Fieldwork

JP, working.

Notebook: Whale-Watching / Kayaking

1.  I will have to set aside the camera a bit more deliberately to engage my whole sight and other senses.    Next time around.  The camera itself, turning it on, fussing with zooming and focusing, really narrows the experience.  I love having the shots to document and to spark memories, but I want to look and see more fully in the moment.

2.  The experience really was rooted in wet neoprene, in the seat of the wetsuit, in the motion of the swell under the kayak, in the lifting and the dropping and the shifting and the pulling and the pushing.  On the afternoon of the 30th, the tug was back into the harbor, but the swell was rising and the wind had created chop, so there was a constant motion -- up down thisway thatway-- that the morning had lacked, had been so flat and calm.  I love the water movement, and the sit-on-top is so well-crafted to ride such movements.  Even now, two days later, if I just sit and unfocus, I am moving in my mind with residual body sense-memories.  A lovely sensation to me.

3.  Then, besides the emphatic floating quality, the sounds!  So many birds flying, shrieking, calling, ker-plunking into the water after the anchovies.  Pelicans and terns and murres and cormorants and classic gulls.  Terns and pelicans out with us, mostly.  Then, the barking of sea lions in the distance, the splashing of seals nearby, the crunching-lunching of otters.  The chatter of humans: excited, agitated, inane.  "HOLY SHIT" were the first words out of one fellow's mouth, as he rounded the small point to leave the harbor only to be faced with a lunging whale.  (That fellow was off his game, more nervous than his date, and he shadowed JP and me off and on, nervously.  Still, such caution in such a situation is no bad thing, and his date may have been more water-savvy -- or simply oblivious -- than he was.)  The whales' spouting, blowing, and splashing.  Occasionally, the power station would let out great blasts of steam that would mimic the whale spouts--and would confuse me, for a moment, as I looked for that other whale.  The water made the most noise and the most noises, lapping and slapping and splashing and crashing along and onto the jetty, the kayak, the whales, itself.

Otters: Inside the Harbor

Jack Spicer: Of Fools, Goddesses, Heroes, Oceans, Love, and Memory

ANY FOOL CAN GET INTO AN OCEAN

Any fool can get into an ocean   
But it takes a Goddess   
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming   
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
    water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

--Jack Spicer

(Thanks, JP, for the suggestion.)

Sofia, All Dressed Up

Fuzzy Otters

Keeping my distance, as appropriate, from these marine mammals, but then the focus for the zoom doesn't work all that well in the swell.

Otters, Curious

Two otters checking me out from a distance.

I saw 12-15 otters yesterday while paddling off Lover's Point in Pacific Grove, CA. I say 12-15 for I kept my distance, as one should, and can't confirm all of the sightings. #13 or 16, for example, was a small log, when I drew much closer. At another point, one fellow surfaced suddenly, chirped strongly at me, and dove down so fast I only had that cry and a sense of a furry brown head, but harbor seals and sea lions don't chirp like that.

(A fading swell helped make the paddling a little fun too; I dislike lakey, flat conditions, but that swell also kept me from poking in among the shore rocks and surge channels too.)

Kelp-Napping

Comfort Reading

Otter, Easily

A closer view of one of those otters in the populous "rafts" in the Moss Landing harbor area. Note how his (or her) feet stay out of the water as the creature moves to our left. The movement is coming from the tail and abdominal crunches as the otter undulates.

I was trying to keep the camera in place as the otter moved out of the frame. I wanted to remember how the otter was moving so easily and efficiently.

That Raft of Otters

Thank you, Uncle Bob, for introducing us to this grand flotilla of fur and fun.

Otter at Steamer Lane

My hero, again. I love watching otters (from the cliff, here, or from the water) in surf zones. I love how they can be so nonchalant, so immersed in the task at hand (finding and eating food), and seemingly unconcerned with set waves or swell in general. Otters ride those waves, all waves, as they like.

Years and years ago, I was watching one otter off the Gazebo Rocks near Asilomar riding out a pretty fierce swell and was struck by the apparent effortlessness in ways that either I keep getting struck by or that I just hadn't noticed. Maybe I should put it this way: watching that otter swimming amidst storm sets schooled me both in poise and technique. I started consciously imitating that otter as I played in the surf zone at Lover's Point and in surge channels all along that rocky shoreline. I had thought I'd been relaxed in surf before, and I had been back in my prime with Keith and Charlie and the gang, but aging demands mindfulness as well as brute training. Dive smarter; dive like an otter.

This otter kept snatching snacks off the rocks below and munching away as the small waves of the day rolled through. I liked hearing the crack of rock against shell as the otter used his chest as a kitchen-anvil.

This is the same otter posted in the photo yesterday. I like that photo for the color contrasts of the water as the wave moved through and for the interlacing of foam and ripples that hint at the action of the water beyond that moment.

(I'm not happy with my prose here; I haven't been clear enough, but I'm going to post this and revise later.)

Three For Luck

My Hero

Sea otter: casual dining.

Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz, CA.