Have you ever heard a blue whale sing?
How to place yourself in proximity to wonder and Old Self Stuff
Remember how you used to wear that Save the Whales pin every day? my friend asked last week. Like pinned to your Umbro shorts?
I do. And though I’ve been embarrassed by that stage for much of my life, I suddenly had a jolt of retroactive self-appreciation and compassion. Because the thing is - I knew who I was then, and what I cared about, and I’ve spent the second half of my life trying to get back to it.
What place or path did you love as a child, and are you still trying to reach it? How?
I wanted to be a mystery writer and I wanted to save the whales. I wanted to live on a sailboat on Taylor’s Creek in Beaufort, NC. During the pandemic I bought a tugboat and kept it there for a little while. It wasn’t practical in the long term, but for a time I got to feel like the self I had intended to become.
(pictured: me preparing to weather a wild storm on my tug in Beaufort at sunset)
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I’m dazzled by synchronicity - particularly as it relates to place. The first time I came to Big Sur, I spent a week in a yurt finishing a book. The fiery sunsets, moody sea-vistas, and ancient trees suited me. I asked the universe, somewhat desperately: how can I spend more time here?
Five years later - the universe works slowly sometimes - an opportunity to work in Monterey for a month fell into my lap. In January I’ll be helping students think about the ways they can communicate their coastal climate work more effectively.
My colleague at the Monterey campus is a whale song scientist. We were catching up the other day and she said: sometimes people ask me what it’s like to hear a blue whale sing.
Her whole face changed - in the way I’ve seen on the faces of other scientists when they talk about something they really love, something that lights them up.
Imagine complete timelessness, she said. No space, no time.
Listen to this recording of a Humpback Whale singing in Monterey Bay. If you could translate it based on your best guess, what would it say?
Listen to this Blue Whale Song recorded in Monterey Bay. How does it make you feel?
I find whale song to be sublime - a collision of wonder and melancholy.
While preparing for teaching in Monterey, I’ve been reading about the history of whale hunting. The mass suffering of whales sickened me, emotionally - so much that I had to talk about it in therapy.
(gray whale calf entangled in northern CA, 2021)
In 2020 I wrote a piece for the Guardian about North Atlantic Right Whales - of which an estimated 360 individuals remain, only 70 of them reproductively active females. Nearly 80% of them have faced multiple life-threatening entanglements due to fishing gear.
These are intelligent, gentle beings who suffer greatly because of human activity - including our underwater noise pollution. I sit with this thought a lot.
“A species that most people have never seen is harder to convince others to save,” Dr Erica Fuller, a veterinarian and lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts, told me. “If you saw one, you’d be struck by how majestic they are.”
I saw my first whale in Hawaii, off the coast of Maui en route to the Molokini Crater, and I wept behind my sunglasses. The majesty was clear. Lionel Richie’s “You Are” was playing on the sailboat stereo as a late season mother and calf breached the water.
People aren’t really sure why whales breach. It could be to get better visuals above the waterline, or for communication, dislodging parasites - or for joy. As I once heard about birdsong: some birds sing just because they can.
I guess what this letter is about is the highly specific act of placing one’s self in proximity to wonder. Whales do this for me - in a way that is almost painful.
Where can you place yourself to be in better proximity to wonder?
Seeing that mother and calf was extraordinary - but it’s a sort of awe that’s tempered with the knowledge of the very real human dangers they face - warming oceans, unpredictable food sources, boat strikes, entanglement.
When I assembled my first book, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, I wrote a story called “Yesterday’s Whales.” The closing line is this:
I pictured the mother whale, exhausted from labor, pushing her calf to the skin of the water. The miracle of breath in the face of predation; life in the wake of whaling ships.
I find it hard to be optimistic for whales. I want to be. I want other people to be as awestruck and enamored as I am - and I guess that’s why I do what I do, partnering with scientists, conservationists, and students to help them translate that wonder - and also the precarity of whales.
A passion for whales is Old Self stuff for me, and I will forever believe my old self manifested this opportunity to be in California and closer to what I love. I hope you find ways to do the same.
xo
MMB