Looking for a whale
Monday, October 1, 2012 at 10:03PM ;)
Roy Ahmaogak and his son Bennie scan the waters of the Chukchi Sea shortly after sunrise this morning, looking for a bowhead whale. In just a few hours, I need to get up and go join them and their Savik crew to go out and look for a whale again, so I don't have time to even glance at the many photos I took today, let alone edit them or make a real post of them. I quickly grabbed this one image from near the beginning of the take, so I could least put something up.
If I had the time, I could make a pretty nice post.
Suffice it to say it was great to be out on the ocean, with good people. The sea got a little bit rough a bit later and I got to worrying a bit about what all the twisting and pitching would do to my still healing, herniated, surgical incision. I could feel it, all right, but everything seems fine now. The world is still rocking a bit for me. I just took a shower and when I closed my eyes to rinse my hair off I nearly got pitched right out of the shower by the motion of the waves, even though the shower is in a firm building on dry land.
Well, frozen muddy land.
Barrow, Roy Ahmaogak, Savik crew in Alaska, whaling
Reader Comments (2)
Looking forward to more of this story and the photographs. I totally related to your experience of feeling like you were getting pitched out of the shower. Been there!
Glad to see you're back workin', dude. The reconciliation of surfing and Arctic whaling that you dream of is of course an expression of your desire to harmonize your own turbulent life. Here you have extended the fantasy by--not unfairly--gilding the lily of climate change. Species adapt, Bill McKibben to the contrary. A swell moves across the ocean of time & life more slowly than our impatient minds can stand. The North Slope Borough will host an extreme surfing championship and use the proceeds to secure polar bear habitat in Siberia. Peace, bro.