Whale Watching

I lived in Los Angeles for three years back in the 1980s.

Fish out of water is an understatement. It might tell you something about how much I missed Wyoming when I tell you that I got all teary one time when I saw a Christmas card portraying a snow-covered pine tree.

I missed pine trees. I missed snow. I missed home.

But there were some really good things about LA also—like whale watching.

When you go on a whale watching tour you climb on a boat with a lot of people. You jockey for position to claim a good viewing spot. Then you hang on while the boat churns out to sea. The leaders of the tour have ideas on where the whales are and they also have rules on how close they can get, but all that is invisible to the folks on the tour.

As soon as the captain powers down the engine, everybody starts looking around.

Then you wait.

And wait.

The boat lurches side to side. You sip on your water bottle and wait. You scan the ocean, training your binoculars on the wavy horizon until your arms are shaking from the effort, so you lower them, and wait.

You think maybe you should have gone to Disneyland instead.

While you’re waiting, you notice the salt on your lips and lick them repeatedly. You gaze into the water and wonder what fishy things are lurking down there. You listen to the calls of the sea gulls as they crisscross the boat’s wake.

You check the horizon again. Nothing.

You watch a couple who are standing a few feet away and notice how the young woman is trying to keep her hair tidy in the wind by patting at it. She keeps swiping her finger under her eyes as if she’s afraid her mascara is running, which it is.

First date, you decide.

Somebody points and yells, “Spout!”

You turn in that direction just as a fountain of water spatters the surface of the sea. Then the maw of a blue whale rises up out of the liquid floor, followed by the massive barnacled slide of a whale body. Then the tail, etched with white scars, flips way up into the air and back down, slamming the surface.

A curtain of water splashes the crowd on the boat. Everybody laughs and applauds (as if the whale were performing a stunt). You giggle with your friends as you wipe the salty water from your face. You show off your photos and look at theirs.

Then you wait, again. And wait. On a two-hour tour, that might be all the whale you see. Sometimes no whale appears at all.

Waiting for the creative muse to show, I’ve decided, is a lot like a whale watching tour.

The ratio of waiting time to the arrival of creative insight is a lot to a little. Sometimes nothing worth anything arrives. Delete, delete.

But still, you’ve got to get on that boat. You’ve got to stay alert.

You’ve got to go out to sea if you want to see a whale, and you’ve got to show up to the page if you want to write.

Food, Glorious Food

I remember a time, shortly before we got married, when Mike and I were eating lunch and he asked, “What should we have for dinner?”

I told my sister about it.

“Oh, he’s gonna fit in with our family just fine,” she said.

Food is a big part of my life. That’s why I am confused when writers neglect to mention all the muffin crumbs, lemon slices, and long, cheesy strands of life in their stories.

I concur with the Italian writer, Aldo Buzzi, who wrote, “The writer who never talks about eating, about appetite, hunger, food, about cooks and meals, arouses my suspicion as though some vital element were missing in him.”

I will make this assertion: leaving out the purchasing, preparation, and consumption of food in your essays, stories, and poems is a lost opportunity.

A LOST OPPORTUNITY FOR…

Waxing philosophic:

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”

Luciano Pavarotti

Paying homage:

“When God sets the table for dinner, I would bet my grandma’s rolls are right next to the butter.”

Susan Mark

Expressing disdain:

“Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.”

Samuel Johnson

Inserting humor:

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”

Calvin Trillin

Portraying attitude:

“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”

Sophia Loren

Describing the sublime:

“Strawberries are the angels of the earth, innocent and sweet with green leafy wings reaching heavenward.”

Terri Guillemets

Delivering a good insult:

“Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.”

Henry James

Bringing characters to life:

(Excerpt from a letter included in my as-yet-unpublished novel):

I hope to bring back a new recipe from my sojourn in Kengetty, but I’m not sure I can recreate it exactly. Mrs. Yandle, the sibilant proprietress of the Gwesty, has a style to her baking that I guarantee I can’t replicate.

Making bakestones, for example. It starts with a pronouncement, to nobody in particular: “Oi! I’d best get to my bakestones, or it’ll be dimmit before we know it!” Followed by a march to the cupboard, a clattering as she pulls bowls, boxes, and implements out and bangs them down on the sideboard.

