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 3rd attempt to see the whale body up-close, it is Noël and Kelsey’s 2nd 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.
