs. They brushed against our shins and feet. They swiveled, bending and propelling, touching our flesh lightly. They made a slalom course through our legs and headed out of the lagoon. They were as gentle as the waves themselves.

Sharks and humpbacks. Two heavenly creatures. Earthly beings living in the sea. Misnamed and misunderstood, hunted and hated. And yet they are the repository of nature's grace. They shed light on our manic selves. They are evidence that there really is something on the other side.