Orca Watching at the San Juan Islands

I used to think that bird watchers were weird. To spend hours in cold, damp weather waiting for a flash of color and then, it was all over. Very strange. That is until I went whale watching in the San Juan Islands.


My daughter, who has lived in Bellingham for the past two years, was coming home, and she needed some help with moving from coast to coast. With my teaching and chairperson duties, the only option was a red-eye reservation. Most of my colleagues thought I was crazy. Or crazier.


I didn't know what to expect. I'd never been to Washington, so my trip was a culmination of assistance and last hurrah. And what a hurrah.


Besides taking care of the paperwork for her lease, my daughter also wanted me to share some of her adventures of living in Washington, so we visited the Space Needle and the Pike Place Market. She also took us to a book store in Fairview, a casino in Nooksack, and the pines surrounding Lake Padden. But the highlight of the trip was the San Juan Islands to see the orcas.


My wife, who had gone ahead and is now somewhere out in the Midwest (they are driving from Seattle to Florida and are amazed at the "amber waves of grain"), had bought the tickets for our excursion. She had also done her usual preparations: buying snacks, sodas, water, ponchos (in case it rained), and Dramamine, so that nothing could spoil our trip on the Fourth of July.


Of course, we woke up late and drove like Mad Hatters to the pier, hoping that the ferry hadn't left us. It hadn't. We were the last on board and as soon as we cast off, we let out a collective sigh.


Once we settled into our seats, we began to see the awe-inspiring beauty of Washington and the evergreen forests that line the shore. After making a few stops at neighboring islands to pick up some other passengers, we were soon in the middle of the ocean waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Some other boats appeared. Still nothing.


My daughter asked the guide, "If we don't see any whales, will we get a refund?" He told her that she'd get a free trip at another time. She didn't seem very pleased by that answer. I tried to cheer her up. "Darling," I said (the only lullaby that always worked on her was Sam Cooke's, "Darling, You Send Me), "it's like when we used to go fishing and I had to remind you that it's called fishing, not catching." That didn't cheer her up either.


Nothing continued to happen until the guide said, "Over there!" At first, I was skeptical. I didn't see a thing. Then, someone else said "There!" I still didn't see anything. Then, my daughter, eyes wide open, said, "There, Daddy, look!" And she was transformed from this beautiful woman into the curious child with braids who took me to see turtle hatchings on a cold Sunday morning.


And then, it happened. A dorsal fin broke the water and disappeared.


Orcas are an endangered species, so the boats have to keep a minimum distance of at least a hundred yards. But after that first sighting, many of the boats formed a semi-circle around the spot and waited for another miracle.


It happened again.


A dorsal fin and a saddle patch this time.


Things were happening so fast that we had to make a choice between taking pictures or watching them through our binoculars. We chose the binoculars because the sightings were so brief, yet so intense that it would have been better to capture the majesty of these remarkable creatures in our minds than on film. Let me tell you, I have newfound respect for those photographers at National Geographic and other whale guardians in Puget Sound.



I think we made the right choice. For to catch a glimpse of that white spot near their eyes and dorsal fin thrusting through the waves is the sight of a lifetime. And we got to see members of two pods until they moved away.


As the boats left the San Juan Islands and we headed home, I realized that most of the trip--not counting the preparation--was spent going and coming from the San Juan Islands. And the time spent watching the orcas was only a tiny fraction of that time.


But what a fraction! The waiting, the absolute absorption when we heard that flooof from the blowhole of the orca or watching an adolescent breaching near the shoreline--kids do the darndest things--was a memory that I took with me on the long boat ride back and through the fireworks.


I would even take those moments back with me on the red-eye back to Miami and the many meetings on campus. Those moments.


Come to think of it, those bird watchers don't seem so strange after all.

***

I Heart New York

Dear New York,


Everyone knows that I love older women, so it was great to see you again!

You, of course, were looking great! But I gotta tell you, although many of your streets were looking cleaner than the last time I saw you, you're showing your age, old girl.

Still, the big surprise was how much friendlier you've gotten over the years. Everywhere I went, your no-nonsense New Yorkers were more courteous, and one young man even called me, "Sir." (Am I, too, getting old?--don't say it!)

It was a short and sweet vacation, and I'm back in Miami in balmy weather. But it was good to see you again.

And despite everything, you still have a place in my heart.

1Love,

Geoffrey

***
New York, New York on Flickr

A Jamaican in the Grand Canyon

As our tour bus passed the stone angel at the entrance of the Hoover Dam, Kanan, our fellow passenger from Dubai, my wife and I marveled at the sheer genius that it took to imagine and construct this engineering marvel. As I gazed at the 726 foot concrete wall, I was once again reminded of the remarkable talent that North Americans have to pull together and create something spectacular. And it was.