At which point she suddenly turns into a monk at prayer as she crumbles lard, butter, and flour together in a bowl, then adds in honey, currants, cinnamon, and nutmeg. She cracks an egg on top as a benediction. When the dough has been mixed to her satisfaction, Mrs. Yandle goes into a kind of fit state, giving it fond slaps and yelling (I kid you not) “Take that, you fop doodle!”

For me, food is also a portal to memory.

What is evoked as I remember my father serving my sisters and me a dish he called “goop” (creamed tuna on toast) after my mother’s departure when I was eight years old? It was about the only dish he knew how to cook, having learned it in the military.

Goop filled the hole in my stomach, but I missed Mom’s tacos, and the way she pressed all the grease out of the hamburger for me, because I was a finicky eater, and couldn’t stand any kind of fat.

And in remembering my father’s dish I am whisked back in time, and feel again the hole in my insides that no amount of food could fill.

There’s much, much more to food than just the ingredients, the cooking, the eating, isn’t there?

So, all I’m saying today is don’t forget the food.

Let your characters argue over pasta.

Resurrect the way your grandfather chewed his pot roast.

Bring into your poem the taste of a single blackberry, just plucked from the bush in the shadow of the Tetons as you keep an eye out for bears.

The Georgie Trail

Sometimes I need a nudge to get adventurous, to try something new, to step off my daily trail. Sometimes that nudge comes in the form of a memory…

It was a leaf-whirling September day in North Bend, Oregon. My husband and I were visiting my stepson and his family. With the grandkids napping, I pulled on a windbreaker and stepped outside. The family dogs, Georgie and Razzy, bounced around me in greeting.

“You want to walk?” I asked. Their tails wagged in the affirmative. We took off up the road that looped through this hilly residential neighborhood. I knew I couldn’t get lost because the loop would lead me right back to where I started. Georgie, the black and tan female-in-charge, ran in front and Razzy, a leggy yellow Lab followed close behind, nipping at Georgie’s tail like the annoying teenager he was.

I slowed on a downhill, trying to see through the dense forest to the blue of the ocean that I knew lay just beyond. I was impatient to see it, but there was only one place on this road where you could get a decent look, high up on a bluff, and even then, the view was partially blocked by a house.

When I looked back for the dogs, I saw that Georgie had left the road and was diving into the thick undergrowth. She turned and gazed up at me with a question in her brown eyes: Are you game?

I backtracked to see where she was going. There was a small path – well, not a path, really, just some trampled leaves and ferns. The dogs had probably done the trampling themselves – it didn’t look like anything humans used.

Georgie wagged her tail and sat, as if to say that she would wait for me to decide. Razzy plopped down beside her.

I hesitated. I like paths. On a hike, I prefer to let my mind wander, and staying on a road or trail means I don’t worry about getting lost. Razzy jumped up and spun around a couple of times in the road. Georgie’s eyes continued to rest on my face.

Oh, what the heck. Let’s see how far it goes. I should be able to track the trampled vegetation to find my way back.

For the next half hour, I followed Georgie and Razzy downhill, through trees, dense ferns and over lichen-splashed boulders. At one point, I couldn’t stay on my feet and had to slide down a muddy slope on my butt. I looked back once and had no idea which way we’d come.

I knew it was crazy – I could fall or sprain an ankle. Neither Georgie nor Razzy struck me as the Lassie type, and nobody knew where I was. I didn’t have a cell phone.

We kept going down, down until a sparkling blue vista opened up before us. Georgie and Razzy splashed into the water of a rocky cove. It was the perfect secret spot – no sign of human visitation at all. I explored the cove, plunked stones into the water (Razzy kept trying to retrieve them) and pocketed pink-lipped shells. I straddled a giant slick-skinned log, inhaling the salt air as I watched the ocean and the dogs.

Finally, I said to Georgie, “Time to go home, girl.” She led us back up the muddy slope, through the branches and ferns until at last the three of us were ejected from the forest onto the road. When we arrived at the house my husband was sitting in the yard. He looked at my muddy shoes and pants.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“On an adventure!” I said.

An adventure I would never have experienced had I not given control over to a brown-eyed mutt.

I try to remember this as I go through life. Not every place I need to go will be reached by a trail. If I keep an open mind and a willing heart, life will present me with surprising detours, and with unexpected guides who ask, “Are you game?” and then maybe, just maybe, lead me to magical places.