When Nature Leaves You Speechless
For the first twenty minutes, we saw nothing.
My friend Trina and I were on a whale watching excursion during the cruise portion of our recent Alaska trip, scanning the water and hoping for some sign that the whales were nearby. Our tour actually came with a money back guarantee that we would see whales, but as our boat continued across the water without a single sighting, I started wondering if we might be collecting on that promise.
Then our captain spotted something in the distance. A spout.
Before long, several boats were heading in the same direction, and suddenly the quiet water seemed to come alive. Whale spouts began appearing everywhere, those beautiful clouds of mist created when a whale exhales warm air through its blowhole into the cooler air above the water.
There seemed to be whales all around us.
I was already in awe.
Humpback whales are massive, beautiful creatures, and there is something almost humbling about seeing them in their natural habitat. One would surface, giving us a glimpse of its enormous body before gracefully disappearing beneath the water again. Then another spout would appear somewhere else.
I would have been perfectly happy if that had been the entire excursion.
But nature apparently had other plans.
Earlier on our cruise, the ship's naturalist had given a presentation about whales. Along with recommending that we take a whale watching excursion, he told us about something called bubble net feeding. It is a rare and specialized feeding behavior practiced by only a small portion of the humpback whale population.
I remember thinking, wouldn't that be something to see?
But I certainly wasn't expecting it.
Then the naturalist on our whale watching boat began paying close attention to the activity around us. The whales appeared to be preparing to bubble net feed.
WHAT?
Suddenly, the presentation I'd heard earlier became very real.
Bubble net feeding happens when humpback whales work beneath the surface to gather schools of fish into a concentrated area. The whales swim below the fish while releasing bubbles that rise through the water, creating what resembles a net. The fish become tightly grouped together, and at just the right moment, the whales surge upward with their enormous mouths open to feed.
All of this incredible activity happens beneath the water where we can't see it.
Our naturalist told us to watch the birds. Gulls had begun circling over the area where the whales were swimming. The birds know that when the whales push the fish toward the surface, there may be a feast waiting for them too.
So we watched.
The whales disappeared beneath the water and suddenly the birds became the stars of the show. They circled and hovered while we waited in anticipation. Then the birds began gathering closer together and flying lower. Something was about to happen. Everyone's eyes focused on the same patch of water. And suddenly, the ocean erupted.
Several enormous humpback whales burst through the surface at once, mouths wide open, water cascading around them while birds swooped and dove into the commotion. It happened so quickly and yet somehow felt like everything slowed down. I was speechless. We had just witnessed the rare behavior we'd heard about on the ship.
How lucky were we?
And then … it happened again.
And again.
And AGAIN.
Four times!
Four times that excursion, the whales disappeared beneath the water. Four times we watched the birds begin to gather. Four times the anticipation grew as we knew something incredible was happening below us. And four times these magnificent creatures exploded through the surface together.
I couldn't believe what we were seeing.
There are some experiences in life that photographs and videos simply cannot capture. You can take a hundred pictures, but they can't recreate the feeling of standing on that boat watching the water suddenly erupt with whales. They can't capture the sounds, the anticipation, the enormity of the animals, or the collective gasp from everyone witnessing it with you.
Those moments have to be felt.
It made me think about how easy it is to lose our sense of wonder as adults.
Children notice everything. They stop for butterflies. They pick up interesting rocks. They stare at bugs crawling across the sidewalk and point toward funny shaped clouds in the sky.
Somewhere along the way, many of us stop looking quite so closely.
We're thinking about where we need to be next. We check our phones. We hurry from one thing to another. We become so accustomed to the world around us that sometimes we forget how extraordinary it actually is.
Travel has a beautiful way of waking that part of us back up. And Alaska certainly knows how to do that. The mountains, glaciers, wildlife, forests, and seemingly endless landscapes have a way of reminding you just how big and beautiful this world really is.
What struck me most about our whale experience was that there was absolutely nothing we could have done to make it happen. We couldn't schedule bubble net feeding for 10:30 that morning. We couldn't pay extra to guarantee it. We couldn't put it on the itinerary and check it off our list.
All we could do was show up, pay attention, and hope nature might allow us to witness something extraordinary. And she certainly did.
There is something incredibly freeing about that. We spend so much of our lives planning and trying to control what happens next. Yet some of life's greatest gifts arrive without our help.
A brilliant sunset.
A rainbow after a storm.
The Northern Lights dancing across the sky.
A deer appearing quietly along a wooded path.
Or a group of humpback whales suddenly rising from the ocean.
Maybe our job isn't always to create the magical moment. Sometimes our job is simply to notice it.
I boarded that boat hoping to see a whale. I stepped off having witnessed something I never imagined I would see, not once, but four incredible times.
It reminded me that I never want to become too busy, too distracted, or too grown up to be amazed. I want to keep looking toward the mountains, watching the skies, listening to the ocean, and yes, paying attention when someone tells me to watch the birds.
Because every once in a while, if we're lucky enough to be present, the birds begin to circle, the water starts to stir, the whales rise, and we find ourselves experiencing one of those extraordinary moments when nature leaves you speechless.
xo, Sheryl
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