Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Outside the hotel

If you ask the locals about the whales, they all have a different story. It's because of the barnacles and the shallow depth of the bay, says one. The whales come there to scrape off their barnacles, and that's why one whale has kept worryingly close to shore all morning. It could also be that the large number  of seagulls that spend time on the aptly-named "seagull rock" nearby produce a scent that Orcas find off-putting and which therefore makes the bay a refuge for mama whales teaching baby whales the mysteries of the sea. It could be both! That's the thing about whales; whales don't feel the need to tell you all of their secrets.

A few days later, up on what used to be a mountain, we saw a forest fire starting in the near distance. The clouds that had passed off in the distance had dropped lightning in among the brush, but we had just driven through all of those forests and seen the ways that the trees were ready for them, how they created layers specifically to be burned off. A hour later we drove straight into that storm and it gave us buckets of ice, thrown down so hard we worried for the integrity of the windows.

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