Sunday, August 12, 2012

Whale watching at San Juan Islands

Orca Jump
I wonder what it would be like to get inside the head of an orca. Maybe I'll find that their undulations at the surface are nothing but a part of their regular breathing. Maybe I'll discover that their enthusiastic jumps and splashy landings are nothing but a mundane response to a mundane stimulus that we don't know about. Maybe they are sticking to their groups just because there is safety in numbers. Maybe it's not really as much fun as it appears to be.

I don't know why they do things they do, but on this bright, clear, un-Seattle-like, warm evening near San Juan Islands, these whales gamboled, splattered and played and infected us with their apparent joy. For two hours they convinced us that we were in paradise too.