Looking Back
by Steve Snow
(Newport Oregon USA)
Sometimes,if you are extremely lucky, you witness something vivid and come away unscathed, able to reflect upon what you saw, or didn't see.
Here, on the Central Oregon Coast we have a large river that supports salmon runs both summer and winter. Coho and Chinooks run a gauntlet of seals and sea lions to make their journey to the spawning beds up miles of rivers and streams. The opening to the river is lined by jetties, they provide a safer entry from the ocean for boats, they also provide a surf break.
Yesterday, a hand full of us noticed a large gray shape as it surfaced and immediately plunged. A baby gray whale we all assumed as we sat just past the outside sets on a warm bright summer day. The intervals were short and the sea had doubled as a flooding tide was peaking. We all paddled toward the spot where the whale dove, hoping, I don't know,to touch it, commune in some cosmic way with one of our earlist ansestors, perhaps we just wanted to apologize for our bad behavior on such a noble and peaceful animal? I'm not sure exactly what I felt but we all moved toward it instintively.
The place was fishy, no other word for it. The aroma of WD-40 was on the water. Suddenly, the birds went nuts at something just a hundred yards away. I couldn't see what happened but I did see the birds flock to the spot and pick up chunks of what? A chum circle of about thirty feet across started to drift in our direction, pushed by the same waves we were waiting for. What was in those waves was the question. I immagined a head high wave with a crimson crown holding a great white ready to stike at the tail of my surfboard.
We all paddled back in, staying down with our hands glued to the rails, hearts pounding, like race horses blasting from the starting gate, not looking back for fear of what we would see.
A few hours later, we heard a report that a 12 foot Great White was caught, tangled in some crab pots just north of our location. On the six oclock news, the Great White's mouth was proped open with a four by four chunk of wood. It's eyes stared at the camera, just as they would have stared at me I knew, if I had looked back.
