In honor of the United Nations' World Ocean Day, remembering our local hero.

 It was Memorial Day weekend, 2017 and our long weekend spent in Bolinas was marked by this magnificent creatures death—the 79-foot blue whale that washed to shore and left a tiny beach town singularly obsessed. She was a fallen hero of another breed—how fitting that her death occurred on this national holiday.

I share my memories of that experience as this event has truly stayed with me in a powerful way. If each and everyone of us could witness the awesomeness of a whale, would we treat her home differently? Do we need to experience it first hand? Would it affect how we consume, how we travel, how we honor the well of richness that the ocean is?

I think it just might…

photo, Beth Miles

May 30, 2017. 
This past weekend, I had the tremendous privilege of experiencing this blue whale's epic end of her journey--the 79-foot endangered species washed to shore in West Marin this past week.

I was moved beyond words. I have never seen such a creature and couldn't believe the scale;—her humanness and the feelings of sadness at her loss.

It is very likely that her death was a result of swimming into a container ship--concussed & with a broken vertebrae/ribs she most likely drowned and eventually drifted to shore.

As hordes of people made the trek to the beach to witness her presence, I was fascinated by the the tiny town's singular discussion. Cars pulling into town with drivers hollering from their moving vehicles, "how do you get to the whale?" Visitors poking her with sticks and families posing in front of her to have their photos taken. Endless conversations about removing the carcass as, “the stench will be awful”, “use a wench and drag her to the continental shelf and dump her”, “cut her up and send the pieces on”, or bury her in the sand.  With each suggestion, my sadness deepened.  

Somehow her awesomeness seemed lost.  Having lost my own mother just two months before, I felt her death to be almost personal.   I wanted to sit with her, alongside the shore, and protect her from the onlookers.  Place my hand, gently, upon her remains, and let her spirit know that she wasn't alone.

And so I did.  An alter was erected nearby and a group joined in song to celebrate her.  I stayed for an hour or so, sat in silence and was reminded of the dynamic process of this thing we call life.  Only when we forget that it’s in constant flux, do we get caught up in the need to keep it all exactly as it once was.  Attempting to stop the movement would be similar to keeping this sea creature from returning to her watery grave.  It’s impossible.   

The privilege of living near the sea where you might have the chance to see a blue whale (only 2,800 left in the Pacific) might mean you may have to endure the smell of her decay. Imagining that a container ship full of fast fashion killed her, the least that we could do for her would be to let her pass as she must and return to the sea in her time.

She was thought to have been a mother of two calves and swam in the Pacific since 1999. I will hold her in my thoughts forever.

Peace & love...