Chapter
14: Lessons Lost
Late in the fall season of my fifth year, while
Wave Rider and I were out deepwater fishing with several other smaller groups
of adolescent males, we heard news that Old Scarred Flippers was ill. Everyone knew that the patriarch was slowing
down. He had lost a noticeable amount of
his blubber the past few weeks. My
mother had expressed her concern to me just the day before, saying that perhaps
her brother was getting too old to make the annual trip to the northern range.
"After fishing this afternoon let's go find
Old Scarred Flippers and see how he's feeling." I clicked to Wave Rider as we sped along
side-by-side after a school of fleeing squid.
After filling our bellies with the hot blood and
flesh of deep ocean delicacies, we found him at the outer reefs where he had taught
us how to eat sea urchins. He was not
alone, two strong adult males kept a watchful eye on him from a distance. For the last several months, he always had a
protective escort that made sure he was safe and that he never ventured too far
from the family pod. In the last year he
had become quite forgetful and often wandered off, getting lost, sometimes for
several days before the anxious pod found him again.
He greeted us cheerfully, "Good day Strong
Nose and Wave Rider. Do you remember how
to select, prepare and eat sea urchins?"
"Of course we do, Uncle. Would you like us to catch some for
you?"
"Yes, that would be lovely," he said
with a smile. "These days lifting
the heavy stone to break the urchins' spines is tiring and not worth the
effort. But today I have a great craving
for their tasty meat."
Wave Rider dove deep to look for the appropriate
type of stones, while I escorted my uncle slowly around the reef, looking for
the largest and most delicious sea urchins.
"How are you feeling Uncle?" I asked hesitantly, not really wanting to
know the truth.
"I am at peace. I will not make the trip to the northern
range this year. I will stay here where
it is warm and I can enjoy calm waters."
He stalled in the water and pointed down to our
left. "There behind the Brain Coral,
where the large moray eel lives, I think I see a good catch of sea
urchins. Where is your nephew with our
stones?"
A minute later Wave Rider appeared. With two good-sized, heavy rocks in his mouth
he mumbled, "Uncle, on the far side of the reef, near the sea grass
meadows of the sandy bottom...I spotted what looked like a net from one of the
surface vessels. I think there were some
dead turtles and other heavy objects in the net. Should we go and investigate?"
"Let's eat first, explore later. You must have your priorities in order Little
Big Splash," our uncle said with a laugh, after intentionally calling my
nephew by his childhood nickname.
We laughed with him fully and easily,
understanding the special bond that we had with him. He watched with gleeful anticipation as we
smashed the heavy rocks on to the sea urchins.
We made sure the round fat bodies were clear of all spines before we
presented them to him.
Old Scarred Flippers may have been getting weaker
at the ancient age of nearly thirty-six years, but his jaws were still strong
and he easily crushed the sea urchin bodies to pieces. With great relish, he expertly separated the
orange and pink flesh from the urchins' hard shell. He devoured all of the catch that we brought
to him in a few short minutes.
"Now, let's see what you have found Wave Rider. Lead the way," he said with a satisfied
whistle and belch of bubbles.
As we neared the tangled net of floating objects,
known and unknown, we heard shallow breathing and weak struggling. Using echolocation, I was able to identify
three large loggerhead turtles tangled in the net. Two of them were dead, but one was still alive. Without talking, we immediately began to pull
away the net and other strange things tangled around the turtles' limp bodies. Some of the stuff sank directly to the
bottom, some floated to the surface. Many
of the objects were hard and colorful, and some were oil-soft, brown or green
like kelp.
"What is this stuff?" I asked to no one in particular.
"It comes from the human beings. It is their waste and they leave it
everywhere they go. Remember when I told
you about the large sea of waste to the north of the Hawaiian Islands, this is
what it's made of," he said as one of the dead turtles broke free and
gently floated away in the coastal current.
"This waste has no value to us. Do not eat any of it. It is foreign to our world and when left to
rot, it sits for hundreds of years before it can be reclaimed by the
ocean."
The barely alive turtle looked at us with fear as
we broke the last few pieces of net holding it in the tangled pile of
waste. When free, the turtle began to
struggle weakly towards the surface, but it soon gave up and began to sink to
the bottom with its dead brothers.
"Push it to the surface so that it can
breathe. Then escort the turtle to the
shallows where he can recover in safety," our uncle commanded us.
Without question, we carried out our uncle's orders. The turtle was able to breathe and as we
pushed it slowly towards the shallows, it gained some strength. We left it in a protected cove with ample rocks
and sea grass where it could hide. We
didn't feel any great joy or reward in helping the turtle to survive—it was
natural behavior for us. We were taught
by our mothers and fathers "to respect and care for all the creatures of
our world. Do not kill for sport or out
of carelessness, we kill for food only, and when we do we say a prayer of
thanks."
A few days later, Old Scarred Flippers
requested a small group of males and females from his immediate family to take
him to the deep ocean to say farewell.
My mother, Wave Rider and I, were asked to be part of the
procession. We swam slowly and quietly
keeping pace with our uncle. He led the
way confidently, knowing exactly where he wanted to go. As he led the group, he asked us one at a
time to swim with him privately.
"Do you think the turtle we helped the other
day understood our intentions?" He
asked me as I swam next to him.
It was a difficult question that I had pondered
myself. I thought carefully for a moment
and then replied, "I think so.
There seemed to be some recognition in his eyes when we left him in the
cove."
"All creatures in our world,
the ocean and the surface world, have some intelligence and recognition of
their place. Some of course, are more
intelligent than others. Our cousins the
great whales are the most intelligent of all, but intelligence is not that
important for life," he told me as we swam together.
"What is important—is the
connection to the universe that each creature, rock, and wave possesses. Everything is constant and connected through
the energy of our world. With that
energy, life is created and peace can be found," my uncle explained to me
as we continued on towards the deepest part of our southern range.
"What happens when your energy is
gone?" I asked him, not wanting to
use the word, death.
"Your physical energy is given back to the
world, and your spiritual energy lives on," he ended as he gestured to me
that our conversation was over.
A short time later, we reached a place where the
larger pod often went night hunting and the upwelling from the deep was cool
and full of life. Even during the
brightest time of day, the sunlight only reached a few hundred feet and after
that, darkness prevailed.
The procession halted and my uncle, Old Scarred Flippers,
the patriarch of our family and the master of ceremonies for the larger pod,
turned and faced us proudly. There was
no sound, just the quiet rhythm of the ocean.
He smiled at each one of us and said farewell with a gesture of his head
and a wave of his scarred pectoral fins.
He rolled over, pointed his body vertically and powerfully started to
dive into the deep.
My mother, his younger sister and only surviving
sibling, whistled sadly as he swam away.
The rest of us stayed solemnly and respectfully quiet until he faded
from sight. No one moved for a long
time. I half expected my uncle to
reappear suddenly with a large squid in his mouth. I wished that I had spent more time with the
patriarch. I lamented the untold lessons
that were now lost to me.
"It's time for us to go back to the family
pod and get ready for the journey north," my nephew Wave Rider said with
some authority. He was now one of the
older males in our small family pod, still too young to join with the alpha
males in the leadership of the larger pod, but responsible for representing us
when they were not present.
My mother nodded in agreement and we made our way
home, each of us lost within his or her own thoughts and memories of the great
Pacific Bottlenose dolphin that we all had loved. I wondered what he felt as he rejoined the cosmos
in the depths of our ocean. I hoped that
it was peace and joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment