I turned 30 last month. I know - I can’t believe it either. One of my resolutions for the year is to be better about posting blogs. To jump start, I thought that this would be appropriate. It’s an article that I wrote that was published in Thirty Things to Do When You Turn Thirty (www.amazon.com/Thirty-Things-When-You-Turn/dp/1416205152) last year.

Be Humbled by Nature

A brief but intimate encounter with a mother gray whale and her new baby leaves this conservationist not only with a sense of awe and wonder, but with a renewed commitment to fight for our planet and all its magnificent creatures.

by Philippe Cousteau

The boat rocked softly as the giant nudged her calf alongside us. After lifting her head out of the water and gently resting it on the side of the boat I felt an overwhelming sense of humility that this new mother would share her most precious possession, her new baby, with us. She was easily twice as long as our frail vessel and could have capsized it with a simple twist of her enormous head. The differences between our species melted away and words were not necessary, it was clear that this was a proud mother eager to show off her beautiful child. She seemed content to share a fleeting moment before she slowly, smoothly slipped back beneath the waves followed by her offspring, leaving a few small swirling eddies as the only testimony to their brief presence.

A gray whale, easily fifty feet long and weighing as many tons, had decided to grace us with a few precious moments. Aside from the awe and wonder that such an encounter would naturally elicit in any reasonable human, I also felt humility and a strange sense of pride in what I had experienced. This creature, whose kind has suffered so much at the hands of man, had swum the fifty yards to our boat and urged her calf to lift its head out of the water and interact with ME! I was standing in a small twenty-foot metal skiff off the coast of Laguna San Ignacio along the western coast of Mexico. I had come to witness the culmination of the annual southward migration of the Pacific Gray Whale, a 6,000-mile journey (the longest of any mammal in the world) south from summer feeding grounds in the Arctic. Here in the warm waters off Baja they give birth and prepare their calves for the journey north back to the food-rich waters of the Bering and Chukche Seas in the Arctic.

A United Nations World Heritage site, Laguna San Ignacio cuts into a spectacular untamed desert on the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula and is the last and only undeveloped breeding and nursery ground in the world for the Pacific gray whale. The other two major breeding areas have been encroached upon by development and industry, which are ruining what were once pristine samples of nature’s beauty. The desert extends for miles around and looking at the sunset over the azure blue waters with every hue of crimson and orange, purple and rose bleeding into one another, it seems as though one is staring at heaven itself.

Only small eco-tourism operations run out of this rustic town along the bay and thus the few tourists who come here to see the whales are treated to one of the most majestic panoramas on earth. The local whale-watching operation adheres to strict rules that make sure the whales are not disturbed and tourists are only taken out for a few hours each day.

Once known as “devil fish,” because they would attack the small whaling skiffs that were sent to hunt them, Pacific gray whales were driven to near extinction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but their numbers have rebounded since the hunt was banned in 1947. They retained their fearsome reputation, however, until 1972 when a local fisherman discovered that a giant whale that had approached him seemed consumed not by a desire to hurt him, but rather by a curiosity about this strange ungainly creature that had invaded her world. As he later recounted, “I don’t know what finally compelled me to reach out my hand. The moment I touched the whale for the first time, I felt something incredible. I lost my fear. I was amazed. It was like breaking through some kind of invisible wall. And I kept touching. That moment I compare with when my first child was born.” From that moment on, the nickname of these gentle giants changed and they are now known as the “friendly whale.”

In our modern, industrialized world we are all too often separated from a sense of belonging to nature. While there are many natural experiences that will humble you, nothing will prepare you for that first moment when you touch a giant whale and gaze into the eyes of her calf. Few experiences in life can ever match the deep feeling of honor at being allowed to share in the mother’s joy and pride in her newborn; the experience will leave you speechless.

As we bustle about our daily lives, which seem to get increasingly busy as we enter our fourth decade, we may forget that we are a part of this planet. Thus it is easy to watch the daily onslaught of bad news about our environment with a certain degree of detachment. From global warming and collapsing ecosystems to pollution and plummeting bio-diversity, we face mounting crises that threaten life as we know it. And yet the power to change rests in the hands of ordinary people willing to demand change of themselves, their habits, and the priorities of their politicians.

Being humbled at the awesome beauty and power of nature is a way to jolt us from our malaise. It can help give us a renewed sense of commitment to embrace the urgent responsibility we all have to fight for a planet in which all its magnificent creatures can continue their incredible journey with dignity and health.

As the only species on earth endowed with the power to cherish, protect, and enhance life, we are bound by a wonderful responsibility to do so. We must embrace this singular power with gratitude and humility. Sometimes being humbled by nature, for just a moment, can help remind us of that.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 3:48 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.