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By Martha Ezell
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Animal Encounter category
About a dozen small boats were scattered around the large lagoon. Suddenly there was a swooshing of motion directly beside me, and an enormous gray mottled back rose from the water. The whale’s body undulated parallel to the boat in a mesmerizing rhythm, swimming just a few feet away. He released a moist, ethereal heart-shaped spray above his head before he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. I looked at Mary, her broad-brimmed hat above a smiling, wide-eyed expression. It was the first time I’d seen her happy in months.
Before the pandemic I had read an article about a small boat of visitors to a bay in Baja California. The photo showed a dozen people leaning over the boat’s hull and interacting with a massive whale. They were not chasing the whale, he was approaching them as if to say hello and the visitors looked euphoric. I could never forget that image. I wanted to be in that boat. I wanted to look a whale in the eye.
I reached for this lifeline of hope amid the emptiness of losing my older brother to cancer. Steven had always been the stable sibling, a predictable and steady pin to my moving-compass style of living. Before he died my brother took one last trip to northern California to see my sister and me, and to meet my grandson, still in my daughter’s belly. Steven arrived looking as handsome and debonaire as always, but his oversized clothes and the grimaces of stomach pain he tried to mask revealed a deeper truth. We spent a day visiting my favorite ocean beach and then we walked under the canopy of an ancient redwood grove. This was the best I could offer him in these precious days. He died eight weeks later.
My brother Steven had found his “soul mate” Mary late in his life. Mary and I didn’t know each other well, but we shared a love of the water and had once gone kayaking together on a mountain lake near their house. In his will, my brother had left me some money “to go and have some fun.” “Would you want to go with me to see the whales in Baja?” I asked Mary at his memorial. A few mournful weeks later, she accepted my invitation. “Sounds healing and wonderful.” she wrote, and we planned a whale adventure in February when gray whales migrate to three bays in Baja to mate, give birth, and nurse their young.
Sitting together on the hard bench at the bow of the boat, Mary and I surveyed the low sand bars and the desert mountains that shelter the waters of Magdalena Bay. Seven of us were seated in the boat, along with a driver and our guide Rafa. Tall, striking, and always calm, Rafa was a biology student in Guadalajara before moving to Baja to follow his passion for whales. We all fit inside a “panga,” the small low-slung fiberglass and wood boats that are ubiquitous in this part of the world.
We joined the early morning fishing boats driving toward the open ocean on our first day of “Whale Camp.” Fishermen in these waters were reported to be the first “friends” of whales in this bay after centuries of whaling finally came to an end. Fishermen and whales became accustomed to each other’s presence in their daily routines and gray whales seemed to seek out human company. Boat drivers here are usually locals, licensed and trained to stay at a safe distance from the whales. They steered unhurriedly through the glassy water, giving visitors time to watch for dives and breaches, everyone listening for the distinctive “phew” sound as the whale’s breath is released.
We watched the waters’ shifting surface for hours and spotted several babies swimming alongside their mothers. I studied the vast expanse of the lagoon and marveled at the great distance whales could travel in only a few seconds, leaving all boats far behind. I understood we couldn’t count on a close encounter with a whale; that it didn’t always happen. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine that any of these phenomenal, wild creatures would approach a boat on their own. Yet to be here, watching this beauty in the company of my brother’s wife, was enough. This was what I had l wanted, to be comforted by nature’s immensity and endless miracles.
Whale Camp was held in a white geodesic dome lit up from the inside and visible for miles against the clear night sky. Inside the glowing dome, we sat on plastic chairs in the sand to learn about whale behavior and the landscape that surrounded us. “Gray whales undertake one of the longest migrations of any mammals,” Rafa told us. Whale pods travel south each year from their feeding grounds in Alaska. They find shelter in the warmer water of these bays to mate and have their babies. Mothers and babies are usually the last to leave these lagoons, giving their calves time to grow stronger. Rafa told us these females and their offspring are often the ones that seek out attention.
We camped in a canvas tent lined up along a sandbar in the company of a dozen others: folks from Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, all of whom confessed exhaustion from the isolation and longing of the pandemic years. We celebrated a seventieth birthday for one of our group members and toasted some honeymooners. How comforting it was to be with others, so close, so tender after these long years of pandemic separation. These were not the estranged folks from different areas of the country we had been hearing about from our various corners. These were our unknown friends.
Mary and I retreated to our tent after dinner, tired and fulfilled by our day on the water. We had yet to talk about my brother, but as we lay in our sleeping bags on neighboring cots, under night’s cover, she began to tell me stories.
My brother’s diagnosis last year came quickly, once the doctors performed exploratory surgery. His condition was inoperable and he was told he could expect to live just a couple of weeks. He needed to go home, close his law practice, and say goodbye to those he loved.
