Evelyn Alfago
It was a warm morning, at the edge of dawn, notes of purple skies mixed with a prideful Venus rising. The atmosphere was filled with humidity, as is usual on Ecuador’s coast during the summer.
In the early 2000s, we, kids in our 20s, used to run frantically towards this tempestuous point we used to call “the base.” Down there, at the right timing between the dance of the winds and the swells, was “La Ola de la Choco.” She was perfectly standing, forming from a smooth and almost tender inside, yet arrogantly gathering velocity and momentum like a mathematical function and thus breaking into an inflection of a rapid turquoise channel that crashed violently into less than one foot from the sand.
Anyone on that wave had to be bold, quick, and agile to make it out in time if they wished to keep the integrity of their legs or spine. The wave was such a wild ride that we would sit on our boards for hours, waiting for the right harmonic pulse to arrive. As the sun rose higher and higher, the heat and humidity eventually crept up on us, creating an unbearable stupor. Little did we know that during those days, we had a privilege: absolute solitude, a quiet contemplation of the rocky point, and an indelible bond between three human beings and a wave. No one else was around.
As the sun dialed up and the heat became unbearable, we employed an old local technique to cool off and wash off the deliriums of overheating. Diving deeper and deeper, turquoise to deep blue, one could not help but hope that the occasional shiver of sharks was a friendly one. Deep down, the mind became steady, focused, and calm. The cooler water was an elixir we would use to resurface back, hop onto our boards, and ride along the wave repeatedly.
During one of those moments underwater, while suspended in the strange quietness of the ocean’s embrace, I heard a clamor, a cry, a moan, a sort of haunted house expression; it was as if ghosts were in the water. For a brief moment, I hesitated. I thought my brain had tricked me. “Could it be the heat? Dehydration? I need to get out of here….,” I thought. But something out of me pulled me, lured me deeper with irrational enchantment, and suspended me. I had to find out. It was as if some relentless infatuation possessed me with a desire to discover the treasure at the heart of the blue darkness.
Looking back, I can relate now to the myth of Ulysses. Like sirens singing songs, hypnotizing and luring men into shipwrecking, one is doomed to follow the irresistible. At some point, as time has no mercy on us humans, I was reminded to surface back and inhale. Washed with awe and excitement, I invited my friends to participate in a private symphony orchestrated by whales. We all dove in, and for a brief period, life had a specific purpose and meaning: belonging.
Back then, that moment at “La Ola de la Choco” foreshadowed a future irony—the irrefutable and fragile interconnectedness of nature and, within that, our dissociated and self-absorbed insistence on being human—somewhat superior, and with a strong will to power. It is within that frame that our loneliness emerges. Yet, at a deep existential level, we continuously yearn to connect and belong. Thus, human nature’s old paradox: a will to power and an inherent condition of aloneness.
Two decades later, as a ship captain, part of my job was to sail people to go whale watching. Initially, it felt like a fun and exciting excursion; later on, however, I witnessed the frantic and almost obsessive greediness of the tourism and whale-watching industries and how we tend to objectify any being that is not us into a form of spectacle and entertainment.
One day, I got closer to a pair of gray whales at the public’s request. While slowly steering the helm, I turned the propeller off and set the sails as a means of power so as not to disturb a mother and her calf. A sadness broke out inside me while I was witnessing the primordial bond between a mother and the vulnerable state of her baby. I admired the beauty, the legend, and its utter fragility. I knew then that the wild symphony I witnessed 20 years ago had become shattered by the ongoing and ever growing human-generated noise of propellers, oil trails, human yelps, phone clicks, and the unfortunate irreversibility of plastic hyperobjects.
It was then I finally understood the legend of Moby Dick, a story of the untamed and unstoppable resolution of a furious will to rebel against all intrusion. I related to why the wild is vehemently responding and why modern-day whales’ behavior reveals the uncanny—erratic demeanor, aggression, and even mass suicide.
On a Valentine’s Day afternoon, at the core of a California Winter, I became aware of out-of-the-norm splashes in the water while walking Shoreline Park in Santa Barbara, California. It was a gray day, with graceful portals of sunlight into the metallic blue water. There they were, in a solace of magical expression—the gray whales on the initiation of their journey up north to receive the eventual summer. There, at a distance, and as a bipedal featherless earthbound creature, I grew respect for a clear boundary. They were out in their element, sovereigns of the salty flows, and there I was, in my element, a creature of some fairy tale, a tale of historical human-made culture and ongoing technology.
That afternoon, an unspoken agreement came about in my heart, a jubilee; we both share a home, an ineffable relationship, and a mutual acknowledgement. There is an inherent miracle to contemplate and reflect upon—our simultaneous existence and shared experiences within this fathomless universe.
The whales we see and all creatures we cohabitate with are not what they seem but may reflect or represent what we are, what we have created, and the consequences of our actions. The health of the environment is the reflection of our physical and emotional health. And we may be witnessing a picture that reminds us of our current state and where we are heading. Our imprints are of earthlings, and our actions as individuals result in timeless sounds of belonging from our collective efforts. Thus, we may be able to change the course of history; and instead of destruction, we may find a way for a creative and thriving life force of expansion.