Myth Happens

And today there was the sea.

We had to earn it: we got hung up in transit hell getting to Long Wharf and the heat and humidity were like breathing through a damp towel. I was sprawled in the back seat of the taxi trying to cool down the back of my neck with the condensation on a glass bottle of apple juice while derspatchel said important, understanding things like, "You're going to be all right. We'll get you out to open water." We got to the harbor just as the Cetacea started boarding. Having arranged to meet at the harbor seals outside the Aquarium, teenybuffalo and I had a brief episode of the kind of cellphone conversation where the two of you are within shouting distance of each other, but there are crowds and heat and glare off everything, so you shout into the phones instead until somebody finally waves. Fortunately, we got aboard with plenty of time for the ritual slathering of sunblock and fastening back of hair with borrowed elastics. (Teeny is to be credited with the provision of both.) And then all was wind and salt and waves curling away from the catamaran and an arc of rainbow following in the spray. Teeny shared some of her ferry guide's spiel about the Boston Harbor Islands, which is how I know that Nixes Mate—a tide-vanishing flyspeck of granite topped with a black-and-white channel marker in hopes of no one else running aground on it; the most recent incident was 2012—is where pirates were hanged in chains as a warning in Colonial times. We'd started on the upper deck of the Cetacea, in the wind tunnel afforded by the only bit of outdoor shade we could find, but I spent most of the trip at the bow with the wind beating so hard on my face that it felt like one constant touch and my hair flinging itself into wind-knots, even tied back and stuffed down the back of my shirt. (I found one tangle so densely knotted afterward that I just had to cut it out. I considered it my sacrifice for the voyage.) I was incredibly, purely happy. The air smelled right. The suffocating haze blew off as we got out of the harbor; the sky was soaking summer blue and the water glinted and wrinkled like coiling glass, mirror-green waves combing and falling between white breaks of foam and bright buoys. Rob came down and joined me, standing against the rail with an arm around my waist. The islands ran off behind us. Cohasset went by and I thought of Jonathan Richman, although I was mostly singing chanteys and Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.

I have no idea how long we spent at Stellwagen Bank. There was a whale there even before we slowed: a humpback by its long white fins and the splattered white markings of its tail, but it wasn't until its second, deep-arching dive that the guides could get a good enough look to identify it as a female named Hancock for the scribbly, signature-like marking on her right fluke. She was fearless of us, or a performer, or just didn't care: she surfaced more than a dozen times within close range of the boat, sometimes just the dark-shining slide of her dorsal fin, often the beautiful, heavy, fluke-lifting dive that made the guy in front of us fist-pump his phone and roar, "YEAH! GOT HER!" with vaguely inappropriate enthusiasm. (Rob began to refer to him as "Ahab.") We were instructed to look for the pale flash of her fins, phosphorescent green under the sunlit, plankton-rich water. I found it strange and touching to hear that Salt, the first humpback named by Provincetown researchers in the 1970's, is not only still alive, but just brought her fourteenth known calf to Stellwagen Bank for the summer. She's believed to be in her fifties. We have no real idea, the guide told us, of the natural life expectancy of whales: they have been studied for so little a time and hunted for so long. They may live as long as humans or even longer. I missed if we were told Hancock's age, but she came up streaming bubbles, gathering to dive so close to the Cetacea, I wondered if we were going to have to dodge whale breath fallout. (Memories of childhood whale watches off Cape Elizabeth: the blow smells terrible.) I wasn't the only person saying out loud, "Oh, beautiful."

Too soon, we had to turn around and make haste back to Boston. Most of the passengers moved indoors now that there were no more whales to crowd for a better view of, so Rob and I settled on the little rim of bench at the bow, and then shortly Rob was seated and I was passed out sideways with my head on his lap. I dozed on and off the whole way back, blinking awake sometimes to an afterimage-blue drench across everything and a little kid near us in a pink windbreaker with her fists on her hips, grinning fiercely into the buffeting wind. I'm not convinced that I didn't sunburn my eyelids slightly, but the rest of me appears to be fine. I woke for good as we were passing Deer Island. We got back into the harbor and the smothering heat came back; I stripped off my jacket and bundled it back into Rob's backpack, although my hat was a temporary lost cause as I picked the knots out of my hair. Teeny introduced us to some sea bass she knows; we fed them the only crackers we could buy from a nearby snack stand and watched the glimmering broken silver of their scales twisting and gleaming in the shadowy water, kelp-tatters clinging to the pilings and a pair of mallards doing their supercilious best to compete for crackers. After that we needed food ourselves, so after a quick calculation of proximity to waterfront vs. not murderously expensive, we ended up at Durgin-Park. Their Indian pudding was as excellent as we'd promised—and apparently competitive with the Indian pudding of Teeny's childhood, a bonus. She and Rob compared notes on growing up in the Pioneer Valley. I ate a very great quantity of fried clams and drank something that was mostly white rum with a gesture toward mint leaves. We separated outside Quincy Market, in the lowering storm that doesn't yet seem to have broken, although it has displaced Friday's fireworks. Rob and I installed the air conditioner in our living room window and collapsed. It has taken me about three times as long as usual to write up this post because my body really wants to be asleep, remembering the rise and rock of the waves and the sticky taste of salt blown on your skin.

Have some chanteys, because they were in my head all day.

The Young Tradition, "Randy Dandy-O"

The Young Tradition, "Shanties: Fire Maringo/Hanging Johnny/Bring 'Em Down/Haul on the Bowline"

Louis Killen, "Hilo Johnny Brown"

A.L. Lloyd & Ewan MacColl, "Blood Red Roses"

Stan Kelly, "Away, Haul Away"

I feel somewhat conflicted about the fact that I know many songs about whales, but mostly the hunting of them. I thought it might be indelicate to sing "The Balaena" or "The Wings of a Gull (The Weary Whaling Grounds)" where they could hear.