My Occasional Obsession

I sometimes have this fantasy/"day-mare"(?) that I am on a little tiny boat in the middle of the ocean, just a speck in the incomprehensible vastness.  I look down to see a dark area in the water.  What is it?  It's hard to tell.  But then I realize it isn't just an area, it's the form of something rising closer to the surface.  Terror strikes my heart as I realize the enormity of this thing and I'm rapidly feeling smaller and smaller as it approaches.  It's the length of three Great White Sharks.  And even though it's harmless, I find myself paralyzed.  Wishing I could reach out and touch it, but too small and puny to reach it, and even if I could reach it, too bewildered to do so.  It's a blue whale.

Ooh I want to see one so bad.  That's one way I sometimes dream of it happening.  But sometimes I just imagine I get to go out with experts on a boat and they can tell me all about it.  I don't really care how it happens as long as I get to see one and I don't drown or get lost.  I sort of tucked this dream away and had forgotten about it for a while and then when I was at the beach the other week and saw those dolphins, I rediscovered my fascination.  Just the idea of animals who have some things in common with me; the fact that they're mammals, they're intelligent and playful, and yet they are so at home in a world that is full of danger and mystery for me.  The ocean is foreign and beautiful and it makes me nervous.  The thrill of just seeing dolphins at a distance but in person was enough to make my whole week.  What would it be like to see them up close, or to see a whale?  Not to mention a blue whale?

There is something about scale that can create such a humbling thrill for us humans.  We long to reverence something and to feel incomprehensibly small at times.  I've felt it out West, surrounded by mountains or overlooking a valley.  It's why we visit the Grand Canyon or the Redwoods.  It's why I want to see a Blue Whale.  I can't wrap my brain around it.  It weighs more than 3,300x my weight.  I could probably swim through its arteries.  Its heart only beats once every ten seconds.

I'm sure I'd experience enough of a thrill just seeing any whale or being close to a dolphin in the ocean. That would make me so happy.  But I'm pretty sure one of the biggest dreams I've dreamed is to see the biggest animal that ever lived.


P.S. How cool is it that in all of evolutionary history - and speaking of scale, take a minute to review how LONG evolutionary history IS - WE are alive at the same time as the largest animal that has EVER lived on Earth!!!