Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25120
• • Text: Dennis Pottenger White metal oars carve whirlpools in cold green water. For hours on end they dip and rise, dip and rise until we raft-up and rest together under a gun-metal gray sky. It's early afternoon on the last day of a sea kayaking expedition off the western coast of British Columbia, and a hand-held radio crackles in the kayak up ahead. Pods of killer whales have been sighted leaving Robson Bight, a protected cove about ten nauti cal miles to the east. But rain, wind and flooding currents are also on the way. So we dig into our stuff sacks, slip on our raingear and paddle back to base camp through the storm. nose to tail on top, snow-white on my belly and above each eye. We move together through deep, green water. We rise to the waterline and blow a deep, long out-breath, followed by a shorter windy in-breath that trails off into silence. Then, instead of diving again, we rest, bobbing together at the surface, our thin hides rubbing gently. Another blow, and suddenly my eyes scroll open. I bolt up, wide awake. I squint into darkness, wriggle out of my sleeping bag and tear down a dark trail toward the water. On the lip of the cliff, in the dead calm of early morning, the only sound I hear is the tinkling of the tide on the rocks below. And then, from somewhere out in the darkness, I hear the whales again. I stand in the dark and think back to my dream. I'd come to Johnstone Strait, the narrow channel separating northern Vancouver Island from mainland British Columbia, to be with killer whales in the wild. But in my dream I wasn't kayaking with orcas, I was one. For days the whales stay to the east and our kayaking trip ends without a sight ing, leaving me feeling empty. But the next afternoon, I hitch a ride to Alert Bay and board a boat bound for Robson Bight. An hour or so at sea, the captain cuts the engine and we drift. Then it happens. About 50 yards off the bow, a black dorsal fin cuts the surface of the water. It belongs to a mature male orca, who blows then dives out of sight. Closer to shore, two more orcas, young twins who lost both their mother and grandmother within the same year, swim side-by-side. Leading the pod is a mature female researchers believe was born in 1947. I scan the wind-rippled water. Killer whales swim all around me-just as they did in my dream. Half a minute later, a sickle-shaped fin breaks the surface not 20 yards from the boat. The lead female blows, inhales and submerges beneath our aluminum vessel. As she passes us, the four ton killer whale swivels her body and, through eight feet of water, a slow black eye the size of a saucer looks right up at me. In this moment hun dreds of flashbulbs pulse in the dark room of my soul, and words from a Joseph Campbell book form on the screen of my mind. The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Kayaking with Orcas