I - Whales
I have driven California’s Highway 1 from Monterey to Big Sur more than a hundred times. It is one of the great roads. It probably shouldn’t be there, or maybe the truth is that it won’t be there too much longer, what with once-in-a-century rains happening more than once a year. But the road! Imagine taking a long noodle of linguini, and draping it up and down over a really chunky, hilly sauce. That’s Highway 1 into Big Sur.
I know the bends and turns, which ones I can accelerate into, and others where I need to quickly slow it down, taking a smooth curve and riding the road wave back up. It is a road you have seen in car commercials, where trained drivers and special effects software contrast to city weekenders, used to bumper-to-bumper Bay Area traffic, but trying hard in their BMWs and Teslas, to be as cool as their lifestyles. A couple weeks ago I was wiggling and weaving through the twisty turns, on a mission to restock food in Monterey. Sometimes I poke along, but this time I was moving. I was at least 300 feet up, with a grand vista out to a vastness of water that is hard to imagine until you see it. I was feeling good, really good, window down, smelling the salt air, and when I could, when the road afforded me a second, I shot glances out to the ocean, into the bright backlit afternoon sun. And in one of those split-second moments I saw the spray of a whale’s spout. Hey hey! I checked the road quickly, then looked back to the water. Three spouts! Whoa! I pulled over, and way out, way out across my view, sprays of water were shooting up. I waited a minute, and then two more over there. Then three over there. I forgot about the rush to buy food, found a roadside boulder to sit upon, took a deep breath, and enjoyed the parade.
When I first looked for whales years ago, I would always be fooled by every white cap and rolling wave, as I didn’t know what to look for, but these vertical sprays of water, going off like geysers, are unmistakeable.
Humpbacks were migrating to their summer homes, and it felt good to know they were there.
II - Wolves
The trail down from the Greenstone Ridge to Chickenbone Lake—the real name of an inland lake in Isle Royale National Park—was very muddy. I was slopping along, with boots that seemed twice as heavy, lifting a pound of mud on each step. At Chickenbone we would pitch our tent and sleep for the night.
I was enchanted with Isle Royale. I still am. A 50-mile-long island in Lake Superior, think of it as a giant granite rock covered in wilderness landscapes of white pine, sugar maple, spruce, fir, cedar, and paper birch, dotted with lakes, bogs, and swamps, a Northwoods oasis surrounded by the crystal clear and icy waters of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world. And while that was reason enough to lure me there, the real magic was the attention wildlife biologists had put on the relationship between a large number of moose, whom they believed swam the 15 miles from Ontario, and many fewer wolves, who were believed to have crossed over on ice one particularly cold winter. For six decades Michigan Tech University has studied them as their numbers increased, crashed, and went though dramatic changes and controversies. The research has become the longest-running predator-prey study in the world.
You know the question asked around campfires, or in getting to know a friend, “What animal would you be if you could choose?” Yup, for me, a wolf. A strong second is a river otter, because they slap mud on river banks then spend the day walking up and sliding down.
I had never seen a wolf. But they were here. And here I was, on an island so big, with lakes you could portage a canoe across, and trails that took a week to cross from Northeast to Southwest, with wolves. I would howl, hoping they would howl back. I would sit still deep in the forest, or on the edge of a granite bald, channeling rocklike thoughts, so still a wolf might not notice. But to no avail.
The next morning we packed up and headed back up to the ridge. The trail was starting to dry out, and for most of the way, with heads down, we saw our own footprints from the day before. I stopped for a minute to adjust my pack, looked down, and there, right in the middle of yesterday’s imprint from my boot, was a clear and fresh print of a wolf.
I still have not seen a wild wolf, but I am quite happy knowing they are here.
Thanks Eddie. I love the juxtaposition of whales and wolves. And you’re absolutely right, it’s wonderful to know they’re out there.
The opening photo is stunning. Now I look at it and imagine a spout, and a howl.