Watch for Five Minutes

Yesterday, wandering along First Beach in La Push, looking for whale blows, not seeing any. On the one hand you can't see what isn't there, on the other hand...

Kite-flying families, Twilight tourists, surfers, eagles. Aha, standing on a log at the front edge of the drift is a woman with binoculars, staring seriously out. I wander up (that 'up' is a clue, my tendency to angle right down to the swashing waves is counter-productive for seeing the water surface outside the surf line) and ask, have you been seeing them? "They're there," says the woman. "Just watch for five minutes, you'll see them blow," says her husband. I sit on a log near enough to the couple to be inside their aura of serious seeing, and it doesn't take but about 15 seconds. A blow and a bit of dark whale back. Involuntarily I hoot and wave my arms, primate greeting cetacean.

It was another curiously hazy/murky day, and windy. The tide was going out. As long as you grant that seeing them blow or seeing bits of whale back or a very occasional fin qualifies as 'seeing a whale', I by golly saw A Great Many gray whales. The water was calm, there was a lot of wind and glare. I never managed to point the binoculars at a whale, the blow or the flash of rolling back went by too fast. Couldn't track whether that one over there, and ah-another, and the-one-between-here-and-the-buoy were three whales, or one on the move.

After a while I waded across the creek and watched from a different spot. More surfers came, and more Twilight tourists. It got glare-ier. My feet were getting really cold, but I kept thinking either, "I'll leave after one more," or, "I can't leave now, I just saw one." Eventually I stopped seeing whales, and I wandered back, wading the creek again, watching for blows. Retrieved my car from behind the school, and drove up to the point to put on dry shoes and socks. The point was swarming with Twilight tourists, and one lady seriously watching. "There," she said, pointing. "You all are here for Twilight but I'm here to watch whales."

Yes, there. Again someone else's serious seeing helped me see. There were many. Not all at once, and who knows whether each manifestation was a different whale or the count (had I been counting) was only a half or a third what it seemed. In the end, the feeling, more peaceable than ecstatic, was that I had seen whales all day, lots of whales; that the gray whales are migrating past First Beach right now oh yes, yes they are.