I prayed for Steven to have a peaceful end, and imagined him every day as best I could from my distant home. When he defied his prognosis by living several months longer than expected, it was a waiting game that wore on everyone, especially him. He was unsure how to navigate his new reality. He knew the more he ate, the worse he would feel. He existed on Cheerios saying he missed the crunch of food more than its taste. He joked that he didn’t want to start any long books. I was relieved each time I could talk with him by phone, but I knew that every day when he woke up he had to face his impending death.
As Mary told me the story of his last weeks, his last days, I realized his physical suffering had been worse than I imagined. I could hear the distress in Mary’s voice as she told me how those last days were filled with unbearable pain and frequent vomiting. It had been worse than I had imagined, and the sorrow mixed with the wonderment of the day until I fell asleep.
The next morning I sat up on my cot and spotted whale leaps and streams of spray above the water through the tent door. The smell of coffee drifted in from the camp kitchen. The sun poked through the clouds and created spotlights on the whales’ movements across Magdalena Bay.
We boarded the panga for another day on the lagoon. In the distance a whale rose vertically halfway out of the water to check out his surroundings, a movement called a “spy hop,” thought to be similar to humans treading water. On our left, two whales exploded out of the water and then slammed down on their sides, one after another. Rafa noticed a boat nearby with a flurry of action. The boat’s passengers were leaning down trying to splash the water with their hands, an activity that is presumed to attract a whale’s curiosity. We steered closer and shut off our engine, floating a good distance away.
After a time of quiet waiting, I heard someone in our boat shout excitedly, “Here you come! Here you come!”
A forty-foot slate-gray body surfaced beside me, inches from the boat. The whale’s body rested on the surface as all of us let out squeals and gasps. I looked toward Rafa, who had warned us we could only interact if the whale came to us. He now reached his hand down and gently patted the back of the whale. Then more hands reached down to stoke her expansive face.
“She’s so soft!” Mary swooned.
The whale navigated her body near to the boat’s side. I reached down to feel her skin: soft, wet, spongy, like nothing I’d ever felt.
“Does that feel good?” I asked, rubbing gently along her barnacle-filled head.
The whale dove under the boat and after a few minutes came up again, her face close beside the boat.
“Where is her eye?” I asked, and Rafa drew a line in the air to the back of her wide head, just above the corner of her mouth.
“Right there!” he said. I saw a large grey-brown pupil peeking out from the elongated shape of her eye.
Again she dove below the surface. We thought it was over. Then up she came again and remained suspended near the boat. She seemed to be seeking the rubbing, the contact, Mary’s laughter. “So beautiful!” someone said, and we all repeated “so beautiful!”, as we were now a chorus of our most genuine and joyful selves. The whale rolled her head to one side and looked at me, pausing slightly just before submerging.
“I see you!” I told her. “I see you!”
Some think whales’ interactions with the boats are driven by their desire to knock the small white barnacles from their body. But his did not seem to be the whale’s attraction to us. Was it our gleeful noises, much like the irresistible “oohs” and “aahs” and chortling humans make when we see a baby? Was it unrestrained curiosity? The whale again slipped quietly into the water and Rafa steered us slowly away. “We’ll let some others have an opportunity for this experience,” he said as we headed inland.
That evening Mary and I sat outside and watched the sun grow dim and disappear behind the mountain silhouette across the water. We were peaceful in a way that we’d both found elusive for the last few months.
“Do you think Steven accepted his fate?’ I asked her.
“He didn’t really want to reflect out loud about mortality or spirituality,” she told me. “He just chose to mimic his previous ordinary days.”
Steven had always wanted to put up a good front for others. The oldest of four siblings, he was determined to be an example for the rest of us and reluctant to reveal his inside thoughts.
“They say you die as you live,” Mary added. But Steven’s impenetrable poise had made it hard for me to feel close to his truth, to say goodbye. I wanted to share his struggle; he wanted to hide it.
I settled into my sleeping bag and thought about how to live with the sorrow and joys of the world intermixed like this. I had found the eternal in the eye of a whale and felt a connection to the divine fully present in my wonder. I was tethered to all of nature and I was happy again.
For many months after my trip and my encounter with the whale, I was content to know that I had manifested my dream. I had been blessed by a whale and the feeling stuck with me. Gradually the heartache has appeared again, and I wish I could maintain the peace that the whale’s touch gave me.
Grief is an undulating motion as real as the whales’ motions in the sea – up and down, up and down, yet always forward, making progress toward an unknown resolution.
For now, I cling to the small joys around me and exhale often, imagining a heart-shaped breath rising in the air above me.
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Martha Ezell is a freelance writer living in Petaluma, California. After diverse careers in social work, documentary filmmaking, and academic technology, she now devotes her time to writing and travel. She has previously been published in Hidden Compass, The Best Women’s Travel Writing series, online at Gadling.com, and in the anthology Deep Travel: Stories from the Inner Journey.