From Lake Mead to the "Gothic-inspired balustrade," the Hoover Dam was an extraordinary site to behold as we made our way from the bright lights of Las Vegas on our way to the Grand Canyon. But we also had a few diversions. Our tour guide, Jim, regaled us with all kinds of stories about Las Vegas and its suburbs. He also showed us videos about early pioneers such as John Wesley Powell and took us through Route 66 where we met the family of the late Juan Delgadillo of Snow Cap fame, who are still continuing the old man's tradition of fake mustard and dead chicken sandwiches. And that was only the start of the journey.

And although Jim had prepared us by telling us all about rock formations and the uplifting of Paleozoic strata (yeah, Jim knows his stuff!), we were not ready for the sheer majesty of the Grand Canyon. It was more impressive than I had ever imagined and also humbling.

From the safety of the barrier at Yavapai Point and watching the Colorado River--a brown snake winding through rock--I realized that I was looking back to the earliest cooling of our planet to the uplifting and folding of tectonic plates into mountains and plateaus of grandeur. We were witnesses to the marriage of stone and water--the obduracy of stone and the subtlety of water that created intricate caverns and monuments of quartz that mark their brief stay with beauties and disasters before they crumble into sand and join the detritus of time.

Staring out into the vastness of the canyon, I also wondered if at fifty, a casual observer could have said as she witnessed my passage through time--the things I have created and destroyed-- and said, "It is good."

The feeling of awe remained with me as we drove back to Las Vegas that shimmered in the distance. And even after a day's tour, Jim still managed to keep our interest with trivia: Why does the Luxor have a spotlight on the top and smaller lights running up and down the sides? Why does the MGM have a green color at night? (You'll have to book with Jim to get the answer.)

As we left the tour bus with our friend Kanan, I also understood that for all its twisting and turning, its upheavals and settlings, the Earth needs us and we need it to tell the stories of our travels through time.

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For more photos, please follow this link: Grand Canyon

Related Post: A Jamaican in Las Vegas

A Jamaican in Las Vegas (Part One)

The minute I landed in Las Vegas--a city ripe for the destruction by the God of wrath from my fundamentalist childhood--I knew my ideas about sex, sin, and scarcity would be challenged. But here I was in the middle of "Sin City" celebrating my fiftieth birthday and checking out things for myself.

As my wife and I walked through the McCarran Airport, we were immediately confronted with the famous "one arm bandits," and by the time we reached the Luxor, we had already had an eyeful of moving billboards on flatbed trucks with the signs: "Girls who want to meet you." For if ever there was a place built with a purpose, it is Las Vegas--a city founded on the idea of satisfying Alpha male desires that revolve around sex, power, and chance.

A vacation in Las Vegas is like living through a twenty-four hour after-party with an anal retentive host. Sure, every now and then you'll run into an empty beer can or a corner where someone has hidden a glass of whiskey (I hope!), but for the most part the streets are very clean. And I am convinced that the many moving walkways above the streets that connect the hotels are designed not only to keep the pedestrians always from the traffic, but also to get the visitors back to their rooms, even if they are too drunk to walk. All they have to do is plop down on the walkway and hold on (not too fast, now) and try to make it to the next one, and the next one, and the next….

So, yes, I will admit it was a lot of fun taking "The Deuce" down to the Stratosphere and seeing so many places that I'd only seen in the movies (Sahara, Frontier, Caesar's Palace) and wondering how many of the many "stars," who started out dirt poor, must feel when they are now regulars on The Strip.

Once we reached the Stratosphere, the highest point in Las Vegas, it was reassuring to hear a familiar voice coming from the Starbucks: "In this life, in this life, in this O sweet life/ We're coming in from the cold."

Atop the Stratosphere, we had a 360◦ view of the desert and Las Vegas--a gambling town with a serious water problem. But they have also dealt with this issue by creating a culture that values water conservation by offering residents tax incentives to use water saving technology and desert landscaping--a Southwest aesthetic, if you will.

And yet in the middle of the desert, what's striking about Las Vegas is the abundance. "You have to do everything big in Las Vegas, honey," said Lee, our Black-Irish waiter (it was St. Patrick's Day) and he was right. From the shows like Ka at the Mirage (a breathtaking spectacle) to the kitschy Tournament of Kings at the Excalibur, everything about Las Vegas spells excess in a gaudy, unashamed manner that you can't help but love. As the sign at the Luxor (thanks, Debbie Kasprzyk) said, "Less is not more. More is More."

It would have been easy to dismiss Las Vegas as a city of sin, sex, and vice or to say it's a town of gamblers and ex-gamblers. But I got a different perspective from the many visitors, cab drivers, bell hops, guides, and retirees whom I met on my vacation: People like you and me trying to make a living in a city with an insatiable lust for excitement. (Yes, I also saw the seedy side of Las Vegas). Perhaps, it was also fitting that as we were leaving our hotel, the unmistakable voice of Joan Osbourne came streaming over the clang and clatter of the slot machines whirring in the background:

If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question

And yeah yeah God is great
yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

***
For photos, please follow this link: Jamaican in Las Vegas

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