Exhale (Whaling pt. 2)

First we have to climb a chain-link fence, then creep under the structure of a bath-house, tie a long rope to its foundation and repel 100 feet down a steep cliff face to the rock beach. It feels like a prison break, or a James Bond movie… if James Bond was ever racing communists to reach the rotting carcass of a grey whale.

This cinematic opening marks my 3^rd attempt to see the whale body up-close, it is Noël and Kelsey’s 2^nd try. We strategically plan our assault for low tide, and unstrategically set out during the new moon, so there is actually very little difference between high and low tides. Halfway there the ocean stops us. Kelsey and I decide to swim past a barrier of rock and wave. Noël elects to stay behind so she can go for help if we become marooned or injured. She waits in a cove with bright green, mossy walls, thick like the pelt of a cold weather creature.

I’m so focused on the waves, and avoiding being battered by them, I actually don’t register the freezing temperature of the water until I am on the next stretch of shore. Now we start a steady trot over the rocks, with no time to waste. The human sense of smell is a running joke in the animal kingdom, but despite my handicap the odor of the dead whale comes into focus well before the image. We stripped down for the swim of course, but I kept my underwear on so they could be converted into a bandanna as we approached the putrescent threshold.

We chant in Sanskrit seed-syllables, and clap as we walk closer and closer. “Sa ta na ma, sa ta na ma:” birth, life, death, and rebirth.

Other than the smell, the first thing I notice are the birds, thirty or forty gulls rest on the whale, and a turkey vulture actually sits in its mouth, tearing strips from the tongue. Turkey vultures have the most powerful olfactory sense of any animal, ever; they can pinpoint small carrion from many miles away, and from high in the air. Comparatively I might as well not have nostrils, yet every cell in my body fights to keep its distance from the carcass, and the world’s greatest smeller is literally sitting inside the whale.

Of course the difference is: what smells disgusting and dangerous to me, smells delicious and vital to the vulture… a bakery is to me, as a dead whale is to it. Eventually our presence inspires flight, and I marvel at the inherent poetry of wild cycles: that whale spent its whole life (50 or 60 years) swimming in the ocean, and now it’s flying.

The whale’s penis is draped over several large rocks, it would normally be internal, like most mammals, but apparently the muscular release or tension that accompanied death forced it out into the open. It is about the same size as my entire body. Yes indeed, this was a male whale.

Huge vertebrae stick out of the rot-widened blowhole. The internal decay is creating a lot of heat, as microorganisms do their good work, and steam billows out of the blowhole continuously, giving the impression that the whale is perpetually exhaling. And in a sense, he is, as he releases all of the minerals, molecules, and atoms that he has been holding onto, back into the world. Complete decomposition is the final breath, and the moment of absolute rebirth… when every cell is free to roam in the belly of a vulture, the primitive body of a microbe, or in particles through the air and sea.

Majik Landscape (Whaling pt. 1)

We start walking on a narrow trail full of coffee berry and poison oak, and we stop short only a few yards in. The swollen innards of some small mammal lies in the middle of the path, next to them a clean picked, blood tinged skull, and a very small distance away the lower jaw. Everything else is gone. No hair, no bones, no flesh, no blood; just the lonely intestine of a recently eviscerated rabbit, and its empty skull.

It smells quite pungent, and our thoughts turn immediately to the huge whale corpse we are on our way to see. If this handful of carrion can smell so badly, surely we are in danger of asphyxiation if we can actually reach the whale.

Roughly a month ago a dead grey whale washed up on the rocky, isolated beach, a few miles south of my home. Everyday it grows tanner and tanner sitting stone still next to an old shipwreck. White water breaks nearby but misses the carcass entirely, it was deposited high on the beach during strong winds and Tsunami reinforced waves, truly, the whale body appeared dramatically right after an earthquake in Japan.

It could be a good or bad omen, these rabbit guts, either way it is remarkable. Kelsey sprinkles tobacco: a small offering. Sticky monkey flower, tall grass, lupin, and giant horsetail join us on the trail. After the tall grass and horsetail our pant legs are populated with ticks, five or ten species, some enormous. What a strange life, living on the end of a grass blade, waiting and waiting for some hot-blooded somebody to walk by. Once their dream is fulfilled, and they hitch a ride on three soft skinned apes, we just flick them off our pants in disgust. It is hard not to hate them, creepy little sanguinavores.

The trail washed out and was never rebuilt, so we repel the last forty feet. Our timing is not ideal, the tide is somewhere between high and low and will be getting higher soon. The steep wall to the east overflows with tiny mossy waterfalls, creating fresh water pools full of tadpoles, and (honest to God) a little patch of quicksand. We are forced by the encroaching ocean to climb over boulders and up crumbling rock faces past stinky cormorant nests. Two dead cormorants lie between rocks on our walk. One moldering right next to her nest, possibly not built far enough away from the pounding surf, a grim reminder that we must leave enough time for a return journey, lest we be battered in a narrow passage by the incoming tide.

This hike is full of crystals. Great bands of quartz run through the igneous rocks, so loose that big chunks can be removed by hand. Solid sulfur lies in little clumps, recently fallen out of the hillside, waiting for an alchemist’s invocation. And crystalline mineral deposits grow like a fungus on some of the boulders, tan and fleshy on the surface and then broken open in places to reveal shimmering cross-sections of pink and white.

Eventually we reach an impasse, two dangerous options: deep water and rough waves, or a steep and crumbling climb, which might not even get us over the ridge. Thwarted. The tide is really coming in now, so we’ve got to hustle. Running on slippery rocks that were dry on the approach. Occasionally we brace ourselves for potential wave death, but are mercifully spared. The salt spray in my face seems to say: “you might not be so lucky next time.” Thankfully the beach widens and the ocean is at bay, so to speak. The adrenaline drains away, and Noël spots an otter diving in the breakwater, body surfing, and smashing mollusks to smithereens on an anvil stone.

Before the long hike back we conduct spontaneous ceremony. First a little, gentle movement, improv Tai Chi, Kelsey chants at a distance. A raft of pelicans soar in from the south, they coast through the curl of a wave. I am moved to sing, exclaim in fact, to greet my soaring cousins with my power voice, my loudest and most resonant tones. A song takes shape, call and response between Noël and me, and then uncontrolled free-form shamanic verse. The tide surges in and a magic landscape is reveled, always there, just waiting for us to take a little time to tune in. The rocks and cliffs, the endless water, distant clouds, my friends and me, and all the beings: together again in a song.